Woody Allen began his career writing jokes and scripts, then progressed to stand-up and acting, and finally wrote and directed his first film, "Take the Money and Run", in 1969. Like many of the early films that made him famous, this was a screwball comedy that starred Allen as a hapless and self-demeaning schlemiel who bumbles his way through preposterous and hilarious situations. His first serious recognition as a filmmaker came with the Oscar he was awarded for "Annie Hall" in 1977. Allen progressed from joke comedy to psychological comedy with films like Manhattan, Stardust Memories, and Hannah and Her Sisters that mine the deeper humor based on personality and show an artistic advance from the skit-like nature of his early works. Allen's work has also come to reveal the poignant emotional mix of tragicomedy in the charm and fantasy of "The Purple Rose of Cairo", the nostalgia of "Radio Days", the multiple plots of "Crimes and Misdemeanors", and the bittersweet tone of "Alice". The critical and commercial success of the recent "Match Point", a tense, unfunny psychological drama, is proof that Allen is not nearing retirement, nor through reinventing himself as a filmmaker. People talk about Hollywood glamour, about studios that had more stars than there are in heaven, about actors who weren't actors but were icons. Other people talk about these things, Taschen shows you. "Movie Icons" is a series of photo books that feature the most famous personalities in the history of cinema. These 192-page books are visual biographies of the stars. For each title, series editor Paul Duncan has painstaking selected approximately 150 high quality enigmatic and sumptuous portraits, colorful posters and lobby cards, rare film stills, and previously unpublished candid photos showing the stars as they really are. These images are accompanied by concise introductory essays by leading film writers; each book also includes a chronology, a filmography, and a bibliography, and is peppered with apposite quotes from the movies and from life. All the icons in the second batch of the series were voted for by over 4500 Taschen readers in a special online poll!