Calhoun W. - Woody Allen: A Photographic Celebration

Copyright 2012 Hors Collection

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Cover photo credit Photofest

Print ISBN: 978-1-62914-391-0

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63220-196-6

Printed in China

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering and its all over much too soon.
W OODY A LLEN

My mother always said I was a very cheerful kid until I was five years old, and then I turned gloomy.
W OODY A LLEN

Woody Allen was born Allan Stewart Konigsberg in Brooklyn, New York on December 1, 1935. With his carroty hair, big ears, and milky skin, he looked just like his mother, wrote biographer Marion Meade.

Allens father worked as a cab driver, jewelry engraver, and a waiter, among other things. His mother was a bookkeeper for a Manhattan florist. His sister, Letty, was born when Woody was eight. His parents hoped he would become a pharmacist.

My mother is an orthodox paranoid and, while she doesnt believe in an afterlife, she doesnt believe in a present one either.
W OODY A LLEN

Woody Allen knows exactly what he wants. Its always been his particular strength to push the independent ideal as far as it will go, and he gets away with it because his writing is so extraordinary. Hes the living proof that talent will out.
C HIWETEL E JIOFOR

Allen regaled fellow students at Midwood High School with his extraordinary knowledge of magic and card tricks, which later played a part in such films as Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001) and Scoop (2006).

They say Allen got something from the Marx Brothers. He didnt. Hes an original. The best. The funniest.
G ROUCHO M ARX

I had infantile interests. Youd be remarkably surprised. I wanted to be a cowboy. I wanted to be a private detective. These were the things that were on my mind at the time. I had no substantial interests whatsoever.
W OODY A LLEN, ON HIS TEENAGE ASPIRATIONS

At the age of fifteen, Allen began writing his own jokes and mailing them to various New York newspapers. His moxie paid off and soon his gags were getting picked up by columnists with his name appearing alongside his material.

It takes no tarot deck to foresee a day, thirty years hence, when the last surviving movie theaters will be mounting Woody Allen festivals containing hours of the best sight and sound gags of the epoch.
T IME MAGAZINE , 1972

I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.
W OODY A LLEN

Still a teenager, Allen was hired by press agent David O. Alber as a joke writer. He made $25.00 a week writing gags and one-liners that were credited to various celebrities in newspaper gossip columns.

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
W OODY A LLEN

Woody Allen appears before us as the battered adolescent, scarred forever, a little too nice and much too threatened to allow himself to be aggressive. He has the city-wise effrontery of a shrimp who began by using language to protect himself and then discovered that language has a life of its own.
P AULINE K AEL

Before I could read, Id always wanted to write.
W OODY A LLEN, ON BEING ASKED WHEN HE STARTED WRITING

Allen eventually graduated to writing bits for comedian Herb Shriner (for $75.00 a week), actor Art Carney, crooner Pat Boone, and television personality Garry Moore.

80% of success is showing up.
W OODY A LLEN