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The legendary film director and screenwriter has been chosen to be the recipient of the prestigious Cecil B DeMille award for his contribution to cinema
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Golden Globes award evenings are usually pretty exciting affairs. However next year’s event to be held, as ever at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in California, just got that little bit more exciting with the news that Woody Allen has been awarded the annual Cecil B DeMille award for services to cinema. With the principal excitement surrounding Allen is whether he will turn up at the star-studded event to receive his prize or not.
Something which is not a foregone conclusion as Allen, now 74 and still going strong, has been a winner of several awards in the past has failed to show up for quite a few of them. Although none as prestigious as the Cecil B DeMille award.
The Golden Globe Award differs from the Oscars in that winners are traditionally selected by members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), and they recognize recognizing excellence in not only in the cinema industry but also in television. Winners are handed their awards at a star-studded event which is regarded as being one of the major highlights of the film industry’s awards season, preceding the Oscar ceremony.
Woody Allen is well known for his dislike of attending high profile Hollywood events, with his most recent “ non appearance” was as recently as last year’s Golden Globes, where he was awarded a Golden globe for best original screenplay for his period comedy “Midnight In Paris” which the considerably taller Nicole Kidman stepped in to accept the Globe on his behalf.
Allen joins a distinguished club of especially talented people through winning the Cecil B DeMille award, among them Audrey Hepburn , Alfred Hitchcock, Walt Disney and Martin Scorsese.
DeMille was a highly influential Hollywood director during the nineteen twenties and thirties, and one of the few who succeeded in making a transition from the the silent film era to that of sound.
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Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi Previn / Getty
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Woody Allen was born Allan Stewart Konigsberg in the Bronx and raised in Brooklyn, New York.
Even while attending High School Allen began to earn some extra money as a joke writer, under the name Woody Allen for agent David O. Alber, who then sold them on to to newspaper columnists.
After graduating from high school , Woody Allen studying communication and film at the New York University.
Allen has enjoyed a career spanning more than 50 years in the entertainment industry, starting up as a gag writer during the fifties for the best comedians of the era, before establishing himself winning reputation on the New York comedy club circuit as a standup comedian in his own right.
In addition to working the comedy clubs at night, Woody Allen polished up his career as a scriptwriter mainly for Johny Carson’s Tonight Show, as well as maintaining a regular column for the New Yorker magazine, going on to make his debut as a Broadway playwright in the mid-sixties.
Following on his success in life theater, Allen soon made made the transition to writing and directing films, first specializing in a form of slapstick comedy, before developing a more sophisticated comedy style.
Throughout his career in the cinema industry Woody has made it a habit of appearing in his own films, usually playing a slightly downtrodden, fairly neurotic anti-hero, with his leading ladies be some of the most glamorous and talented movie stars of the times, with the most well known being Diane Keaton , Merry Streep and Mia Farrow . Some of the most memorable of the more than forty films that Woody Allen directed are “Annie Hall “released in 1977, “Manhattan” two years later, “Hannah and Her Sisters” released in 1986 and Radio Days that came out the following year.
Allen has been the recipient of four Academy Awards, three of them for Best Original Screenplay , as well as a winning one for best director for “Annie Hall” , as well as being nominated a total of 23 times, more than any other screenwriter in history.
Woody has also won two Golden Globe awards for best screenplay, in 1985 for “ The Purple Rose of Cairo” and last year for “Midnight in Paris.” He was also nominated a further eleven times, five for best director, four for best screenplay and even twice for best actor.
