Woody Allen Tonight: Can the Count get it all together? Part 2 of "Count Dracula" from "Getting Even"

"It's so rare to see [Count Dracula] around this early. In fact I can't ever remember seeing him around in the daytime."

-- the Mayor, in tonight's conclusion of "Count Dracula"

by Ken

Vampires are prepared for a lot of things, but not necessarily -- as we learned in last night's first installment of Woody Allen's "Count Dracula" -- for total eclipses of the sun. We'll have a recap of Part 1 in the click-through, before proceeding with Part 2, which concludes our current run of "Woody Allen Tonight." Not to worry, we'll be returning to Woody (on to Without Feathers!), but before we leave him, I wanted to be sure everyone saw this terrific comment left by UncommonSense in response to the "Woody Allen Tonight" post of "A Twenties Memory":

I discovered Woody Allen's writing when I was about 12, shortly after discovering his films. I found a paperback copy of Without Feathers in the bookstore at the mall and bought it because I had loved Take the Money and Run so much when I saw it on the CBS Late Movie.

I was hooked. I had never read anything like it. Here were stories written in language that was clearly above any experience I had ever had, but which I understood and found hilarious. After Without Feathers, I went back and bought Side Effects and Getting Even in short order. I still remember laughing out loud as I read some of the stories - "The Whore of Mensa," "The Kugelmass Episode, "and yes, "A Twenties Memory." I remember a girl at school asking me, "You mean they write books you can just sit there and laugh at?"

My wife and I saw Midnight in Paris last weekend at an old, independent movie house, and as we watched it, I thought constantly of "A Twenties Memory," which I have not read since I was a teenager. The story was my first exposure to The Lost Generation - the first time I had heard of Gertrude Stein, for example. To this day, my image of Hemingway is formed in part by Allen's humorous characterization in the story. When I read A Moveable Feast [Hemingway's memoir of his life in Paris in the '20s] as an adult, I felt like I had been there before. In fact, sometimes when I think of one story, I can't be sure I am not remembering details from the other.

I lost track of my Woody Allen volumes years ago. They're probably in the attic somewhere. I might have to go and hunt for them.

Well said, UncommonS! And thanks for sharing all that! Now back to tonight's regularly scheduled programming: the conclusion of "Count Dracula," one of the three pieces in Getting Even that had never appeared in print before the book was published.


WITH THE ECLIPSE DRAWING TO A CLOSE, CAN COUNT
DRACULA GET IT ALL TOGETHER? TO FIND OUT, CLICK HERE

SO FAR IN "WOODY ALLEN TONIGHT"

from Getting Even (1971)
"A Look at Organized Crime"
"Death Knocks," Part 1 and Part 2
"A Twenties Memory"
"Hassidic Tales, with a Guide to Their Interpretation by the Noted Scholar," Part 1 and Part 2
"The Schmeed Memoirs," Part 1 and Part 2
"Count Dracula," Part 1

THURBER TONIGHT (including WOODY ALLEN, ROBERT BENCHLEY, BOB AND RAY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, S. J. PERELMAN, JEAN SHEPHERD, and E. B. WHITE TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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