Woody Allen: A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham

In this meticulous if less-than-convincing chronicle, biographer McGilligan (Funny Man) traces Woody Allen’s trajectory from self-deprecating comic through celebrated auteur to Hollywood pariah. Growing up in Brooklyn, Allen became a paid joke writer for a New York Post gossip columnist while still in his teens, and by the 1950s he was writing for numerous TV variety programs. Unsatisfied with the small screen, Allen turned to stand-up comedy before pivoting to filmmaking with 1966’s What’s Up, Tiger Lily? Thoroughly covering the making of all 50 of Allen’s films, McGilligan details how “misbehaving robots [and] malfunctioning props” plagued the shoot for Sleeper, and how an unpublished murder mystery novel Allen wrote while filming Love and Death in Paris transformed into Annie Hall. McGilligan devotes a considerable portion of the book to relitigating the 1992 implosion of Allen’s relationship with Mia Farrow after he began an affair with her 21-year-old adopted daughter from a previous marriage, Soon-Yi Previn, as well as the sexual abuse allegations made against him soon afterward by his adopted daughter with Farrow, Dylan. McGilligan’s repeated invocation of McCarthyism to describe the inquest into Allen’s alleged abuse raises serious questions over whether readers should trust the impartiality of his account, casting a pall over even the robust recounting of Allen’s prior life and career. This is more interested in defending Allen than allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins/Loomis. (Feb.)