HENNA AND HER SICKOS

HANNAH AND HER SISTERS (1985)
dir: Woody Allen

Straw man argument for hate readers: Here at Rated Ecch, we separate the art from the artist. This parody was done in 1986, five years before his reputation as a child predator went down. We good? Okay, on with the show.

HENNA AND HER SICKOS
MAD #265, September 1986
w: Debbee Ovitz (Arnie Kogen)
a: Mort Drucker

I've said before I don't think Debbee Ovitz is a real person, probably an amalgam of writers or a pseudonym. The credit only appears on two articles. They've used tryout contributors before but never for movie or TV parodies, and before 1990 almost never had woman contributors (don't look at me). This is as much a parody of the Woody Allen persona as a whole and one of my favorite Drucker splashes. Also included are Louise Lasser (his ex-wife and former co-star) as Mary Hartmann, movie critics Siskel and Ebert, Jeffrey Lyons and Gene Shalit, and New York mayor Ed Koch, wearing a button with his catchphrase "How'm I doin'?"

Though as much as I admire Mort Drucker, it pains me to say it but every once in a while he can't get a photographic reference for an actor and ends up copying Al Hirschfield. Very rare, but it happens once in a while, like this Thanksgiving guest I can't seem to identify.

Lee (Barbara Hershey), one of the sisters, comes back home to her boyfriend Frederick (Max Von Sydow) and it's evident they're breaking up. Mickey (Woody Allen) is a television producer who thinks he may have cancer and used to be married to Hannah (Mia Farrow). Holly (Dianne Weist), the third sister of the title, is always changing careers and borrowing money to start them. Her newest one is a catering service she has with her friend (Carrie Fisher). One of the guests at a party they're catering (Sam Waterston) is an architect that ends up taking them both out. Elliot (Michael Caine) is married to Hannah but has just started seeing Lee secretly.

Aside: It always annoys me in comics when the titles on book spines are displayed upside-down.

In the crowd scene in the third panel is Benchley, which was a newspaper strip Drucker had for a while

Mickey has a flashback to earlier when he was married to Hannah and wasn't able to conceive, and asks his friend (Tony Roberts, who's mostly only played Woody Allen's sidekick) to be a donor for him. His wife, played by Joanna Gleason, is also depicted. Mickey finds out he's not going to die, which seems like it would be good news, but makes him even more depressed. Hannah ask her parents (Maureen O'Sullivan, her real-life mother, and Lloyd Nolan) if she's adopted.

Mickey contemplates becoming religious, but before that, we are treated to flashbacks of when he went out on a date with Holly and it didn't work out. In the present they meet again, with her finding her voice as a writer and them getting married. The last panel is a reference to how Mickey realizes life's worth living after seeing a screening of Duck Soup, plus the criticisms Woody was getting in real life as a filmmaker before his scandals started to overshadow them.

This was the final Little Annie Fanny in the September 1988 issue of Playboy. Not a parody of any actual Woody Allen film but Hannah had been the most recent one to feature him.