Woody Allen is one of America’s best known film directors. His “triple-threat” talents of writing, directing and acting are rare in the film industry. His output has been prolific for half a century. In addition to directing 50 films, he has acted in or written at least a dozen others.
Woody Allen was born Allan Stewart Konigsberg, in the Bronx, in 1935, and brought up in Brooklyn, New York. His parents, Martin and Nettie, also had a daughter, Letty, who born in 1943. Depicting a boy with bickering parents in some of his comic films; the reality is that the parents did not have the best relationship, and Allen was impacted by the tension that often marked life at home. In addition to English, Yiddish, Hebrew, and German were heard in the house, as grandparents on both sides were Jews who had emigrated from Russia and Austria.
Allen attended public school while also attending classes at Hebrew School. Although his self-effacing character is often depicted as “nerdy” and scrawny, he was quite athletic with a passion for baseball. Another talent he gained early was doing card tricks and magic acts. He would entertain fellow students with his sleight-of-hand.
Still in high school, he began selling jokes to an entertainment agent. Incredibly, he began earning more than the combined salaries of his parents. He legally changed his name to Heywood Allen at age 17, then opted for the more informal “Woody.”
He made three attempts at college, not completing any of them. Ironically, he failed a course at prestigious NYU titled, “Motion Picture Production.” Formal education may have been too structured and limiting for Allen. He continued writing, and selling jokes and comic sketches, sending them to writers working in the Broadway theater scene in New York. One, Abe Burrows, co-author of the hit show (and movie) Guys and Dolls was bowled over by the young Allen’s writing. Burrows provided Allen with introduction letters to comics Phil Silvers and Sid Caesar, among others. These were some of the big stars in 1950s television. Woody Allen was already recognized as a very special talent and his career took off.
It is said that Woody Allen has worked many days where he wrote for 15 hours. His television writing connections kept expanding — The Tonight Show, Ed Sullivan Show, Sid Caesar’s Comedy Hour, the list is long and impressive. He was published in highly respected magazines such as the New Yorker, for which he wrote short stories and even captioned the witty cartoons the magazine is famous for.
Starting in 1960, Allen was also a performing comedian. He crafted his low-key, self-mocking, intelligent style. He took to writing plays beginning in 1965 with Don’t Drink the Water, and four years later presented Play It Again, Sam, which he adapted for the screen in 1972.
With these myriad talents already established, it was filmmaking that would become Allen’s most prodigious and prolific field of achievement. He hit the funny bone of the audience early on with films such as Take the Money and Run and Bananas. Writing, directing, and acting, he was a central character in his own creations. He was the hilarious hero for whom it seemed most everything went wrong. In Take the Money and Run he began an often-repeated pattern of casting the woman he was involved with in a role opposite him. For that film, it was his then wife, Louise Lasser. Later on, Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow would each appear in multiple films.
It is fair to say that Woody Allen has gone through many different stages as a writer and director for film. When he has gotten to serious and somber works he isn’t in front of the camera. In the late 1970s, Allen made two of his best films, Annie Hall and Manhattan. Sandwiched between these was a film he intended as a homage to the great Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman. The film, Interiors,featured Diane Keaton, who had played the ditzy central character of Annie Hall. As funny as his previous films were, Interiors was dark and brooding. It was Woody Allen presenting a completely opposite view of the world to the audience.
Through the following decades Allen has continued his enormous output. In the 1980s his films seemed to explore more elements of fantasy and of referencing the film world itself. He then created more mysterious and intriguing stories; more than once his plots involved people literally getting away with murder. Many younger stars have been showcased in Allen’s films.
There has been controversy stemming from his personal life; especially his involvement and subsequent marriage to his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, who is the adopted daughter of Allen’s former companion, Mia Farrow. Woody Allen was never one to be in the public eye, and the bitterness that came out of this situation has only increased his desire for privacy. At age 80, he is actively working on new projects.
Allen’s “stand-up” work is highly regarded, having been ranked as the Number 4 comic of all-time by Comedy Central. He has authored four books of short stories and is a talented clarinetist, specializing in New Orleans jazz. Woody Allen has won four Academy Awards, two Golden Globe awards, and received ten awards from BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts). In 2014, he was honored at the Golden Globes ceremony with the “Cecil B. DeMille Award” for lifetime achievement.