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—Woody Allen in July 1976 1977–1989: Established career Then came two of Allen's most popular films: Annie Hall and Manhattan. Annie Hall (1977) won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress in a Leading Role for Diane Keaton, Best Original Screenplay and Best Director for Allen. It set the standard for modern romantic comedy and ignited a fashion trend with the clothes ...
- Allan Stewart Konigsberg, November 30, 1935 (age 87), New York City, U.S.
- City College of New York (dropped out)
- 1956–present
- Letty Aronson (sister)
Woody Allen. Woody Allen was born on November 30, 1935, as Allen Konigsberg, in The Bronx, NY, the son of Martin Konigsberg and Nettie Konigsberg. He has one younger sister, Letty Aronson. As a young boy, he became intrigued with magic tricks and playing the clarinet, two hobbies that he continues today. Allen broke into show business at 15 ...
- January 1, 1
- 1.65 m
- Bronx, New York City, New York, USA
Woody Allen has acted in, directed, and written many films starting in the 1960s. His first film was the 1965 comedy What's New Pussycat?, which featured him as both writer and performer. Feeling that his New Yorker humor clashed with director Clive Donner 's British sensibility, he decided to direct all future films from his own material.
Woody Allen. Writer: Annie Hall. Woody Allen was born on November 30, 1935, as Allen Konigsberg, in The Bronx, NY, the son of Martin Konigsberg and Nettie Konigsberg. He has one younger sister, Letty Aronson. As a young boy, he became intrigued with magic tricks and playing the clarinet, two hobbies that he continues today. Allen broke into show business at 15 years when he started writing ...
- November 30, 1935
- Overview
- Youth and early work
- The 1970s
Woody Allen (born November 30, 1935, Bronx, New York, U.S.) is an American motion-picture director, screenwriter, actor, comedian, playwright, and author who is best known for his bittersweet comic films containing elements of parody, slapstick, and the absurd but who also made weighty dramas, often with dark themes and bleak landscapes reminiscent of the work of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman—who, perhaps more than any other filmmaker, influenced Allen’s work. Allen was also known as a sympathetic director for women, writing strong and well-defined characters for them. By the late 1970s he was widely regarded as one of the world’s most-accomplished filmmakers, but the unevenness of later films and allegations of sexual abuse tarnished his reputation.
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According to official documents, Allen Konigsberg was born on December 1, 1935. However, he later wrote in his autobiography, Apropos of Nothing (2020), that his actual birth date was November 30. He grew up in Brooklyn in a family steeped in Jewish culture. Konigsberg was especially close to his younger sister, who would later work with him as a producer. As a boy, he was enamoured of sports, magic, motion pictures, and jazz (taking up the clarinet as a teenager, though his musical idol was saxophonist Sidney Bechet). While still in high school, using the name Woody Allen, he began submitting quips to newspaper columnists—most notably to the nationally syndicated Earl Wilson. Before long, as Woody Allen, he was being paid to write jokes for entertainers. Stints by Allen as a student at New York University (as a film major) and the City College of New York were ended abruptly by poor grades and erratic attendance. In 1956 Allen began writing for television, and in 1958 he joined Sid Caesar’s writing staff alongside Larry Gelbart (later the writer-producer of TV’s M*A*S*H*) and Mel Brooks. In 1960 Allen moved to the Garry Moore Show. At this time he also began performing stand-up comedy at clubs in Greenwich Village, which led to guest appearances on television and to several comedy albums.
While performing stand-up in a nightclub in 1964, Allen impressed actress Shirley MacLaine and producer Charles K. Feldman, who gave him a chance to write the screenplay for the film What’s New, Pussycat? (1965), in which he also appeared. Allen made his first film, What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966), by redubbing a James Bond-like Japanese action film, International Secret Police: Key of Keys (1965), and shifting its focus to the pursuit of a top-secret recipe for egg salad. A year later Allen played Bond’s nephew in Casino Royale. In the meantime, he wrote a play, Don’t Drink the Water, which won acclaim on Broadway in 1966. That year also marked Allen’s first contribution to The New Yorker. Writing initially in the style of S.J. Perelman, Allen would go on to contribute dozens of sophisticated humour pieces to the magazine over several decades; these pieces were collected in books such as Without Feathers (1975) and Getting Even (1978).
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Before undertaking another feature film, Allen starred on Broadway from 1969 to 1970 in another play that he had written, the romantic comedy Play It Again, Sam. In the 1972 Herbert Ross-directed film adaptation of the play, Allen reprised his role as a shy film critic who seeks romantic advice from an apparition of Humphrey Bogart. Bananas (1971), the first of Allen’s directorial efforts for United Artists, starred him as a hapless, neurotic Manhattanite who is drawn into a revolution in a fictional Central American country. Though somewhat undisciplined, Bananas offered snatches of absurdist humour that rank among Allen’s funniest film moments.
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In Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*but Were Afraid to Ask) (1972), Allen satirized David Reuben’s popular sex manual with mixed results. Sleeper (1973), a far more cohesive satire, featured Allen in the role of a neurotic health-food mogul who goes into the hospital for a simple operation and awakens 200 years later to learn that doctors had frozen him and that he is now a stranger in an even stranger land. Sex is forbidden—a notion inimical to any Allen protagonist—so he joins the rebel underground, whose leader is played by Diane Keaton (Allen’s costar in Play It Again, Sam). Love and Death (1975), a parody of Leo Tolstoy’s fiction, Sergey Eisenstein’s filmmaking, and a clutch of other landmarks of Russian culture, was less universally applauded.
After delivering an excellent “straight” performance as the protagonist in The Front (1976), Martin Ritt’s fine drama about Hollywood blacklisting, Allen made Annie Hall (1977), a breakthrough work that dramatically elevated his status as a filmmaker. An elliptical account of the rise and fall of a romance between the quirky title character (played by Keaton) and a comedy writer (Allen), it was Allen’s first attempt to blend genuine sentiment with his patented theatre-of-the-ridiculous. Although Allen denied its origins in autobiography, the poignant love story almost certainly mirrored some aspects of the real-life relationship that had transpired between Keaton and Allen. The film also marked the emergence of the distinctive on-screen persona that many came to believe was merely an extension of the offscreen Allen: a neurotic, erudite, wisecracking, moralistic, phobia-ridden pessimist who is obsessed with his mortality but finds solace for his existential despair in art and love and who is at base a mensch. Annie Hall won Academy Awards for best picture, best actress (Keaton), best director, and best screenplay (Allen and collaborator Marshall Brickman). Allen, however, chose not to attend the Academy Award ceremony and instead played clarinet at Michael’s Pub in Manhattan, as he usually did on Monday nights.
Allen’s next film, Interiors (1978), was a carefully crafted homage to the weighty psychodramas of Ingmar Bergman. Abjuring humour, this tale of a dysfunctional family (starring Geraldine Page, Maureen Stapleton, E.G. Marshall, Mary Beth Hurt, and Keaton) received a mixed reaction from critics, some of whom saw it as decidedly pretentious. Despite the film’s poor showing at the box office, Allen received Academy Award nominations for best director and best original screenplay.
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Apr 2, 2014 · Who Is Woody Allen? Born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 1, 1935, Woody Allen is an American film director, screenwriter, actor and author who is best known for his romantic comedy films ...
Feb 22, 2021 · Woody Allen and Mia Farrow in the 1980s with, from left, Fletcher, Dylan (in Farrow’s arms), Moses, and Soon-Yi. The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images. For years, the account given by Woody ...
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