This is from Jim Haberman who started this whole discussion. He headed this message, "Absolutely my final words on this pointless mess. No, really." Here it is…
Dear Mark, aka Mr. Switzerland,
Anytime now someone's inevitably going to chime in swearing that was a brilliantly-disguised Rich Little instead of Woody Allen being interviewed. Someone else will counter with David Frye.
So what have we learned? Seems to me the grand take-aways from all this heatedly obscure conjecture are:
- Clearly, nobody knows anything.
- Except Woody Allen himself, who probably either doesn't remember, or doesn't even care to remember.
- If the interviewer had been Peter Cook, maybe 500 people in North America would care about it. And most of those are probably Canadians.
- As we've gradually unearthed a dozen or so names utterly unheard of in the U.S., we're down to 6 or less who care, all of whom have gotten in touch with you. (Multiply that number by 10 for the U.K. if you're prone to exaggeration.)
- Keeping one's opinion to oneself is very wise. Not even having an opinion is priceless.
- To quote the immortal Groucho: "Well, I'm sorry the matter ever came up. All I know is it's a viaduct."
Perhaps at the very least we can all agree that Woody Allen gave a number of terrifically quick, inventive and very funny comebacks in this piece. Or perhaps we can't even agree on that. If that was in fact Woody Allen.
But I know we can all agree I should never write to you again with some cockamamie theory about a person no one's even heard of. Now, if only I could agree about that…
P.S. Come on, it's definitely Barry Took.
Thanks, Jim. And I still have no opinion on this.