From: noraa@cbnewsk.cb.att.com (aaron.l.hoffmeyer)
Subject: More Mia and Woody
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 02:13:04 GMT

Source:  USA Today, August 20, 1992

Woody's and Mia's New York stories

Can it get any harder to keep up?

As allegations surface daily, previously reported details are under
fire in the murky Woody Allen/Mia Farrow drama.

The age of Soon-Yi - the Korean-born orphan Farrow adopted as a child
and who is now romantically involved with Allen - is being questioned.
She was reported to be 21, but Farrow spokesman John Springer now says,
"Nobody knows for sure.  It's somewhere between 17 and 21."  She
graduated from high school last year.

The legality of Allen's co-adoption of two of the couple's children -
thought to have happened when they were small - is also under fire.
Farrow's lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, charges Allen formally adopted the
children in 1991 "while he was having sex with their sister."  Farrow,
he contends, was not aware of that when she approved the adoption.

Allen's affair with Soon-Yi started in December, signaling the end of
his 11 1/2-year union with Farrow.  Last week, Allen sued for custody
of the couple's children - one biological child and two adopted.

Farrow, who has 11 children, charges Allen with abuse of their
7-year-old daughter Dylan.  Allen vehemently denies the charges and
counter-charges that spurned Farrow tried to blackmail him.

Longtime friend Maria Roach, who shared with the press a note she said
she got recently from Farrow, says Farrow and Allen "were about to
start a film together, and he gave her the ultimatum: `keep your mouth
shut about this.  Soon-Yi and I will just continue our lives.  You can
work for me.'" Farrow refused.

The couple's swan song may be Sept. 23, when Allen's new film,
_Husbands and Wives_, is due to open.  Says Martin A. Grove, film
analyst for _The Hollywood Reporter_: The movie may attract "people
that say, `Woody and Mia are splitting - let's see if there's any sign
of a problem between them in the movie.'"

	- Karen Thomas

========================================================================

Child's taped interrogation

A spokesman for Mia Farrow confirmed Wednesday that the actress taped
her daughter, Dylan, 7, while she questioned the child about an alleged
incident with Woody Allen at their Bridgeport, Conn., home.

Spokesman John Springer says Farrow made several copies.  New York TV
station WNYW says an "anonymous source" gave it a copy, in which Farrow
isn't visible, but her voice asking off-camera questions is
recognizable.  "The tape seems to support Farrow's allegation of abuse,"
says spokesman Ted Faraone.  He says the tape was made earlier this
month.

Station execs had already decided not to air the tape (their reasoning:
to protect the child) before Farrow's lawyers pressured them not to run
it. 

Connecticut policy confirm an "ongoing investigation in which Woody
Allen is involved,"  but have not commented if the tape is part of the
probe.

When the investigation is complete, the D.A. decides whether to press
charges.  No word if that will happen before Allen's custody hearing
Aug. 25.

========================================================================

`No crueler way to lose a child or lover'

Two weeks ago, Mia Farrow's close friend Maria Roach says she received a
letter from Farrow's discussing the pain and turmoil she and her family
suffered since director Woody Allen began an affair with her college-age
daughter.

Roach's father, director Hal Roach, is Farrow's godfather; Maria is the
godmother to one of Farrow's children.

[This is an excerpt of the letter.]

"I have come so perilously close to a genuine meltdown of my very core.
Though I am not yet out of danger I can see once again the salvation, a
better life.  I have tried to live honorably and conscientiously and set
this end above all other things.  But obviously my vision has been
unclear.  I have spent more than a dozen years with a man who would
destroy me and corrupt my daughter, leading her into a betrayal of her
mother and her principles, leaving her morally bankrupt with the bond
between us demolished.  I can think of no crueler way to lose a child or
a lover...

"But I must pity him.  He has spoiled and mutilated that part of himself
which is improved by right conduct and destroyed by wrong.  Can life be
worth living when this part is once ruined?...

"I believe that the really important thing is not to live but to live
honorably or rightly.  Perhaps there is only one thing to consider when
performing any action.  That is whether one is acting rightly or wrongly
nd though some lesser self within me cries out for revenge, I know that
to do wrong is in every sense bad and dishonorable...

"So one must not even do wrong when one is wronged.

"I see now that I have spent long years with a man who had no respect
for everything that I hold sacred; not for my family, not for my soul,
not for my God or my goals.  But here I stand with washed eyes, gazing
clearly into a future and a new dream.  With my arms and heart full of
my children, I will not look back, I will not face my anger again, for I
have better things to do ... before I die.

"Socrates believed the soul is immortal because it can perceive, have a
share in truth, goodness, beauty, which are eternal.  Man can know God
because he has something in him akin to the eternal, which cannot die.
I am ... drawing strength and courage from (these thoughts) and I will
travel lightly into an unknown future, hearing only these essentials,
trusting I will be safe, that a new life will create itself, one of
real meaning without compromise.

========================================================================

Woody Allen again redefines our terms

by Joe Urschel

Even in a New Age of alternative lifestyles, there are limits of
acceptability

Just when the whole "family values" debate was about to degenerate into
mere political rhetoric, along comes Woody Allen to give it credence.

The Woody Allen-Mia Farrow breakup, with all of its messy accusations,
during the Republican convention, is a confluence almost too perfect for
even opportunists of the radical right to exploit.

Allen and Farrow have handed traditionalists the kind of unctuous
"alternative lifestyle" that would make even Murphy Brown gag.

Allen, despite his eccentric behavior and unconventional relationship
with Farrow, had come to symbolize a type of new Age family man.

He didn't marry the woman who had his baby.  He didn't even sleep at her
house.  But he spoke like a father, he adopted children, and all those
pictures of him in Central park, kids in tow, made him seem almost
exemplary.

He seemed to prove that you didn't have to have a split-level house with
a station wagon and a marriage license and 2.3 children to be an
acceptable dad.

He personified the notion that you could stray from the norm, flout
convention and be the kind of person even the most suburban of parents
could envy.

And then he joyfully admits to having an affair with Soon-Yi Previn, the
adopted daughter of his "almost wife,"  "longtime companion,"
"significant other," or whatever it is you call someone with whom you
have children and shared a life for 12 years,  Soon-Yi's age in unclear.
She apparently is somewhere between 17 and 21 years old.

It may be true that there is no biological link between Allen and this
woman who was adopted by Mia Farrow when she was married to Andre
Previn.

And perhaps in a technical sense he is not her stepfather because he
never married her adopted mother.

But if that is his moral defense, it stands as a callous rejection of
the notion that "alternative lifestyle" families are every bit as
legitimate as traditional families.

Because to forgive Woody Allen on those grounds says emphatically that
he had no familial relationship to Farrow's daughter.  It says what he
had with Farrow was not a family.

How much responsibility does a father - even an unconventional father -
have to the feelings of the woman he once loved as a wife?  Or to the
children he raised with her?  Or to the conventions of the society that
embraced him with great affection?

Maybe Woody Allen feels very little responsibility.  But can he feel
none?

You don't need a marriage license to make a family; but, by the same
token, you don't need to break a law to commit one of society's most
heinous social taboos.

There may be few absolutes left when it comes to defining the close
human bonds that make up a family unit.

But there are some.

========================================================================
End of articles
========================================================================

Aaron L. Hoffmeyer
TR@CBNEA.ATT.COM 


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