REGARDING ‘HARRY’

Kristine McKenna’s assertions smack of something very much like sexism; she’s far more interested in the actresses’ youth and beauty than she is in the complex, well-written characters they play in Woody Allen’s films (“This Old Dog’s Tricks Are Getting Tiresome,” Dec. 14).

Whether McKenna’s numbers game (“38 years younger” . . . “32 years younger” ad nauseam) is brought on by hormonal imbalance or simple envy, one cannot know. Don’t like it? Don’t see it! But if you do see Allen’s movies, try to resist doing all that math in your head; you might miss something remarkable.

“Deconstructing Harry” is a brilliant and ingenious companion piece to one of Allen’s most reviled and misunderstood films, “Stardust Memories” (1980). Both films are about art and artifice, fiction and reality, and the dangers inherent in confusing the art with the artist.

McKenna might try to make a case otherwise, but I believe Woody Allen thinks a good deal more about Klaus Barbie than he does about Barbie dolls.

DONNA W. COHN

Los Angeles

Did anybody else notice that every letter last Sunday that lambasted McKenna for her diatribe against Woody Allen was written by a man and every letter that sent kudos to her was written by a woman? Let me be the first man to say I totally agree with her.

It reminds me of another ridiculous conceit: the incredibly beautiful call girl/prostitute who decides to pass up any money-making jobs to spend time with the down-on-his-luck loser (see “Leaving Las Vegas”). It never happens but men will keep writing about it because they live in a fantasy world.

By the way, I’m 44 and married to a 46-year-old woman who is a fabulous cook, artist, homemaker and the primary bread-winner. Let’s hear it for “older women.”

JON ROE

Los Angeles

Did it ever occur to McKenna that older women simply won’t go out with Woody Allen? Only once during the six years I was single between marriages did a woman go out with me who was within five years of my age, and she quickly wrote me off as immature.

I’ve always wanted to play Laurence Harvey to Simone Signoret and would have loved a date with Joni Mitchell. But one has to be realistic. Next month, I’ll be celebrating my first wedding anniversary with a loving, caring, extremely good-looking woman 11 years younger than I. Don’t criticize me, please.

PHIL GOOD

Huntington Beach

Congratulations on your piece about Woody Allen casting women young enough to be his granddaughters opposite himself. That’s been bugging me for a long time--and not only is he doing it, but Robert Redford (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Clint Eastwood (Meryl Streep) are just as guilty! I could chew nails, really.

And McKenna is so right--if it ever happens where the woman is older, it is not meant to be serious, and they never end up together.

TOBI DRAGERT

Tarzana

McKenna’s article was poignant, intelligent, sophisticated, even-handed and nonjudgmental (something uncommon in literary media). What made it a stellar read was its critical thought process and its spiritual insight. When a work transcends the parameters of which it was constructed and if it can take the reader, listener, admirer to another level--put them in a different space--it reaches a certain benchmark and truly becomes a paradigm of the word “masterpiece.”

RON NEWMAN

Los Angeles

McKenna comes to the conclusion that Woody Allen’s screen relationships with younger women result from or reflect “capitalism, a spiritually bankrupt system that has drained all meaning from the process of aging. . . .”

Allen may focus on younger women-older men characters in his films (and in his personal life), but his motives probably have more to do with his psychological makeup than with our economic system.

LAURENCE S. GOLDSTEIN

Los Angeles

Lest we forget that there are men in Hollywood with a little more sexual maturity than Woody Allen, recall a 1970s comedy called “House Calls,” in which Walter Matthau portrayed a middle-aged widower doctor.

When asked by a colleague why he’s ignoring all the panting young chicks to make a play instead for middle-aged Glenda Jackson, he replies, “Because I don’t want to date someone I have to explain Ronald Colman to.”

DAVID R. MOSS

Los Angeles