The Unruly Life of Woody Allen (39 page)

Khsti Groteke returned to work after spending her day off in Boston. In describing what had taken place, Mia wanted to know if she observed anything out of the ordinary on Tuesday. Well, said Kristi, she wasn't terribly surprised to hear about Alison Stickland's account. At some point in the afternoon, there was about fifteen or twenty minutes when she couldn't locate Dylan. Or Woody. She had scoured the premises.

Moving Pictures:

Fielding Melush: I'm doing a sociological study of pen I'm up to child molesting.

1971

On the village green of Litchfield, Connecticut, population 8,500, the stone courthouse with its quaint clock tower looked as though it belonged in an Andy Hardy film. In August, the State Attorney for the Litchfield judicial district was on vacation. However, Frank Maco's assistant made a special call to report that a certain Dylan Farrow from Bridgewater was accusing her adopted father. Woody Allen, of sexually abusing her in an attic. Maco laughed. "I figured it was a practical jokc," he said later As it happened, Maco was a fan of Woody's films. His favorite was
Annie Hall
particularly the scene in which Woody kills a spider "the size of a Buick" in Diane Keaton's bathroom.

Forty-five years old and a veteran prosecutor, Maco was appointed nates attorney for upscale Litchfield County in 1988. His first month on the job he won a conviction in a child sexual-abuse case. Returning from his summer holiday, Frank Maco turned his attention to Woody Allen, and ordered an investigation. At Frog Hollow, crime-squad trucks came barreling down the driveway. The attic was dusted for fingerprints and searched for hair samples. Detectives interviewed Dylan, Mia’s other children, and a score of people involved with the family—neighbors, doctors, teachers, and baby-sitters— none of whom seemed to have much regard for Woody. In addition to the police investigation, Maco would go a step further. To determine if a criminal prosecution was warranted, he also asked the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic at Yale—New Haven Hospital—a highly respected group of two social workers and a pediatrician that had investigated 1,500 similar cases—to assess Dylan’s claims of abuse.

The New York Child Welfare Administration assigned Dylan Farrow’s case to Paul Williams, a thirty-two-year-old Jamaican-born social worker. A skilled investigator with an outstanding record, a quiet, dogged man, Williams had handled more than seven hundred child-abuse cases since he joined the agency in 1987, and was so highly regarded by his superiors that he had been named Caseworker of the Year in 1991. He was now specially selected to handle this high-profile, extremely sensitive case.

Williams s first order of business was to schedule a meeting with Woody, one that Woody promptly canceled. The caseworker made a second appointment. Then a third.

Finally, on August 20, Woody showed up at Lafayette Street. He was accompanied by an attorney. Though Williams did not say so, one of the things he was trying to determine was whether Woody fit the psychological profile of a sex offender. When he questioned him about his visit with Dylan on August 4, Woody looked away with imperial disdain and refused to answer. He was more willing to talk about Satch, and admitted that he had called him a bastard, but said it was only a joke. If a poor relationship existed, it was Mia’s fault. At one point, when Williams brought up Soon-Yi, he blandly replied that they had "an adult, healthy relationship."

After a few minutes, Woody abruptly stood up and walked out. He didn't like Paul Williams or his snoopy questions. There was no doubt in his mind that the caseworker was out to get him.

Several days later, one of Williams's superiors informed him of hearing through the grapevine that the charges against Woody Allen were going to be dismissed and the case closed. After all, the filmmaker was one of New York's most distinguished citizens, as symbolic of the city as a wholesome red apple. In full throttle, Williams resolutely ignored the rumor and kept digging anyway. Did Woody Allen, for example, ever have sex with his sister as a teenager? The caseworker's attempt to interview Woody's psychiatrist about this question was quickly foiled by Woody s attorneys. However, in a two-page letter, Dr. Kathryn Prescott stated that she had been treating Woody since 1972, and "there has never been any suggestion that Mr. Allen was suffering from a sexual perversion/deviant sexual behavior." As for engaging in sex with Letty Aronson, Prescort added, there was absolutely no evidence of any such thing. Even bringing up such a bizarre notion, she said, was shocking and disgusting to her patient. Prom Williams's point of view, however, such inquiries were not ridiculous at all.

When Susan Coates first told Woody about Dylan's accusations, he listened in disbelief. Nothing at all happened, he said. And if he did rest his head on Dylan's lap, it was "a normal paternal thing... not in any way sexual."
Attic?
Was she crazy? He was terrified of closed-in places. Besides, there was nothing new about Mia's spreading ugly stories like this. For months she had been making threats. One of her favorites was: "You took my daughter, now I'm going to take yours." Only a few weeks earlier, in the course of a particularly rancorous phone conversation, she warned, "1 have something very nasty planned for you." It seemed clear to him that she had acted out of hatred, cooking up the story and coaching Dylan to repeat it on videotape. Fortunately, few people would believe her.

Yet, Woody was worried. Obviously he could not pretend to ignore such a serious charge. In any case, knowing that the matter had been reported to the police propelled him into action. In an effort to take command of the situation, he responded with a preemptive strike, a sort of end run around Mia. That way, he could make public his side of the story, or at least a portion of it, before he could be accused of child molestation or anything else she might dream up.

On the morning of Thursday. August 13, Hal Davis was at his desk in the pressroom on the first floor of the New York County Courthouse. Davis, a reporter for the
New York Past,
who had been covering the courthouse since 1978. received "a call out of (he blue" from PMK's Leslee Dart. "This is ofT the record," Dan announced. "But I have a client who has a case you might be interested in." Without mentioning her client's name, she referred Davis to Harvey Sladkus, a well-known matrimonial attorney.

Minutes later, Davis learned that a sealed motion was filed earlier that morning in Supreme Court by Woody Allen to obtain sole custody of Dylan, Satchel, and Moses Farrow. Once other court reporters began making calls, the story jumped the fence and by noon was hurtling out on the AP wire. Ordinarily, by the end of the day, reporters would have received the computerized printouts of the day's Requests for judicial Intervention (records of the order to show cause) giving names and the relief being sought. What Dan provided, Davis explained, was "a shortcut."

Like sharks smelling blood in the water, the journalists scrambled for further details. But Dan, climbing to high moral ground, tried to keep them at bay. "Mr. Allen has never discussed his private life in public" she said tersely. "He does not intend to do so now.*

Overnight the story gathered momentum. In Bridgewatcr, the sheriffs car drove up to Mia's from door. When the bell rang, she began screaming because she believed the burly officer had come to rake her children away. He was merely trying to serve her legal papers. 'Her hysteria and terror were contagious," recalled Kristi Groteke. "There we were, like two chickens without our heads, running from room to room, locking all the doors, and Mia was crying, 'Kristi, don't accept the papers! Don't touch the papers!' "

In the city that Saturday, Fifth Avenue was hot and quiet. Inside hit air-conditioned penthouse. Woody kept busy on the phone with his attorneys. In an annoying development, Alan Dcrshowitz, the prominent Boston lawyer and Harvard Law School professor, was apparently also representing Mia. Dcrshowitz—who captured national attention when he won an acquittal for Klaus von Bulow, the socialite accused of trying to murder his wife with an insulin injection that had sent her into an irreversible coma—denied he was Mia's attorney Instead, he described himself as "a kind of mediator" between Mia, for whom he felt pity, and Woody, "a great filmmaker" who unfortunately had acted foolishly by making "a career-destroying decision." Even though a mediator is generally brought in by both sides, in this instance there was no question about Dershowitz's loyalties. As he explained later at the hearing, Mia "needed a defender and an advocate and 1 reluctantly played that role because I was a great admirer of Woody Allen." Dcrshowitz demanded unemployment compensation for Mia, suggesting Woody pay her over the next ten years for the loss of her job as his leading lady in thirteen films. The lump sum of $2.5 million was mentioned. Woody decided Dcrshowitz must be crazy.

Hopes that Woody could keep a low profile were dashed that afternoon when Mia's mother went into battle mode. Unable to contain her fury, Maureen O'Sullivan issued a puzzling statement to the media through her publicist, John Springer. With the precision of a Panzer commander, the eighty-one-year-old actress lobbed faxes into the city's news outlets. Woody was "a desperate and evil man," she wrote. He had injured her family, and she wasn't going to stand for it. When reached by a reporter at her home in Phoenix, she said ominously that the truth "will soon be made public." It was front-page news in the Sunday edition of the
Daily News,
where double banner headlines—bombs away —bracketed Woody's picture.

On Monday morning, the explosive accusations of child abuse surfaced when the Connecticut State Police confirmed they were conducting an investigation involving Woody Allen and the sexual abuse of his seven-year old daughter. By that time, PMK was already announcing that Woody had admitted having an affair with Mia’s adult daughter, "a lovely, intelligent woman who has and continues to turn my life around in a wonderfully positive way." His only crime was falling in love, which was "real and happily all true." In no way was his affair related to the custody suit charging Mia as an unfit mother. "They are totally separate issues," the statement continued, never making reference to the double police investigations in Connecticut and New York.

Within hours, television crews descended on Woody's building like a horde of marauding Visigoths. The only person who would talk to them was a doorman, who defended Woody as "a very nice guy, a genius, and a great tipper." Woody's problems seemed crystal clear to the doorman. "Mias just trying to get revenge," he said. Toward evening Woody emerged from the building, his head lowered and his fishing hat pulled down over his glasses. He hopped into his beat-up station wagon and headed over to Michaels Pub. There was a small audience that evening, probably because nobody imagined he would show up. Afterward, he stopped to sign autographs before creeping out the back door.

The next day Woody called a news conference at the Plaza Hotel. Local television stations interrupted regular programming for live coverage. In a room overflowing with reporters and TV cameras, he swept up to the microphone with a businesslike expression on his face. Outfitted in a blue button-down oxford shirt and khaki slacks, he began to read, sonorously, a two-page prepared statement in a style of delivery that combined Hamlet's soliloquy with traces of stand-up comedy. Even though he had always "assiduously avoided publicity," he felt compelled to defend himself because he had absolutely not sexually abused his daughter. It was Mia, a dangerous woman unfit to raise children, who was using the sexual-abuse charge, "a currently popular though heinous card played in all too many child custody cases." Her lawyers were demanding $7 million in exchange for dropping the child-abuse allegations, an offer he of course rejected. While there was nothing funny about the content of his statement, the famous vocal mannerisms invited nervous smiles as reporters seemed unsure how to respond. Completing his prepared text, Woody turned away from the podium without answering questions. As he was heading toward the door, however, he stuttered, "This is my one public appearance in years, and it's all straight lines." The reporters laughed.

After the press conference, Alan Dershowitz denied that Mia had demanded $7 million. The discussions about money were pan of negotiations to establish a trust fund for the children. He also pointed out, again correctly, that the child-abuse investigations in Connecticut and New York had not been instigated by Mia, but by Dylan’s doctors, acting under state laws. Woody, he suggested, filed his custody suit for one reason: to divert attention from those investigations.

Voice of America, Part One:

Q: What's Woody's latest flick?

A: "Honey, I Bleeped the Kids."

Q: What's his next film?

A: "Close Encounters with a Third Grader."

—New York Post,
1992

Voice of America, Part Two:

Newsweek: The question most people are concerned about is Mia Farrow's charge that you sexually molested Dylan. Is this in any sense true?

Woody Allen: Of course not. I'm on record with the most unequivocal denial that you can possibly imagine.

—Newsweek,
1992

"The heart wants what it wants," he told
Time.
"There's no logic to those things." It was a paraphrase of Blaise Pascal's maxim, "The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of." Most people had not read the maxims of Pascal, but that was another matter. Most people didn't appreciate the maxims of Woody Allen, just as they also rejected his "The Woman I Love" speech as romantic justification for sleeping with Mia’s daughter. At the
New York Post,
Cindy Adams reported that mail was running ten to one against " Woodenhead Allen." Readers ranged "from calling him a nerd and a turd to gender phraseology of bum, scum, crum, and creep. Also pig." To which she added, "And they're the favorable letters." In an interview with
People,
Mia's brother John Farrow, now a boat salesman in Annapolis, Maryland, happily predicted Woody's indictment and ruin. "When all of it comes out, he's going to jail," Farrow chortled. "I'd like to take his little flute and ram it."