Love and Death (1975): "...the best thing is blonde twelve-year-old girls."
If a novelist or writer or any artist makes art that expresses the attraction between teenage girls and older men, is that indicative of their own personal desires and/or does it express an event they may have occurred previously in their lives? For example, was Nabokov an active ephebophile and did Tatiana von Furstenberg have an affair with a married man while she was at boarding school? Let us take a look at Woody Allen for a possible clue to the answer.
Woody Allen has written and/or directed in at least five films that contained age-discrepant relationships. Those films are:
And in Love and Death (1975) ninety-year-old Father Andre, the “Holiest of Holies, Ancient and Wise” shared, “I have lived many years. And after many trials and tribulations. I have come to [the] conclusion that the best thing is blonde twelve-year-old girls. Two of them, whenever possible.”
Manhattan (1979) – forty-two-year-old Isaac (Woody Allen), a comedy writer and aspiring novelist, ends his affair with a seventeen-year-old high school student (Mariel Hemingway) to be with an older woman (Diane Keaton), only to regret it later.
Stacey Nelkin related in 2011 on The Howard Stern Show that Manhattan was based on her relationship with Allen that began after they met on the set of Annie Hall. Nelkin was a seventeen-year-old student at the pretigious Stuyvesant high school in Manhattan and Allen was fourty-two. Allen confirmed in a 2014 Op-Ed piece in the New York Times that he and Nelkin did have a relationship.
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Manhattan (1979) |
Deconstructing Harry (1997) - Writer Harry Block (Woody Allen) drives a prostitute, a friend, and his kidnapped son, to his former university to receive an honorary degree. One of the sub-plots involves Harry's relationship with Fay (Elisabeth Shue), a young fan who turns into a follower, then a pupil - Eliza Doolittle style, and finally into a roommate. Despite warning Fay to avoid falling in love with him and confessing his intention to “fuck” her before moving on to the next fan, Harry fell in love with Fay and was distraught to learn that she got engaged to Larry (Billy Crystal), Harry’s “alleged” friend.
Whatever Works (2009) - Boris Yellnikoff (Larry David), a middle-aged Professor of Quantum Mechanics at Columbia University, reluctantly marries Melodie Saint Ann Celestine (Evan Rachel Wood), a young runaway from Mississippi.
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) - Alfie (Anthony Hopkins), an elderly man, leaves his wife to marry a young call girl, while Roy (Josh Brolin), a middle-aged novelist, becomes engrossed by Dia (Freida Pinto) a beautiful young woman, while desperately trying to get his second book published.
In Irrational Man (2015) Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix), a philosophy professor at Braylin, finds himself in a life crisis, but he gains a new purpose in life after he begins a relationship with one of his students, Jill Pollard (Emma Stone) and becomes a one-man vigilante.
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| Dylan Farrow and Woody Allen |
In addition, in 1992 Allen was accused by Dylan Farrow, his adopted daughter, and Mia Farrow of molesting Dylan when she was two and seven-years-old.
Here are some low-lights from the 33-page decision from the presiding judge in the case:
When Allen met Farrow she had three biological and three adopted children. One of whom was ten-year-old Soon-Yi. Allen and Farrow met in 1980 and "[u]ntil 1985, Mr. Allen...viewed her children as an encumbrance. He had no involvement with them." Allen even had a separate residence on the opposite side of Manhattan.After unsuccessfully trying to have a child together, Allen allowed Farrow to adopt Dylan, a newborn, in 1985.
Eventually, Woody warmed up to Dylan; however, according to Dylan and Farrow, Woody warmed up to Dylan too much. For example, when Dylan was 2-years-old, Farrow told Allen "...[you] look at her in a sexual way. You fondled her...You're all over her. You look at her when she's naked."
Then in 1990, 19-year-old Soon-Yi asked Woody if she could attend a New York Knicks' basketball game with him at Madison Square Garden. Soon-Yi "opened up" to Woody (no pun intended) after attending several basketball games and in 1991, after she enrolled in Drew College in Madison, New Jersey, Allen and Soon-Yi began speaking regularly on the phone.
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| Allen, Farrow and Soon-Yi |
Needless to say, Farrow was distraught over Allen and her (adopted) daughter's affair.
Very interestingly, Farrow is no stranger to age-discrepant relationships. For example, according to J. Randy Taraborrelli's Sinatra: Behind the Legend, nineteen-year-old Mia Farrow lost her virginity to forty-eight-year-old Frank Sinatra at his ultra-modern glass and metal house in Palm Springs after their flight on a private jet. “They had dinner on the terrace, served by an army of servants, and then he swept her into his bedroom.” Farrow described the night as “magical”.
And a November 2013 Vanity Fair article related that subsequent to her marriage to Sinatra and prior to her marriage to Allen, Farrow married composer-conductor André Previn. Previn and Farrow had three sons and adopted three underprivileged Asian daughters. (You guessed it. Soon-Yi Previn was one of the adopted daughters.) But what you may not have guessed it that Previn and Farrow were the inspiration for the song “Beware of Young Girls” that was written by Dory Previn. (You guessed it. Dory was André’s ex-wife.) Previn and twenty-three-year-old Farrow started an affair while Previn was conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and Farrow was filming A Dandy in Aspic. Dory separated from André after she discovered that Farrow was pregnant with André’s child. Consequently, according to The Independent, Dory was institutionalized with severe mental illness prior to composing “Beware of Young Girls”.
Subsequently, Allen and Soon-Yi adopted Bechet Dumaine Allen and Manzie Tio Allen. I won't comment on the adoption or the picture below, but based on Allen's record, one would be not surprised if "something" came out of the adoption(s).
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| Allen with Bechet and Manzie in Beverly Hills (2012) |
TheDaily Mailrevealed that Allen is friends with another famous ephebophile, Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein and Allen were seen hugging, whispering, joking and laughing as they strolled to Epstein's $50 million Upper East Side of Manhattan town house.
Epstein, who is also friends with former president Bill Clinton and Britain's Prince Andrew, was accused in a civil suit of the following allegations:
- he received three twelve-year-old French girls as a birthday present
- he had a fourteen-year-old “Balkan sex slave” that he procured from her family
- he had a fifteen-year-old sex toy named Virginia Roberts that he loaned to friends, and
- he paid forty, mostly underage girls, approximately $300 apiece to give him “messages” (i.e., hand jobs) at his second home in Palm Beach.
Is it true that birds of a feather flock together?
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| Jeffrey Epstein, Woody Allen and Soon-Yi |
Only God knows if Allen is a pedophile, but clearly he's an acting ephebophile. But we find it surprising that Allen didn't use his fame to marry a nymphet à la J.D. Salinger and Elvis instead of marrying his wife's (adopted) daughter.