Woody Allen was once made a knight commander by France, but he didn’t know because the paperwork got lost in the mail.

Woody Allen was once made a knight commander by France, but he didn’t know because the paperwork got lost in the mail.

A decade later, he found out about the award by reading about it in the New York Times.

Across nearly nine eventful decades, Allen’s life has been full of surprises. Writing jokes got him a gig as the youngest writer of Sid Caesar’s television dream team. As a rising comic, he boxed a kangaroo on TV. He made a blank-check deal with a major studio for terms unmatched in Hollywood apart from early titans like Chaplin and Welles. All before Annie Hall.

Yet despite once being one of the most consequen­tial American cultural figures, Allen is now persona non grata. In this judicious biography, acclaimed biographer Patrick McGilligan charts the meteoric rise and fall of the comedian whose nonconformity proved both his secret genius and Achilles’ heel.

Drawing on meticulous research, McGilli­gan reconstructs Allen’s Brooklyn boyhood, his salad days as a television comedy writer, his rise to stand-up, and the thoughtful, award-winning film­making of his golden years in the 1970s and ’80s. His messy relationships with wives and girl­friends, including Annie Hall costar Diane Keaton, were essential to his artistic development and undo­ing. Yet no one could have predicted his tumultuous personal and professional relationship with actress Mia Farrow, his alleged abuse of their adopted daughter Dylan, and his subsequent marriage to Mia’s daughter Soon-Yi Previn.

In this comprehensive, sweeping, and rigor­ous account of Allen’s life and career, McGilligan astutely reveals the writer’s writer beyond the smoke and controversy, and paints a compelling portrait of the most creative, productive, and influential film­maker of his time.