Woody Allen  (b. 1935) Death Knocks LINKS Woody Allen http://omni.cc.purdue.edu/~royald/allen.htm This Woody Allen research homepage includes an extensive bibliography of Allen's works. BIOGRAPHY Woody Allen (b. 1935) After being dismissed from both City College of New York and New York University, this precocious and prototypical New Yorker became a television comedy writer at the age of eighteen. He wrote two successful Broadway plays; his first screenplay, What's New Pussycat?, appeared in 1965. A dozen years in show business gave him the confidence to set out on his own, and he began performing as a standup comic. Soon after, he embarked on the filmmaking—writing, performing, directing, and producing—career for which he is famous. His talents, and those of the actors and technical group he has brought together as a kind of filmmaking repertory company, account for his reputation as an innovative contributor to cinema history. (His 1977 film, Annie Hall, won four Academy Awards.) In his spare time, he plays the clarinet in a Dixieland jazz group at a New York nightspot, and continues to write occasional pieces such as Death Knocks.