Woody, the Great Expanse

Before the dour, Bergmanesque period of “Interiors,” before the dissonant notes of “September” and “Shadows and Fog” and “Alice”--before there were Mia and Soon-Yi and he became a kind of creepy curiosity, sitting courtside at New York Knicks games with his former lover’s adopted daughter, Woody Allen was a stand-up comedian.

That’s no profundity, but seeing the Allen of “Woody Allen’s Television Days,” a two-part series that begins Friday at the Museum of Television & Radio in Beverly Hills, one is struck by the great chasm that exists between the Allen of today and the Allen of 1964.

Introduced by Jack Paar that year as a “a brilliant young intellectual comedian,” Allen comes out, looking pressed and neurotic, and does a routine about his NYU years, and how he cheated on his metaphysics exam by looking into the soul of the boy sitting next to him (a line Allen resurrected 13 years later in “Annie Hall”).

The clip from the Paar show is included in the first of two 90-minute films museum curator Ron Simon has pieced together from old shows as an ode to Allen’s strictly comedy years. Part 1, “Sketches and Kvetches,” runs from Friday to Feb. 18, and Part 2, “Tell It Again, Woody,” plays from Feb. 19 to March 21.

Much of this material was shown in Los Angeles in 1989 when the museum, then based only in New York, presented “Woody Allen: the Television Work” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

This time around, in addition to the screenings, there will be two radio programs: an interview with Allen about his career and a National Radio Theater of Chicago production of “God,” one of his absurdist plays.

“Sketches and Kvetches” features a 1962 “Tonight Show” appearance, a sketch Allen wrote with Larry and Allen Gelbart for “The Chevy Show” in 1958 and a nightclub routine that appeared on the special “Gene Kelly in New York, New York” (1966), in which Allen dissects his family tree (on which every branch contains someone named Max). The film concludes with the complete screening of “The Kraft Music Hall: Woody Allen Looks at 1967,” a variety series Allen guest-hosted. It’s highlighted by a question-answer session between the comedian and conservative “Firing Line” host William F. Buckley.

“It was a whole decade of learning for him,” Simon said of Allen’s years as a TV comedy writer and stand-up comedian. “You see a directorial sensibility emerge in the specials. He’s beginning to shape the material. A lot of the earlier . . . movies [“Bananas,” “Take the Money and Run”] do have a sketch quality to them.”

“Tell It Again, Woody,” Part 2 of the museum series, includes scenes from Allen’s only network special and a 1977 interview with friend Dick Cavett, during which Allen discusses the anticlimax of finally meeting an aged Groucho Marx, his reverence for Bob Hope and the vagaries of his nightclub years (Allen was four days into an extended engagement at the Crescendo Club in Hollywood when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated).

Most comedians light on a formula for success, then cleave to that acceptance long after they’ve had anything fresh to say. To Allen’s credit, he acted on his apparent boredom with the artistic limits of stand-up comedy.

As a filmmaker, some would say, Allen has these days fallen back into a rut. The criticism comes from disgruntled fans for whom 1989’s “Crimes and Misdemeanors” was the last time Allen was piquant and relevant, as opposed to being a dim echo of his various selves.

For them, seeing Allen all over again as nothing more complicated than a fussy Jewish comedian may be touching. Revealingly, when Cavett notes in the 1977 interview that the recently released “Annie Hall” threatens to bring him mass acceptance, Allen visibly cringes. He promises that his next film will be something serious and unexpected, something to throw his fans off the scent.

He couldn’t have imagined then how successful he’d be.

BE THERE

“Woody Allen’s Television Days” will be screened Wednesdays through Sundays at 3 p.m. and Thursdays at 7 p.m. Museum admission is $6 adults, $4 students and seniors, $3 children. Call (310) 786-1000.

‘It was a whole decade of learning for [Allen]. You see a directorial sensibility emerge in the specials. He’s beginning to shape the material.’

RON SIMON

TV museum curator, on Woody Allen’s years as a TV writer and comedian.