To Woody Allen, Epstein was Dracula serviced by ‘young female vampires’


Woody Allen was among Jeffrey Epstein’s famous friends who paid tribute to him on his 63rd birthday in 2016, penning a secret letter that jokingly compared the financier’s seven-story Manhattan townhouse to Count Dracula’s castle in the classic 1931 movie “Dracula,” saying he had “three young female vampires who service the place.”

In his letter, Allen, 89, also made it clear that he and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn — who is the adopted daughter of his ex-girlfriend Mia Farrow — were frequent guests at Epstein’s Upper East Side home, enough that he and Previn convinced the convicted pedophile to upgrade the quality of the meals that he served at his dinner parties.

A photo of Allen’s letter was published Monday with a New York Times report, “A Look Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan Lair.” The report describes some of Epstein’s macabre decorating choices. “Dozens of framed prosthetic eyeballs lined the entryway, while a sculpture of a woman wearing a bridal gown and clutching a rope was suspended in a central atrium,” the Times said.

Jeffrey Epstein
FILE – This photo provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein, March 28, 2017. (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP, File) 

Epstein also showcased photos of himself with presidents and a first edition of “Lolita,” the 1955 novel in which an intellectual develops a sexual obsession with a 12-year-old girl and repeatedly rapes her, the Times said.

The timing of Allen’s letter to Epstein is sure to do further damage to the director’s once-hallowed reputation. Among other things, the letter was written seven years after Epstein had already served 13 months in a Florida jail for soliciting prostitution from a teenager. Epstein’s plea deal in that case followed the first investigation into his alleged sex-trafficking of under-age girls. Three years after Allen wrote the letter, the U.S. Justice Department completed a new investigation into Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking and arrested him. Epstein died in federal custody in August 2019 of a suspected suicide.

Allen also wrote his letter a year before he would suffer his own fall from grace, as both a revered, Oscar-winning filmmaker and as a public intellectual. During the #MeToo movement, Allen’s adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, publicly renewed her 25-year-old allegations that the “Annie Hall” director had molested her when she was 7 in her mother Mia Farrow’s Connecticut home. Allen has long maintained that he never molested his daughter, but his marriage to Previn, 35 years his junior, faced new scrutiny in a damning 2021 HBO documentary, because their relationship allegedly began when she was a teenager and Allen was in his fifties and in a long-term relationship with her mother.

It’s clear from Allen’s letter to Epstein that he wasn’t too disturbed by the bizarre decorating choices of his friend’s “lair,” or by the omnipresence of young women. Allen also didn’t let Epstein’s earlier criminal conviction deter him from being a regular guest at his dinner parties, which usually included a rotating list of celebrities, academics, politicians and business leaders, according to the New York Times.

Allen appeared to enjoy being in the company of “accomplished types, men and women in journalism, in TV, even royalty.” The reference to royalty probably is Prince Andrew, the son of the late Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles’ younger brother.

The Daily Beast previously reported that Epstein hosted a dinner at his townhouse in Andrew’s honor in December 2010, about a year after he finished his jail term in Florida. Allen and his wife were guests, and so, too, were other members of New York City’s media elite — Katie Couric, George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Rose.

The Daily Beast cited comedian Chelsea Handler, another guest at the party, who reported that Allen tried to hit up a “jolly” Andrew for an invitation to the upcoming wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

In his letter, Allen jokingly complained about the first time he and Previn were invited to Epstein’s home for dinner. He and the other “accomplished types” were ushered up to the living room, “where everyone sat around prior to dinner being served and chatted.” But no drinks were served.

“That should have been the first clue,” Allen wrote. “When the meal was put out downstairs, it was meagre. So meagre, my wife, the one sitting next to her, kept mumbling, ‘Is this it? Is this all we’re getting?’”

Allen’s letter described how the meals served at Epstein’s parties eventually improved, largely with the help of Previn, who “bullied him into putting a few flowers in the middle of the table to make it look mildly warm and inviting. This took time and a number of corrections, but his meals have been tweaked into some sense of normal, civil, dining.”

The other famous friends who sent Epstein letters for his 63rd birthday likewise commented on their memories of his dinner parties, according to the New York Times. Ehud Barak, former prime minister of Israel, and his wife noted the great diversity of guests. “There is no limit to your curiosity,” they wrote in their message. “You are like a closed book to many of them but you know everything about everyone.”

The media mogul Mortimer Zuckerman also suggested ingredients for a meal that would reflect the culture of the mansion: a simple salad and whatever else “would enhance Jeffrey’s sexual performance,” the New York Times said.

 

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