ALLEN, WOODY

born Dec. 1, 1935, Brooklyn, New York, N.Y., U.S. original name Allen Stewart Konigsberg, legal name Heywood Allen American motion-picture director, screenwriter, actor, and author, best known for his bittersweet comic films containing elements of parody, slapstick, and the absurd. He was also known as a sympathetic director for women, writing strong and well-defined characters for them. Among his featured performers were Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow. Much of Allen's comic material derives from his urban Jewish middle-class background. Intending to be a playwright, Allen began writing stand-up comedy monologues while still in high school. His introduction to show business came a few years later when he was hired to write material for such television comedians as Sid Caesar and Art Carney. In the early 1960s, after several false starts, he acquired a following on the nightclub circuit, performing his own stand-up comedy routines. His comic persona was that of an insecure and doubt-ridden person who playfully exaggerates his own failures and anxieties. Soon Allen began writing and directing plays and films, often also acting in the latter. He appeared in and wrote the screenplay for What's New, Pussycat? (1965), and his first play, Don't Drink the Water, appeared on Broadway in 1966. He starred in and directed the film Take the Money and Run (1969), a farcical comedy about an incompetent would-be criminal. The films that followed, Bananas (1971), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask (1972), and Sleeper (1973), employed a highly inventive, joke-oriented style and secured his reputation as a major comic filmmaker. In Love and Death (1975), a parody of 19th-century Russian novels, critics discerned an increased seriousness beneath the comic surface. This was borne out in Allen's next (directed) film, the award-winning Annie Hall (1977), in which the self-deprecating humour of the protagonist (played by Allen) serves as but one motif in a rich portrayal of a contemporary urban romantic relationship. He also starred in the film version (1972) of his successful Broadway play Play It Again, Sam (1969) and in the motion picture The Front (1976). Allen's subsequent films contained a paradoxical blend of comedy and philosophy and a juxtaposition of trivialities with major concerns. The critical and commercial failure of the bleakly serious drama Interiors (1978) was followed by the highly acclaimed seriocomedy Manhattan (1979). In such later films as Stardust Memories (1980), Zelig (1983), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), and Alice (1990) Allen attempted with varying success to blend his vein of absurd humour with more realistic narratives, a wider range of character portrayals, and light but basically serious themes.