Unruly Life of Woody Allen

by Marion Meade

  On stage and off, Keaton was a mix of eccentricities. Her acting leaned heavily on a collection of dithering and blithering mannerisms that would so annoy one critic that he awarded her, a decade hence, "the Sandy Dennis Prize for Instant Deliquesence." In personal conversation, jittery and inarticulate, she tended to flutter through a rich repertoire of stutters and stammers and giggles—"God!'s" and "Well, uhs"; "gees" and "sures." Unconventional in appearance, she dressed herself in clothing purchased in thrift shops. "She was the type," Woody recalled, "that would come in with, you know, a football jersey and a skirt.. . and combat boots and, you know, over mittens." Few woman would have felt truly comfortable in some of her outlandish getups—including a tiny minidress with brilliant green tights, and orange clogs with three-inch soles—but Diane had the flair to pull them off. Woody was openly smitten.

  "When I first met her," he said later, "her mind was completely blank." Far from being a drawback, this was precisely the sort of unequal relationship he preferred. There is no doubt that his newly beloved, eleven years younger, was unformed and guileless, lacking in formal education. But underneath she was not "a coatcheck girl," as he seemed to think, nor was she "a complete idiot." As a self-appointed mentor, he suggested books to improve her mind and psychotherapy for her immaturity, even offering to pay for her sessions. She seized the opportunity.

  Woody's throat hurt. In his dressing room, on the makeup table, alongside paperbacks of Selections from Kierkegaard and Basic Teachings of the Great Philosophers, he kept a blender, a can of chocolate syrup, and a jar of honey. The highbrow books were for show. The other paraphernalia had a serious purpose; he was whipping up malteds to gain weight and the honey was medicinal because his throat was usually raw from the strain of trying to project his untrained voice across the footlights.

  Aside from preoccupations with his voice, life as a stage actor turned out to be surprisingly pleasurable for Woody. He had his days free to write or relax. In the evenings, he and Diane would walk together to the theater district, strolling down Broadway to Forty-fourth Street. Shortly after eight o'clock, the curtain went up, and he spent the next ninety minutes onstage in the company of people he liked. Now that the play was doing nicely at the box office, he had stopped biting his nails and felt completely comfortable about the text. Afterward, cast members went out for a late supper before heading home. "It was the easiest job in the world!" he said years later.

  Broadway critics tended to be lukewarm. Some dismissed Woody's play as little more than a diverting evening at the theater. Clive Barnes of the New York Times wished he had treated the subject more seriously, while Walter Kerr thought he had copied George Axelrod's seven-year-itch fantasy of a lonely man, sexually obsessed and dreaming about babes. However, none of the nitpicking criticisms mattered to theatergoers, who found the work funny and entertaining. As a result, Play It Again, Sam settled in for 453 performances on Broadway, and a London production starring Dudley Moore had an equally successful run.

  Playing opposite Diane, Woody came across as an immensely attractive performer. Even though he continued to portray the nebbish, and would do so until he made Annie Hall in 1977, audiences glimpsed a more earthy side of him with Diane, who obviously liked him. It was easy to see why: He was smart, confident, and absolutely sexually appealing, despite his glasses and funny clumps of red hair. And it was not hard to imagine him in bed with a woman, in contrast to the typical comic, whose character was usually about as erotic as Mr. Magoo.

  The special chemistry between Woody and Diane worked beautifully for both of them but would have an even greater impact on Keaton's career. In the long run, her association with Woody would mean more important film roles and eventually an Oscar for Annie Hall. On the other hand, it would take years to erase her public image as Woody's girl.

  Four years later, Play It Again, Sam would be released as a film starring Woody and Diane. The rights were sold to Paramount Pictures, which initially intended to cast it with stars, but a number of actors turned down the roles. By the time the project finally got rolling in the fall of 1971, Woody was sufficiently famous from Take the Money and Run and Bananas to be per-fectly eligible. Although he agreed to write the screen adaptation, he had no interest in directing the finished script. Because he had put Sam behind him and moved on to new projects, Paramount hired the experienced Herbert Ross, who made a few notable changes, chiefly shifting the locale from New York to San Francisco. Lavishly praised as a funny, smoothly made situation comedy, Play It Again, Sam would become Woody's biggest box-office success so far and make him a mass-audience star. The picture has become a classic.

  Throughout the run of the stage play, obsessively in love with Diane, he was intent on disentangling himself from his marriage. Even though he and Louise had amicably agreed to separate, they continued to live together. When she finally moved out in June of 1969, he could not bear to inform his parents of the breakup. At the very moment when the movers were loading up the van, hoisting some of Louise's bookcases out of a window onto Seventy-ninth Street, Marty Konigsberg arrived at the door.

  "What's happening?" he asked.

  Not a thing, Woody told his father.

  While calling the separation a trial, neither one of them expected to get back together, and Louise would eventually take a twentieth-floor co-op on East Seventy-first Street. After almost ten years together, three of them as Woody's wife, she counted on retaining his allegiance. For a time, this turned out to be the case because he felt protective. After giving her a cameo in Take the Money and Run, he took pains to cast her in three additional films. What's more, they were still sleeping together. For all their problems living under one roof, there had never been any trouble with their sex life. Together they traveled to Mexico for the divorce in the spring of 1970 and spent the night in the same hotel room. Next morning, they appeared in court nervously holding hands. Louise would recall the trip as a larky "good time"; whereas Woody said, deadpan, that the divorce was a "protest against the Viet Nam War."

  Nevertheless, he continually fueled Louise's jealousy of Diane Keaton. About a month after the divorce, the summer Woody was in Puerto Rico filming Bananas and living at the San Juan Sheraton with Diane, Louise came to visit. In his hotel room, he pointed to a bureau. "That's Diane's drawer," he said, then began to extol her virtues. Diane was, he insisted, the greatest actress in America and responsible for the best relationship he'd ever had. Louise took the lavish praise for Diane personally and interpreted it to mean that she lacked talent. His flaunting of Keaton that day in San Juan would continue to rankle Louise twenty years later.

  Her confidence buckling, she fell into a slump. That Woody was romantically attracted to Diane could not be disputed, but she refused to acknowledge that he loved Diane, or felt any physical passion for her, beliefs that Woody seemed to have encouraged. Once, when Diane returned to California for a month to visit her parents, he invited Louise to stay with him.

  In 1970 Woody's income topped $1 million ($4.2 million today). Now that he had a checking account that seemed about as large as the federal budget, he stopped carrying cash and relied on friends for pocket change, nor did he cash checks or visit banks. All such mundane transactions were left to his accountant. Looking for ways to spend his money, he splurged on a Picasso lithograph and German Expressionist paintings, Jacobean furniture, leather-bound volumes of Franz Kafka's work, and a Rolls-Royce complete with driver. An ardent New York Knicks fan, he asked sportscaster Howard Cosell to help him get season tickets at Madison Square Garden (then located at Forty-ninth Street). Even though the seats were "way up in the balcony," he felt lucky to get them and over the years moved down to courtside.

  With money rolling in, he was able to afford the penthouse of his dreams. Even before Louise moved out, he decided to buy a co-op in the neighborhood, something not more than "ten blocks from the mainstream." Among the glamorous properties that realtors showed him were a pair of adjoining penthouses on Fifth Avenue, located abo
ut a block north of the building where Louise's parents once lived, whose doorman examined his scruffy clothes and made him wait for Louise in the lobby.

  The building at 930 Fifth Avenue turned out to be exceptionally conservative. Its co-op board, fearing that the presence of a person such as himself—that is, a person in show business—would inject a sleazy element into the building and upset other tenants, had "grave reservations" about accepting Woody, recalled one of the shareholders. In an interview with the board, Woody argued that he was not the usual show-business person at all; in fact, he was basically asocial, either writing all day or rising early each morning to go out and make movies. He insisted that he had "practically no friends" and would cause no trouble. After numerous reassurances, he was accepted, at which point he turned around and made a request of the board: that he would never be approached in the lobby for an autograph. (This pact was immediately broken when an elderly dowager, living in the building for many years but unaware of the no-autographs agreement, trotted up to him and exclaimed, "Are you Woody Allen?" "No," he said, and turned away.)

  Renovations to convert Penthouses A and C into a suitable duplex—a project running into tens of thousands of dollars—meant gutting the property. On the lower floor, a warren of small rooms surrounded by narrow terraces, walls were razed to create spacious living and dining rooms, a library, and a private elevator foyer. External walls were also knocked down and small windows replaced with giant floor-to-ceiling solar glass to provide sweeping views of the park and skyline. There was only one bedroom, which along with its adjoining dressing room took up the entire top floor (no doubt signifying this was the home of a confirmed bachelor). The upper terrace wrapping around the airy master bedroom was turned into a small garden park of lush plants and trees with a pond. (Years later, complaining of bugs, he hardly ever ventured outside.) When Architectural Digest ran a photo spread, Woody's interior designer Olga San Giuliano explained how she worked with the "fantasies and inner life" of her client, so that the penthouse might reflect "who he is privately."

  During these years, the relationship with his parents remained as ambivalent as ever. Seldom did he show up at family gatherings, and when he did, it was for only a few minutes. After saying hello, he usually disappeared into the bedroom to watch television before beating a hasty departure. For the most part, however, he was a dutiful son and brother who made sure none of the Konigsbergs had to do without. Proudly, he moved Nettie and Marty into the city and bought them a co-op on the Upper East Side as well as a vacation home in Hallandale, north of Miami Beach. His mother, after more than thirty years, retired from her bookkeeping job at the florist shop. His father, still spry at seventy, kept busy with a variety of odd jobs; he sometimes did engraving for a jewelry shop on the Lower East Side or else he breezed around the city delivering packages for the Rollins and Joffe office, where people affectionately called him "Mr. K."

  Living comfortably now, neither of the Konigsbergs was in any position to object when their son kidded them in public. They were proud of him, they would insist. Whether Nettie actually saw all of Woody's films is doubtful. But evidently Marty did, going to the box office and paying for a ticket like anyone else. He was not always thrilled, and once remarked to a relative, "I don't understand that crap he's writing."

  Another recipient of Woody’s generosity was his sister, Letty, a petite redhead with a perky sense of humor and yappy mannerisms reminiscent of her mother. Eight years apart in age, Letty and Woody, as children, seemed to be neither rivals nor equals. Their relationship was affectionate; she worshiped her brother, who in turn felt protective of her. As a grown-up, Letty was always included in the select group invited to see rough cuts of Woody's pictures. In times of crisis, she was one of his most passionate defenders.

  After graduation from Brooklyn College, Letty became a teacher. When her first marriage to a neighborhood boy ended in divorce, she married the principal of her school, Sidney Aronson, and had a son, Chris. By the seventies, Letty and Sidney were living comfortably in Manhattan, on Park Avenue, only a few blocks from Woody. Having grown disenchanted with teaching, Letty decided that she wanted a career in television. She managed to find minor positions on Robert Klein's television comedy series and later on Saturday Night Live. Throughout the 1980s, she was employed by the Museum of Television & Radio, where her duties included publicity and exhibitions.

  When it came to financial support, Woody would be as generous to Letty as he was to his parents. On the other hand, according to Mia Farrow's recollections, he was privately disparaging and avoided her company. Is it coincidence that in every film in which the Woody Allen character has a sister—films such as Stardust Memories and Deconstructing Harry—the sister character is written to be a perfect horror? It may be that this was the only way Woody could express his resentment of the adorable baby sister doted on by his mother.

  The March of Time:

  "The inequality of my relationship is a wonderful thing. The fact that I'm with a much younger woman, and much less accomplished woman, works very well. By luck, it's a very happy situation."

  —Woody Allen, on his relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, 1997

  For all their affection for each other, Woody and Diane Keaton were incompatible. As time went on, the relationship grew progressively difficult, in part because he was reluctant to face the truth: She was not the "coatcheck" girl he first perceived. Once young and naive, without "a trace of intellectualism when I first met her," he recalled, she turned into an enthusiastic pupil who worked hard at self-improvement. She read, took classes, and studied photography. Five times a week she visited her therapist. Woody, however, stuck in the role of mentor, still needed her to be subservient. By the time the stage run of Play It Again, Sam ended in March 1970, their affair was over. A brief period of living together ended with Diane renting a place of her own. She began to see other men—including Warren Beatty and Al Pacino in the seventies. In some respects she remained, as Woody once depicted her, "a real hayseed, the kind who would chew eight sticks of gum at a time." She still loved to chew gum. Otherwise, she was her own person.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Medici

  Arthur Krim was a solidly built man, five foot ten, with glasses and dark hair streaked gray. Avuncular in manner, he was an intellectual who could have easily been mistaken for a college professor or a doctor. Born in Manhattan in 1910, he graduated from Columbia Law School, then joined a prestigious New York law firm where he rose rapidly to partner. After serving in the army during World War II, he became president of Eagle Lion Films, his first motion picture experience. In 1951 he and his friend Robert Benjamin took over the venerable United Artists, a one-of-a-kind studio that dated back to 1919, when it was founded by four silent-era superstars— Charles Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks— for the express purpose of retaining control over their enormous earnings. By the late forties, however, the company was losing $100,000 a week and the two surviving owners, Chaplin and Pickford, were only too relieved to sell. Among the classics released by a revitalized UA were The African Queen, High Noon, Marty, and Some Like It Hot. In the 1960s, which brought across-the-board declines in the industry and all-time-low box offices, UA nonetheless continued to prosper with the James Bond, Pink Panther, and Beatles movies.

  United Artists was a New York-based motion picture company that seemed made to order for someone like Woody. An oddity in the Hollywood system, a film studio without a physical studio, it had no lot, no wardrobe or property departments, no contract players or star salaries. Its corporate headquarters was located at 729 Seventh Avenue in midtown Manhattan, 3,000 miles from the movie industry's nerve center. There was a pronounced feeling of family among chairman Krim and his top executives, Bob Benjamin, Eric Pleskow, William Bernstein, and Mike Medavoy. With minimal overhead, they functioned essentially as a financing and distribution company that leased its features from producers for a period of seven years.

  In
1966 Woody tried to interest United Artists in financing his first picture, but the studio was unwilling to put up more than $750,000. On the strength of Take the Money and Run, Rollins and Joffe were able to hammer out a three-picture contract that would give their client modest two-million-dollar budgets and fees of $350,000 for writing, directing, and acting. David Picker, head of production, told Woody to go ahead and write whatever he liked. Taking Picker at his word, he submitted The Jazz Baby, a period drama set in New Orleans. The bewildered UA brass went into shock, and Eric Pleskow, for one, would blank out the script so effectively that he lacks all recollection. Woody, untroubled, promptly came back with another screenplay titled El Weirdo (again coauthored with Mickey Rose), which read like a fast-paced cartoon.

  Possibly the first draft for El Weirdo was "Viva Vargas! Excerpts from the Diary of a Revolutionary," a story Woody had submitted to The New Yorker the previous year. William Shawn rejected the piece because he felt it ridiculed Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the charismatic guerrilla leader who had been killed in Bolivia two years earlier, but the story was finally published by Evergreen Review. Whichever in fact came first, the story or the script, the idea was appealing enough that Woody determined to tell it in one form or the other.

  In El Weirdo, eventually tided Bananas, a sex-starved tester of useless products (for instance, coffins with stereo systems) falls hopelessly in love with a plump blond political activist named Nancy (Louise Lasser), only to be rejected by her because he lacks leadership qualities. "Who's she looking for, Hitler?" Fielding Mellish wonders. But Fielding, having survived constant near-electrocution by his electric blanket during a childhood of habitual bed-wetting, is tougher than he appears. Desperate to win Nancy’s love, he travels to San Marco, a banana republic whose president has just been assassinated in a revolutionary uprising. Joining a band of rebels, he becomes president and returns to the United States in a red-bearded, Castro-type of disguise to promote foreign trade for his country (locusts at popular prices), and gets himself arrested and pardoned. Bananas ends with Fielding's wedding night, covered on television with sports commentator Howard Cosell supplying a live play-by-play.