Famous Ephebophile: Jerry Seinfeld (39) & Shoshanna Lonstein (17)

Back in 2015, Jordan Sargent asked on Defamer "Remember When 39-Year-Old Jerry Seinfeld Dated [Shoshanna Lonstein] a 17-Year-Old?" (06/29/15) Sargent wrote that Seinfeld “picked up” Shoshanna, “a senior at the prestigious Nightingale-Bamford School”, in Central Park.  

1993 was a good year for Jerry Seinfeld. His sitcom, which was on its way to becoming one of the most celebrated shows in television history, won an Emmy in the category of “Outstanding Comedy Series” [...] And, just a hair shy of 40, he met a woman who would capture his heart: a high school student he picked up one day in Central Park.

Whatever the budding age-gap couple discussed, it was brief, but it resulted in Shoshanna giving Seinfeld her phone number. Subsequently, they had an affair that lasted from Shoshanna’s senior year of high school to the end of her senior year of college. 

Shoshanna Lonstein was a senior at the prestigious Nightingale-Bamford School on the Upper West Side when, on a spring afternoon, she was approached by one of the most well-known comedians in the country [...] a short conversation, she gave her phone number to the comedian, sparking a relationship that would begin around her high school graduation and end right after her college one.

Per  Karen S. Schneider's People cover story, "LOOK WHO'S IN LOVE: Jerry Seinfeld, 39, and Shoshanna Lonstein, 18, make an unlikely romance work" (March 28, 1994), Seinfeld referred to Shoshanna as “a person, not an age” and that their age-gap click was literally audible. Seinfeld said:

“[Shoshanna’s] the most wonderful girl in the world.” And Seinfeld shared, “Shoshanna is a person, not an age. She is extremely bright. She’s funny, sharp, very alert. We just get along. You can hear the click.” 

Schneider wrote that Seinfeld related that “the age issue” was immediately “forgotten.” And unlike most men, Seinfeld wasn't shy about being an open ephebophile. So much so, that he arrived at the schoolgirl's UES apartment in a lustering long limousine. Schneider wrote:

Within weeks after their first date, friends and neighbors grew accustomed to the sight of the Seinfeld limousine idling outside the Upper East Side luxury apartment building where Lonstein lives [...]

 

Shoshanna’s parents, the Lonsteins, even approved of her age-gap affair with Seinfeld. Schneider wrote:

The Lonsteins have always approved of the romance. “Shoshanna is very mature,” says a source close to the family. “Jerry is thoughtful, a good person.

However, one would have to assume that if Seinfeld weren't famous, rich, and Jewish, the age-gap affair would not have been condoned by the Lonsteins. 

Seinfeld even visited Shoshanna on campus at George Washington University where “the couple walk arm in arm across campus”. Schneider elaborated:

At George Washington University in Washington, where Lonstein, now 18, enrolled in September, the couple walk arm in arm across campus when Seinfeld pops in for an occasional visit. 

On weekend trips to Los Angeles, where he tapes his show”, they have eggs and cheesecake with his friends and cast members at Jem’s Famous Deli in Studio City before heading off to spend an afternoon shooting hoops in the park.

Sadly, as we mentioned, they never married, but the age-gap affair lasted approximately five years. 

Famous Ephebophile: Mozart's Don Giovanni's Passion for Youthful Beginners

Don Giovanni (1787) is considered by many to be the finest opera of all time. David Naugle opined: 

"What Plato's Republic is to political philosophy, what Michelangelo's Cistine Chapel Ceiling is to painting, and what Shakespeare's tragedies are to drama, so also is Mozart's Don Giovanni to the works and world of opera." 

And Naugle shared that Goethe said that Mozart "[...] obviously possessed deep insight into human nature [...]"

Don Giovanni was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart but was written by librettist and ephebophile Lorenzo Da Ponte. Is the opera so well known because of its music or libretto? I would argue that the "unsung hero" is Da Ponte. In addition, it is known that Don Giovanni was a libertine, who seduced over 1,000 females in Spain - not to mention other lands, but many would be surprised to realize that he specialized in nymphets. 

For example, Giovanni's servant, Leporello, explained to Donna Elvira, one of Giovanni's young spurned conquests, that Giovanni's "[...] outstanding passion is the youthful beginner [...] provided she wears a skirt." 

While pretending to be Giovanni, Leporello referred to Donna Elvira as, "Poor little girl [...] pretty little face!

During his seduction of "Little" Zerlina, a peasant girl, Giovanni told her, "[...] you are not destined to be a peasant, those roguish little eyes will win you another lot, those lovely little lips, those white and fragrant little fingers; it's like touching reeds and smelling roses." Zerlina was further described as "[...] my little dear," and as having, "[...] white and young little hands [...] that fresh complexion [...]"

And, Giovanni informed Leporello, "I met a beautiful, young, elegant girl on the street; I went up to her, I took her by the hand [...]"

38-year-old Da Ponte had two sources of inspiration for his libretto: his 16-year-old mistress and Giovanni Bertati's libretto for Don Giovanni, o sia II convitato di pietra. 

Da Ponte wrote in his memoir: 

"A beautiful girl of sixteen [...] came to my room [...] at the sound of the bell [...] She would bring me now a little cake, now a cup of coffee, now nothing just her pretty face [...] I worked twelve hours a day every day [...] and through all that time she sat in an adjoining room [...] ready to come to my aid at the first touch of the bell. Sometimes she would sit at my side without stirring, without opening her lips, or batting an eyelash, gazing at me fixedly, or blandly smiling, or now it would be a sigh, or a menace of tears. In a word, this girl was my Calliope [...] for all the verse I wrote for the next six years. 

So, why isn't Don Giovanni known as an ephebophile? Is it because it's difficult to find accomplished teen opera singers? Consequently, most performances of Don Giovanni are done by middle-age women, which causes a major theme of the opera to get lost in translation. 

Famous Ephebophile Anthony Weiner: Another Ephebophile Entrapped by a Nymphet

Weiner & The Nymphet

The Daily Mail reported that 51-year-old Anthony Weiner had an online affair with a 15-year-old high school sophomore. It's important to note that the nymphet initiated the affair, confessed that it was consensual, and shared that she was obsessed with Weiner.

Excerpts from The Daily Mail piece:

Although the girl said she did not want to press charges because she believes her relationship with Weiner was consensual

The girl first reached out to Weiner on the evening of January 23, 2016, when she noticed his Twitter page allowed non-followers to contact him through direct private messages. 

She told DailyMail.com she was interested in politics and had heard about his sexting scandals, and was curious to see what he was like.   

It was clear from the messages that she was encouraging Weiner to engage with her in a sexual manner. She told DailyMail.com she didn't consider Weiner her boyfriend, but thought the relationship was a 'romantic' one.

She acknowledged during interviews that she had developed an obsession with Weiner, and sought him out on Twitter in January while trying to write a book about him. She said she continued to write the book as their relationship developed.

Once again, an ephebophile, Weiner, wasn't able to resist the allure of a nymphet, and the nymphet is being hailed as the innocent victim when they both should be scolded. 

Update 10/01/17: Weiner was sentenced to 21 months in a federal prison, and he will have to register as a sex offender, but the nymphet wasn't charged with a crime.

Famous Ephebophile: James Franco - Old\Young Teen Sexual Affairs On & Off the Screen?

[UPDATE 2/18/18] When I first wrote this post, I didn't include a review of James Franco's Actors Anonymous, because an Amazon review led me to believe that the novel didn't contain any ephebophilia, but a recent post on the Daily Mail proved me very wrong. 

1. By page 43, the protagonist took an acting class on Lankershim Boulevard in LA where he participated in an improvisation scene from Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago.

“So, last night, how’d it go? […] “Don’t bullshit,” he said.

“No bullshit.”

“So tell me. And no bullshit.”

“So tits like melons, no bullshit.”

 “No shit?”

“No shit, and an ass – momma.”

“A momma ass?”

“No, an ass like butter. An ass like candy.”

“An ass like that?

“An ass like an onion, bring a tear to your eye.”

“Like…”

“Like eighteen […] Sheeeit, you think she’s a virgin? […] Little slut, hungh?”

2. It’s mentioned on page 51 that it’s usually no fun to be the actor, director and writer of a film unless you’re Charlie Chaplin or Woody Allen.

Joyce Milton shared in her book, Tramp: The Life of Charlie Chaplin, that Chaplin acknowledged: 

“I had a violent crush on a girl only ten or twelve. I have always been in love with young girls [...]” 

In addition, Milton clarified that Chaplin developed a crush on 12-year-old Maybelle Fournier, he met Mildred Harris when she was 14-years-old, and impregnated her when she was 16. Furthermore, he was smitten with 15-year-old Hetty Kelly, and impregnated Lillita Grey when she was 15-years-old - allegedly before they were married.

And the 33-page decision from the presiding judge in the case between Mia Farrow and Woody Allen revealed that in 1990, 19-year-old Soon-Yi asked 55-year-old Allen, her adopted step-father, if she could attend a New York Knicks' basketball game with him at Madison Square Garden. Soon-Yi "opened up" to Woody (no pun intended) after attending several basketball games and in 1991, after she had enrolled in Drew College in Madison, New Jersey, Allen and Soon-Yi began speaking regularly on the phone. And in January of 1992, Farrow found six graphically nude photographs (e.g., "legs spread apart") of Soon-Yi on a mantelpiece in Allen's apartment. Subsequently, Allen married Soon-Yi.

3. The perils of fame are often mentioned in the book. For example: “[…] I’m like Santa Claus: Everyone needs a picture sitting on my knee. The ones I don’t mind are the young pretty ones.” (52)

4. The protagonist had sex with a drunk and unconscious girl in her Ohio University dorm room, but despite the fact that she was a college coed, she was described as: “[…] a little blond girl, pretty cute.” (60) Freshman?

5. The famous ephebophile Charlie Chaplin was mentioned again: “My stare was the stare of an uncompromising carnivore that saw her young flesh as food; like Chaplin’s companion in The Gold Rush who is transformed […] into the Platonic form of the Female, a pinup bent-over in a tingly blue G-string. She was only eleven, but I never broke my vampiric stare as I went through our moves with the other zombies.” (104)

6. It’s shared in the novel that: “Errol Flynn once owned a Gauguin painting, but he had to sell it when he became dissolute and was two million in debt […]” (157)

Beverly Aadland’s mother wrote in her book The Beautiful Pervert: “My Beverly was only fifteen and still a virgin when she met [forty-eight-year-old] Errol Flynn. A few hours later, she was still fifteen…but she wasn’t a virgin anymore.” Beverly went on to co-star with Flynn in Cuban Rebel Girls (1959).

And Nancy Mowll Mathews related in Paul Gauguin: An Erotic Life that 13-year-old Teha’amana was offered to Gauguin by her mother and that: "[...] Western tourists were commonly offered young girls, usually by the girl's parents, to serve as companions [...]" and that Gauguin had a "[...] genuine delight at having an adolescent lover [...]".

7. The Actor had a beautiful girlfriend, but that didn’t prevent him from having: “[…] an uncontrollable need to fuck every young thing he could. In France that summer, he fucked.” (181)  “Young thing” is elaborated upon: “[…] there was something nice about fooling around with her young body and having her say things like “You’re fucking the mayor’s daughter” over and over […]” (186)

8. The Villain shared: “[…] I was in Paris sleeping with college girls literally half my age, but underneath I have a good heart. Just as The Actor had a good heart.” (191)

9. The ephebophile shared his technique for procuring young girls: “One of my favorite approaches was to ask the young girls that requested to take a photo with me to email me a copy of the photo; that way I can give them my info very quickly in front of a crowd of fans and later work out a way to see them.” (213)

10. Kim was carried out by two orderlies, “grunting and thrashing”, but, inadvertently, her “flat young chest was exposed for all to see.” (225)

11. 17-year-old Cent, the star of “Day’s End, a film about teenage vampires […] was screwing the 38-eight-year-old producer, Mark Steely.” (266)

12. Lastly, The Actor had “a lifelong love of literature” that wasn’t shared by his father who didn’t care about The Actor’s: “[…] discovery of Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, or Raskolnikov, or Hamsun’s Hunger.”

Underground Man is the protagonist in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. In part two of the novella, 40-year-old Underground Man has a brief sexual relationship with Liza, a young prostitute. Underground Man met Liza in a brothel where she had been sold into prostitution by her family. 

Figure 1.

James Franco posted the pictures in figure 1 on his Instagram. The pictures are inviting Franco's fans to see a trailer for his new movie Palo Alto (2014), which is based on Franco's book. And as you can see from the pictures, Franco's character is a teacher and soccer coach "who gets too close to a teenage girl on his team".

James Franco & Lucy Clode Selfie (Figure 2)

In a classic case of art imitating life, Franco invited Lucy Clode, a Scottish teen, to a hotel rendezvous after he signed her autograph and took a selfie (Figure 2) with her outside of the Longacre Theatre after he starred in a performance of Of Mice and Men. Clode tagged Franco when she posted the selfie on Instagram, which allowed Franco to directly contact the 17-year-old.

This is how their conversation went:

As you can cull from the conversation, there were two sources of contention - Clode wanted to verify Franco's identity and (initially) she didn't want to meet him until after her 18th birthday; however, she decided that if she could unequivocally verify Franco's identity, she would meet him at the hotel. 

This is the headline of an article posted on the Huffington Post -  So, Is James Franco's Use Of Instagram Innovative Film Promotion Or Just Kind Of Creepy? The Franco/Clode selfie and subsequent conversation may or may not have been to promote his film, but clearly the reporter, Lauren Duca, is middle-aged women who is, unsurprisingly, against age-discrepant relationships between ephebophiles and teleiophiles. In contrast, Franco got between 49,000 and 51,000 Likes, mostly from young women, for the pictures in figure 1. 

Lastly, it's not clear why Clode (initially) wanted to meet Franco after she turned 18, because the age of consent in Scotland is 16. And it's 17 in New York, which may explain why Franco didn't have an issue with inviting the nymphet to a hotel.

[Update 11\02\14]: What's James Franco's favorite book? You guessed it. He posted on Instagram that it's Nabokov's Lolita.

[Update 03/04/15]: This is a GIF from “Agent Provocateur” an episode of Law and Order: SVU  which was based on James Franco's encounter with Lucy Clode. Here's the episode's (partial) plot summary: A 15-year-old girl, answering a social media invitation, sneaks out to meet her movie star crush […]

Famous Ephebophile: Lord Byron

I (temporarily) abandoned MacCarthy's Byron Life and Legend on page 217 for Gilot and Lake's Life with Picasso (Gilot met Picasso when she was twenty-one, and he was sixty-two.) specifically because MacCarthy didn't cover Byron's writing process. However, I did cull that Byron was an (acting) ephebophile. 

Initially, Byron's affection was for Lady Oxford but it "transferred from the mother to the daughters, beautiful, well read, [and] precocious children". Byron was "bowled over by attractions of the eldest daughter, Lady Jane Harley, then sixteen, describing her in his dairy as 'a delightful creature, but un pea libre'."

"[B]ut his favorite was her younger sister Lady Charlotte, at eleven, was at the age of promise which most moved him, the child on the edge of puberty."

Lady Charlotte as Ianthe

"Lady Oxford's daughter Charlotte is the subject of the famous and much anthologised five stanzas "To Ianthe," fragile flower of the narcissus [...] In these stanzas [...] Byron celebrates the girl's evasive charm and addresses the painful ambiguities of their relationship:"

"To Ianthe"

Not in those climes where I have late been straying,
Though Beauty long hath there been matchless deemed,
Not in those visions to the heart displaying
Forms which it sighs but to have only dreamed,
Hath aught like thee in Truth or Fancy seemed:
Nor, having seen thee, shall I vainly seek
To paint those charms which varied as they beamed—
To such as see thee not my words were weak;
To those who gaze on thee what language could they speak?

Ah! may'st thou ever be what now thou art,
Nor unbeseem the promise of thy Spring—
As fair in form, as warm yet pure in heart,
Love's image upon earth without his wing,
And guileless beyond Hope's imagining!
And surely she who now so fondly rears
Thy youth, in thee, thus hourly brightening,
Beholds the Rainbow of her future years,
Before whose heavenly hues all Sorrow disappears.

Young Peri of the West! — 'tis well for me
My years already doubly number thine;
My loveless eye unmoved may gaze on thee,
And safely view thy ripening beauties shine;
Happy, I ne'er shall see them in decline;
Happier, that, while all younger hearts shall bleed,
Mine shall escape the doom thine eyes assign
To those whose admiration shall succeed,
But mixed with pangs to Love's even loveliest hours decreed.

Oh! let that eye, which, wild as the Gazelle's,
Now brightly bold or beautifully shy,
Wins as it wanders, dazzles where it dwells,
Glance o'er this page, nor to my verse deny
That smile for which my breast might vainly sigh
Could I to thee be ever more than friend:
This much, dear Maid, accord; nor question why
To one so young my strain I would commend,
But bid me with my wreath one matchless Lily blend.

Such is thy name with this my verse entwined;
And long as kinder eyes a look shall cast
On Harold's page, Ianthe's here enshrined
Shall thus be first beheld, forgotten last:
My days once numbered — should this homage past
Attract thy fairy fingers near the Lyre
Of him who hailed thee loveliest, as thou wast—
Such is the most my Memory may desire;
Though more than Hope can claim, could Friendship less require?

Byron commissioned for Richard Westall to paint the nymphet's portrait, and he shared "I should love [Charlotte] forever if she could always be only eleven years old [...]" 

However, it appears that Byron's affections went too far. "Lady O[xford] detected him one day in an attempt upon her daughter, then a child of thirteen, & was enraged with him to the greatest degree."

[Update] Famous Ephebophile Woody Allen: "The Best Thing is Blonde 12-Year-Old Girls."

Woody Allen's Love and Death (1975)

If a novelist or writer or any artist makes art that expresses the attraction between teenage girls and older men, is that indicative of their own personal desires and/or does it express an event they may have occurred previously in their lives? For example, was Nabokov an active ephebophile and did Tatiana von Furstenberg have an affair with a married man while she was at boarding school? Let us take a look at Woody Allen for a possible clue to the answer. 

Woody Allen has written and/or directed at least nine films that contained age-discrepant relationships: 

Play It Again, Sam (1972):  A female character shared with Allan (Woody Allen), “Allen, I won’t deny it. I’m a nymphomaniac. I discovered sex very early. I slept with everybody. My school teacher.”

Love and Death (1975): Ninety-year-old Father Andre, the “Holiest of Holies, Ancient and Wise” shared, “I have lived many years. And after many trials and tribulations. I have come to [the] conclusion that the best thing is blonde twelve-year-old girls. Two of them, whenever possible.”

Manhattan (1979): Forty-two-year-old Isaac (Woody Allen), a comedy writer and aspiring novelist, ends his affair with a seventeen-year-old high school student (Mariel Hemingway) to be with an older woman (Diane Keaton) - only to regret it later. 

Katie Duggan shared in the article “The Women of the Woody Allen Papers” published in The Nassau Weekly that I picked up while attending a function at Prince University that a draft of Manhattan’s script, which is archived in one of 56 boxes in the rare-books wing in Princeton’s Firestone Library that Heminway’s character was originally sixteen - an “infant”. 

Stacey Nelkin related in 2011 on The Howard Stern Show that Manhattan was based on her relationship with Allen that began after they met on the set of Annie Hall. Nelkin was a seventeen-year-old student at the pretigious Stuyvesant high school in Manhattan and Allen was forty-two. Allen confirmed the relationship in a 2014 Op-Ed piece in the New York Times. 

Husbands and Wives (1992): Gabe Roth (Woody Allen), a literature professor, began a relationship with one of his students (Juliette Lewis) after she read and praised the manuscript of his new novel.  However, prior to taking Roth’s class, Rain had previous relationships with three much older men: her father’s close friend, her father’s business partner, and her analyst.  

Deconstructing Harry (1997): writer Harry Block (Woody Allen) drives a prostitute, a friend, and his kidnapped son, to his former university to receive an honorary degree. One of the sub-plots involves Harry's relationship with Fay (Elisabeth Shue), a young fan who turns into a follower, then a pupil - Eliza Doolittle style, and finally into a roommate. Despite warning Fay to avoid falling in love with him and confessing his intention to “fuck” her before moving on to the next fan, Harry fell in love with Fay and was distraught to learn that she got engaged to Larry (Billy Crystal) - Harry’s “alleged” friend.

Whatever Works (2009): Boris Yellnikoff (Larry David), a middle-aged professor of quantum mechanics at Columbia University, reluctantly married Melodie Saint Ann Celestine (Evan Rachel Wood), a young runaway from Mississippi.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010): Alfie (Anthony Hopkins), an elderly man, leaves his wife to marry a young call girl, while Roy (Josh Brolin), a middle-aged novelist, becomes engrossed by Dia (Freida Pinto), a beautiful young woman, while desperately trying to get his second book published.

Irrational Man (2015): Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix), a philosophy professor at Braylin, finds himself in a life crisis, but he gains a new purpose in life after he begins a relationship with one of his students, Jill Pollard (Emma Stone) and becomes a one-man vigilante. 

A Rainy Day in New York (2019): Ashleigh (Elle Fanning), a Yardley college student, was involved in not one, not two, not three but (possibly) four age-gap affairs. For example, after Gatsby (Timothée Chalamet) and Ashleigh visit New York City, Ashleigh becomes infatuated with Roland Pollard (51-year-old Liev Schreiber), a famous film director, whom she is interviewing for the school's paper. Ashleigh says referring to Roland, "I can see why all the leading ladies fall in love with him."

As you can see, some of Allen's work fulfills the request of almost every Hollywood movie executive, which is, “Give me the same thing, only different.” Yet, up until the filming of Husbands and Wives, there was only speculation about Woody’s intentions, but they became clear when his wife, Mia Farrow, found nude pictures of her adopted daughter, Soon Yi Previn, in Woody’s bedroom that were taken some time before Soon Yi’s 19th birthday. Thus, Woody is a great example of (his) art imitating (his) life. 

Dylan Farrow and Woody Allen

In addition, in 1992 Allen was accused by Dylan Farrow, his adopted daughter, and Mia Farrow of molesting Dylan when she was two and seven-years-old. 

Here are some low-lights from the 33-page decision from the presiding judge in the case:

When Allen met Farrow she had three biological and three adopted children. One of whom was ten-year-old Soon-Yi. Allen and Farrow met in 1980 and "[u]ntil 1985, Mr. Allen...viewed her children as an encumbrance. He had no involvement with them." Allen even had a separate residence on the opposite side of Manhattan. After unsuccessfully trying to have a child together, Allen allowed Farrow to adopt Dylan, a newborn, in 1985.

Eventually, Woody warmed up to Dylan; however, according to Dylan and Farrow, Woody warmed up to Dylan too much. For example, when Dylan was 2-years-old, Farrow told Allen "...[you] look at her in a sexual way. You fondled her...You're all over her. You look at her when she's naked."

Then in 1990, 19-year-old Soon-Yi asked Woody if she could attend a New York Knicks' basketball game with him at Madison Square Garden. Soon-Yi "opened up" to Woody (no pun intended) after attending several basketball games and in 1991, after she enrolled in Drew College in Madison, New Jersey, Allen and Soon-Yi began speaking regularly on the phone.

Allen, Farrow and Soon-Yi

And in January of 1992, Farrow found six graphically nude photographs (e.g., "legs spread apart") of Soon-Yi on a mantelpiece in Allen's apartment. 

Needless to say, Farrow was distraught over Allen and her (adopted) daughter's affair. 

Very interestingly, Farrow is no stranger to age-discrepant relationships. For example, according to J. Randy Taraborrelli's Sinatra: Behind the Legend, nineteen-year-old Mia Farrow lost her virginity to forty-eight-year-old Frank Sinatra at his ultra-modern glass and metal house in Palm Springs after their flight on a private jet. “They had dinner on the terrace, served by an army of servants, and then he swept her into his bedroom.” Farrow described the night as “magical”. 

And a November 2013 Vanity Fair article related that subsequent to her marriage to Sinatra and prior to her marriage to Allen, Farrow married composer-conductor André Previn. Previn and Farrow had three sons and adopted three underprivileged Asian girls. (You guessed it. Soon-Yi Previn was one of the adopted girls.) But what you may not have guessed is that Previn and Farrow were the inspiration for the song “Beware of Young Girls” that was written by Dory Previn. (You guessed it. Dory was André’s ex-wife.) Previn and twenty-three-year-old Farrow started an affair while Previn was conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and Farrow was filming A Dandy in Aspic. Dory separated from André after she discovered that Farrow was pregnant with André’s child. Consequently, according to The Independent, Dory was institutionalized with severe mental illness prior to composing “Beware of Young Girls”.

Subsequently, Allen and Soon-Yi adopted Bechet Dumaine Allen and Manzie Tio Allen. I won't comment on the adoption or the picture below, but based on Allen's record, one would be not surprised if "something" came out of the adoption(s). 

Allen with Bechet and Manzie in Beverly Hills (2012)

The Daily Mail revealed that Allen is friends with Jeffrey Epstein - another famous ephebophile. Epstein and Allen were seen hugging, whispering, joking and laughing as they strolled to Epstein's $50 million Upper East Side of Manhattan town house. 

Epstein, who is also friends with former president Bill Clinton and Britain's Prince Andrew, was accused in a civil suit of the following allegations:

• he received three twelve-year-old French girls as a birthday present 
• he had a fourteen-year-old “Balkan sex slave” that he procured from her family 
• he had a fifteen-year-old sex toy named Virginia Roberts that he loaned to friends, and 
• he paid forty, mostly underage girls, approximately $300 apiece to give him “messages” (i.e., hand jobs) at his second home in Palm Beach. 

Is it true that birds of a feather flock together?

Jeffrey Epstein, Woody Allen and Soon-Yi

Only God knows if Allen is a pedophile, but clearly he's an acting ephebophile. But what we find surprising is that Allen didn't use his fame to marry a nymphet à la J.D. Salinger and Elvis instead of marrying his wife's (adopted) daughter.

[Update 6-23-19]

Soon-Yi related her version of the affair in Daphne Merkin's New York Magazine profile "Introducing Soon-Yi Previn: As controversies tumbled around her, the daughter of Mia Farrow and wife of Woody Allen stayed silent for decades. No more":

The first statement that Soon-Yi released was to Newsweek in August of 1992: “I’m not a retarded little underage flower who was raped, molested, and spoiled by some evil stepfather — not by a long shot.” 

Soon-Yi’s first “friendly encounter” with Allen happened in the 11th grade after she broke her ankle during a game of soccer while attending the Marymount School of New York. Subsequently, Allen advised her to see a doctor and offered to take the nymphet to school after she returned from the hospital “in a cast and on crutches”. 

Soon-Yi shared, “You know, he didn’t have to offer. I’d never been nice to him really.”

After that, in a bit of foreshadowing, Farrow naively suggested that the budding age-gap couple go to Knicks games together where the Catholic schoolgirl “gradually began to open up to Allen”, because she knew that Allen and Farrow were in a relationship “just because of the kids.”

It’s not clear if the nymphet opened up literally or figuratively, because Allen and Soon-Yi were “vague on how and when their friendship turned sexual”. 

Soon-Yi opined, “I think Woody went after me because at that first basketball game I turned out to be more interesting and amusing than he thought I’d be.” 

Soon-Yi shared that by the time she started commuting to Drew University, the age-gap couple  “[...] were like two magnets, very attracted to each other,” because Allen had showed her “affection”, he was “nice” which “thrilled” her, and he made her feel “valued” which was “quite flattering”.

After Farrow found Soon-Yi’s nude photos prominently displayed on Allen’s mantel, she slapped her “[a]nd then she called everyone. She didn’t contain the situation; she just spread it like wildfire, and then she was screaming at Woody when he came over.” Soon-Yi regrets that her (adopted) mother found the nude photos “[...] but notes that they were taken in the privacy of Allen’s home, for themselves.”

Interestingly, the “molestation charge”, the public viewing their relationship “as a virtual case of incest”, and the paparazzi “deepened” their relationship. Soon-Yi shared, “I was madly in love with him [...] Completely attracted to him, physically and sexually [...]”

Subsequently, Allen released a statement confirming his real, true and loving relationship with his (adopted) step-daughter and “[...] on December 23, 1997, Woody and Soon-Yi got married in the mayor’s office in Venice [...]”

Katie Duggan also shared in the article “The Women of the Woody Allen Papers” that “[i]n one story, a male narrator talks about his crush on Thelma, who ‘although only fifteen years old was endowed with sufficient physical gifts.’” And that Allen wrote in his notes about Ashleigh Enright, a journalism student in A Rainy Day in New York (2019) “she should not be 20 or 21. Sounds more like 18—or even 17—but 18 seems better.” 

Richard Morgan, who was the first to read the archives “cover to cover”, shared in “I read decades of Woody Allen’s private notes. He’s obsessed with teenage girls.” for the Washington Post:

Allen's work is flatly boorish. Running through all of the boxes is an insistent, vivid obsession with young women and girls: There's the "wealthy, educated, respected" male character in one short story ("By Destiny Denied: Incident at Entwhistle's") who lives with a 21-year-old "Indian" woman. First, Allen's revisions reduce her to 18, then double down, literally, and turn her into two 18-year-olds. 

There's the 16-year-old in an unmade television pitch described as "a flashy sexy blonde in a flaming red low cut evening gown with a long slit up the side." 

There's the 17-year-old girl in another short story, "Consider Kaplan," whose 53-year-old neighbor falls in love with her as the two share a silent, one-floor-long elevator ride in their Park Avenue co-op. [...] who ends up sending his 17-year-old neighbor a valentine. The contents of that love note are instructive to Allen's sense of courtship and, in creative terms, to his sense of how chemistry forms between two characters. It reads, in full: "I saw you only briefly the other day and have not stopped thinking of you. Though we shared a casual and fleeting elevator ride — one floor, to be exact — I fear my life can never be the same. Please meet me for cocktails one night this week. I live in the penthouse. I implore you not to say no. If it turns out for one reason or another you can never share my feelings than [sic] the worst you will suffer is that I will tell you how lovely you are for the duration of a single martini." [...] 

Another of Allen's male characters, in a draft of a 1977 New Yorker story called "The Kugelmass Episode," is a 45-year-old fascinated by "coeds" at City College of New York. In the margin next to this character's dialogue, Allen wrote, then crossed out, "c'est moi" — it's me.

[...] in a draft of "My Apology," a short story: "Of all the famous men who ever lived, the one I would most like to have been was Socrates. Not just because he was a great thinker, because I have been known to have some reasonably profound insights myself, although mine invariably revolve around two eighteen year old cocktail waitresses and some rope handcuffs." (In the published version, the object of desire has become a stewardess whose age is omitted.) 

In another draft, titled "My Speech to the Graduates," he complains that "science has failed us. True, it has conquered many diseases, broken the genetic code, and even placed human beings on the Moon. And yet when a man of eighty is left in a room with two eighteen year old cocktail waitresses, nothing happens.

[Update 7-23-19]

16-Year-Old Babi Christina Engelhardt and Woody Allen

Babi Christina Engelhardt opined in Gary Baum's Hollywood Reporter piece “Woody Allen's Secret Teen Lover Speaks: Sex, Power and a Conflicted Muse Who Inspired 'Manhattan'” that Stacey Nelkin was not the sole inspiration for Manhattan (1979). Babi presumes that she, Nelkin and the two "beautiful young [lipstick lesbian] ladies" were the inspiration for the critically acclaimed and award winning film. 

Let's learn more about Babi and see what would give her that impression. 

In the Allen, Woody: Director section of the New York Magazine cover story “Who Was Jeffrey Epstein Calling? A Close study of his circle - social, professional, transactional - reveals a damning portrait of elite New York” it states: 

“For years before his relationship with Mia Farrow, Allen had carried on with a 16-year-old girl he’d met at Elaine’s named Babi Christina Engelhardt [...] Engelhardt had sex with Allen more than 100 times, she says, sometimes with [Mia] Farrow [or with two other "beautiful young ladies" in his Central Park facing 930 Fifth Ave bedroom].” (The 16-year-old shared that she had [lipstick] lesbian sex before she met Woody.)

Babi shared the details of her relationship with Woody with Baum in his Hollywood Reporter piece. Baum wrote that, which is absolutely no surprise to us, that “confident” Babi “brazenly” initiated the affair with Woody:

Sixteen, emerald-eyed, blond, an aspiring model with a confident streak and a painful past: Babi Christina Engelhardt had just caught Woody Allen's gaze at legendary New York City power restaurant Elaine's. It was October 1976, and when Engelhardt returned from the ladies' room, she dropped a note on his table with her phone number. It brazenly read: "Since you've signed enough autographs, here's mine!"

Soon, Allen rang, inviting her to his Fifth Avenue penthouse. The already-famous 41-year-old director [...] never asked her age. But she told him she was still in high school [...]. Within weeks, they'd become physically intimate at his place. She wouldn't turn 17, legal in New York, until that December.

The pair embarked on, by her account, a clandestine romance of eight years [...]

17-Year-Old Babi Christina Engelhardt

Babi shared that she “liked” Woody and finds him “so interesting” because “his wit is magnetic” and that “[...] he was charming and alluring.”

Baum wrote of Babi: 

She's proud of her teenage self as an up-by-her-bootstraps heroine who successfully beguiled a "celebrated genius." Even now, she holds herself largely responsible for remaining in the relationship as long as she did [...]. She considered him then, and still considers him now, a Great Man.

In reference to the article, Babi related: "I'm not attacking Woody," she says. "This is not 'bring down this man.' I'm talking about my love story. This made me who I am. I have no regrets."

The letter Woody sent to Babit thanking her The Voice of the Moon and
(possibly) requesting a three-some.

The most surprising part of the article may be that Babi began “[...] working as a personal assistant to Jeffrey Epstein [...]”. And the most interesting item in the article is a letter that Woody sent Babi in 2001. After Woody thanked Babi for sending him a copy of the documentary The Voice of the Moon, he wrote: 

“If you're ever in New York I would love you to meet my wife [i.e., Soon-Yi  Previn] — she'd like you. We get out to California every so often. If you'd like I'd call and perhaps we could all get together.” 

Babi presumed that Woody was inviting her to a threesome, but she didn’t participate. 

This update raises at least two questions:

1. Who were the two "beautiful young ladies" and just how young were they?
2. And did Epstein supply Woody and Soon-Yi with nymphets for threesomes?