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The moral: Never believe in the fairy tales movie people create. They will buoy your spirit and, with the flick of a headline, crush it. Another moral: Don't always heed what you read. The tabloid newspapers, especially in New York City, have feasted on this fracas, one-upping each other daily in the body count of revoltin' developments. With all the soiled laundry of unverified allegations, the facts are hard to determine, let alone the truth. Every journalist is, perforce, a garbologist.
So what can we find in the rubble?
Allen and Farrow have been a couple since 1980. For the first five years, their affair was carried on mostly at his apartment, rarely at hers, which for years has been overflowing with kids and pets: Farrow now has four biological and seven adopted children. "She likes to spend tons of time with kids," he told author Eric Lax in a biography published last year, in enumerating the opposites that attracted him to her. "I like to spend . . . only a limited time with kids." But the warming intensity of their companionship led Allen to a decision he had avoided in two marriages, to Harlene Rosen and actress Louise Lasser, and in a long affair with actress Diane Keaton: to have a child. Satchel (named for ageless pitcher Satchel Paige) was born in 1987. In this Allen found the joy of fatherhood -- and of his relationship with Farrow. Mia, Woody told Lax, "has brought a completely different, meaningful dimension to my life."
Allen, by all accounts, radiated a fatherly devotion toward Satchel and the two children he adopted with Farrow: Dylan and 14-year-old Moses. Says an old friend, TV personality Dick Cavett: "He completely rearranged his man- killingly busy life so that he could lavish time and money and attention on the children, probably more than many orthodox parents do. He'd get up at 5 and religiously make it over there seven days a week." And Farrow was devoted to his devotion. But after Satchel's birth, the romance began to wane. Their partnership has been platonic for four years, Allen says, and it is not known what efforts either party made for sexual companionship in the interim.
Allen frequently escorted Farrow's children to sports events, movies, the circus. Two years ago, Allen, who says he had previously paid little attention to Soon-Yi, began taking her to Knicks games at the Garden. Allen said in an interview with TIME that their sexual relationship blossomed late last year. It was not until January that Farrow learned of the affair. Yet the director and his star continued working on their new film Husbands and Wives, due to be released on Sept. 23.
A few weeks ago, Allen visited Farrow's family in her Connecticut home. Shortly thereafter, Farrow talked with Dylan, and recorded the conversations ! on videotape, to determine whether the child had been abused. Farrow took Dylan to a physician, who, obliged by Connecticut law to do so, reported the claim of abuse to the police, and Allen was a candidate for questioning. Within a week he filed for custody of his three children. And early last week he publicly announced his love for Soon-Yi. In a phrase echoing his declaration about Farrow, he said Soon-Yi "has and continues to turn around my life in a wonderfully positive way."