Allen ‘obsessed with young girls’, claims author

WOODY ALLEN has been described by the first person to ever read through his archive as having “an insistent, vivid obsession with young women and girls”.

Author Richard Morgan gained permission from Princeton University to read through the 56-box archive of scripts, story ideas and anecdotes that Allen has been curating since 1980. In one of his stories, My Speech to the Graduates, he complains that “science has failed us. True, it has conquered many diseases, broken the genetic code, and even placed human beings on the Moon. And yet when a man of 80 is left in a room with two 18-year-old cocktail waitresses, nothing happens.”

In a television pitch, Allen describes a 16-year-old as “a flashy, sexy blonde in a flaming red low-cut evening gown with a long slit up the side”. A short story features a 17-year-old whose 53-year-old neighbour falls in love with her in a lift.

Allen, 82, was criticised for saying he felt “sad” for Harvey Weinstein. He then backtracked, saying: “He is a sad, sick man.” In 2014 Dylan Farrow, Allen’s adopted daughter, wrote an article in The New York Times accusing him of sexually assaulting her when she was seven – charges he denies.