Woody, Woody, Everywhere

The problem with his first marriage, explains Woody Allen, was his attitude toward his wife: he placed her under a pedestal. For one thing, their deep philosophical discussions always ended with her proving that he did not exist.

Worse yet, she was immature: whenever he took a bath, she would walk in and sink his boats. After five years, it was a tossup between a trip to Bermuda or a divorce. They decided to split up, reasoning that a vacation is over in two weeks, but a divorce is something they would always have.

Riding the marriage-go-round is an Allen specialty, and when he does it on TV and in nightclubs, everyone howls.

Everyone, that is, except his first wife Harlene, 28. She fumes. Last week, charging that since their divorce in 1962 Allen "has continued to hold me up to scorn and ridicule," she--and her lawyer--made threatening noises about filing a defamation-of-character suit.

Droll Troll. Actually, Allen, 31, defames no one more scandalously than he does himself. He is a droll troll, a neurotic elf, a Freudian slip with legs. His basic problem, he says, is living up to his image of himself as an intellectual Gary Grant, which is not easy "when one is from Flatbush, stands just 51 feet tall, weighs 123 pounds, can't see any too well, and has a head of odd-looking red hair." To compensate, he bites his nails, and when his supply runs out, "I bite the nails of loved ones."

In the past two years, he has turned his surrealistic view of life into a light industry. After making his mark on the club circuit, he wrote and appeared in What's New, Pussycat?, which rang up one of the biggest box-office grosses ever (over $8.3 million) for a comedy movie. Then, in the Japanese-made film What's Up, Tiger Lily?, he collected $75,000 for supplying the dubbed-in dialogue that is totally alien to anything that is happening onscreen. In November, following a performance in the forthcoming Casino Royale, in which he ad-libbed 60% of his lines, he opened his new Broadway play Don't Drink the Water, for which he gets an average weekly royalty check of $3,500.

Betwixt and between, he dashed off four comic essays for The New Yorker, appeared on numerous TV shows at $10,000 a shot, played Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas for $25,000 a week, turned out two bestselling comedy albums, and lent his owlish visage to several advertisements ranging from Smirnoff's vodka to Foster Grant sunglasses. Now he is completing a new nightclub act as well as a play about "a happily neurotic love affair." This summer he plans to begin work on Take the Money and Run, a new film he co-authored and will star in. Has success spoiled him? "I just fail with a better class of women now," sighs Woody, adding that Parker Bros, has bought the memoirs of his love life and will turn it into a new parlor game.

Warning Sign. Allen's portrayal of the shy, withdrawn, sensitive, slightly ticky fall guy is only partly an act. His monologues are drawn from personal experiences, only exaggerated and wildly distorted. He was truly bullied as a kid; from these experiences comes the story of a vacation at an interfaith camp, where "I was sadistically beaten by boys of all races and creeds." He was once mugged, and that led to a routine about his carrying a sword, which in case of attack changes to a cane "so I can get sympathy." Now, he adds, he warns away street rowdies by wearing a sign that says: "Do not fold, staple or mutilate."

Security for Woody is his six-room brownstone on Manhattan's 79th Street, where he landed after indecisively trying apartments on 61st, 75th, 78th, 80th and 74th Streets. He is a compulsive worker, goes for months without reading a newspaper, spends up to 15 hours a day holed up in his den, pacing the room, laughing and talking to himself, dashing to the typewriter when he comes up with a line, say, about the Southern bigot and bedwetter who went to Klan meetings in a rubber sheet. As he works, he constantly plies himself with chocolate malteds, chocolate bars and chocolate cake, seeks inspiration by retreating to the library to shoot billiards. On the road, he totes along his clarinet and a ton of New Orleans jazz records and stereo equipment so that he can jam along with the records in his hotel room. Says Woody: "I'm not as normal as I appear."

Married a year ago to Actress Louise Lasser, 26, he has found a new source for material: "My wife cooked her first dinner for me. I choked on a bone in the chocolate pudding."

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