The Unruly Life Of Woody Allen Book

Woody Allen once controlled the press like his actors and as critic Andrew Sarris observes, Woody "is almost a ventriloquist and all his actors are marionettes. It's his nature. He has to be on top." The Soon-Yi scandal cost him $7 million and his protected reputation and now we've got Marion Meade's unblinking look at his blighted life (superior to John Baxter's Woody Allen; not quite as good as Meade's Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? The son of a loveless father and mother who respectively ignored and beat him daily, Woody grew up mean, scarred and scared: he slept with a night light until his early 40s and considered suicide daily until at least age 51. His uncanny gift for comedy gave him no comfort but films did. His most autobiographical character is Cecilia in The Purple Rose of Cairo, who took refuge in theatres from "the ugly light" of real life. Meade casts ugly light on Woody and his work. His best role for a woman, Annie Hall, is "basically stupid" as Diane Keaton said. In life and art, Woody sought leading ladies he could dominate. He stalled Mia Farrow continually before granting her the right to keep her shampoo at his apartment "alongside toiletries belonging to Diane Keaton, preserved there like so many fossilised relics in King Tut's tomb for more than a decade." Mia was horrified that he spilled her family's nasty secrets in Hannah and Her Sisters and fretted over his obsession with Keaton and her sisters, Mariel Hemingway's sister and Mia's own sister Steffi--whose photos she discovered (shades of Soon-Yi!) in his apartment. Woody's loveable persona was as fake as his transplanted, dyed hair. And Mia's no sweetheart herself: having caught her father with Ava Gardner one night as a child, she married Ava's former husband Frank Sinatra at 19, and then stole her friend Dory Previn's husband Andre, saying, "You don't fight what feels good." If Meade's sour, thorough tome is true, nobody in Hollywood fights what feels good and they all come out looking pretty bad. --Tim AppeloRead More