Andre Previn, Dead. There but for Farrow...and several other abuses....

If memory serves well...Andre Previn was livid and red-as-a-lobster over how badly his ex-wife was treated by Woody Allen.

Imagine...somebody so LOW as to have an AFFAIR. Oh, that Woody Allen!

Oh, that ANDRE PREVIN.

Here's Andre in happy times with Mia Farrow.

Charming isn't he? He doesn't seem like a weasel.

And Mia, she looks pure as the driven snow here. Naive, adorable, not the type to, oh, pretend her son was the bastard child of impotent Frank Sinatra (whose widow had to read her crap). Not the type to spend most of her time with her adopted brood, which led Woody, who NEVER lived with her, to seek somebody new.

But let's get back to Dandy Andy.

Andreas Priwin, as he was known in Berlin, had to flee the Nazis in 1938, but fortunately turned up in sunny Los Angeles, where his uncle Charles Previn worked at Universal Studios. Eleven years after leaving Berlin, Andre got his first movie credit, composing music for a Lassie film in 1949 called "The Sun Comes Up." He recalled it as "the most inept score you ever heard."

Previn considered jazz his primary gift, and in 1952 got a shaky start with a 1952 album, "Andre Previn Plays Harry Warren."

Soon he was offering hipper material ("Andre Previn Plays Songs by Vernon Duke" "Andre Previn Plays Songs by Jerome Kern" "Andre Previn Plays Songs by Harold Arlen") and offering jazz-tinged versions of "Pal Joey" and "Gigi" and "West Side Story."

Before "smooth jazz" became a dirty word, Previn was there with "tasteful" albums of sophisticated swing. I liked the one he fashioned out of Duke Ellington material:

I also owned the album he made with Russ Freeman ("Double Play") but mostly for the topless babe on the cover.

Andre was a little less racy by 1962 when he and Doris Day brought "Duet" to the stores, and a few years later the increasingly popular Previn offered "The Popular Previn" in 1965.

By then, Andre had "Best Score" Academy Awards for "Irma La Douce" and "My Fair Lady." He also won a Grammy for "Andry Previn PLays that Old Black Magic" among others.

He had been edging toward the classical field, and was soon earning more fame as both a pianist and a conductor than as a jazz composer and easy-listening album-maker.

He would still dabble in the American Songbook ("The Jerome Kern Songbook" in 1994 with Sylvia McNair and "The Harold Arlen Songbook" in 1996 also with Sylvia McNair).

Sylvia McNair? Not one of his wives. He had five.

The first wife was a jazz singer, Betty Bennett. After nearly five years, it was time for a divorce.

It didn't matter that she was knocked up and loaded with his second child. The divorce was final before the baby appeared.

Wife #2 was the legendary Dory Langan. Under that name, in 1958, she and Andre (with jazz guitar from Kenny Burrell) released her first singing album, "The Leprechauns Are Upon Me." She and Andre began writing songs together, including "The Faraway Part Of Town" (from the all-star flop "Pepe") and "One, Two, Three Waltz" (for, guess what, the movie "One, Two, Three") and "A Second Chance" for the romantic "Two for the Seesaw." Several of their songs were Oscar-nominated. Dory suffered a nervous breakdown but recovered, and co-wrote ""You're Gonna Hear from Me" with Pevin, which was covered by Frank Sinatra. She had her best success when she paired her lyrics to music by Fred Karlin: "Come Saturday Morning" (from "The Sterile Cuckoo") which remains most memorable for the awkward phrase, "just I and my friend."

Andre and his friend Mia Farrow began having an affair. This was most apparent in 1969 when Farrow became pregnant. Dory, shattered, eventually divorced Andre. She suffered more mental ills due to the affair, had shock therapy, and emerged with some rather harrowing, moody and eccentric new solo albums, which were a bit too far to the right of cabaret and art song to appeal to the people who bought Joni Mitchell. (An irony being that her drummer John Guerin would appear on Joni's starker, more jazzy albums done long after Dory was gone from any major label). Still, it might be argued that a few of her quirky songs are a lot more memorable than anything Andre Previn ever composed. "Doppelganger" comes to mind, instantly, from "Reflections in a Mud Puddle."

Dory's 1970 solo album included a song called "Beware of Young Girls," which was about Mia.

And yet, one day the "Beware of Young Girls" grimaces were hurled at Woody Allen by people who a) falsely believed that Woody and Mia were married, and b) falsely believed that they were still together when he began seeing Soon-Yi Previn, and c) falsely believed that Soon-Yi Previn was Woody's daughter, when she was actually adopted back when the cheating Mia and the cheating Andre got married.

Sometimes an affair produces a lasting relationship, and it seemed that way with Mia and Andre. They were married in 1970, and the marriage lasted through the entire 70's. Perhaps one might find it "positive" that Previn would stick up for an ex-wife and put down an adopted daughter at the same time. His hatred of Woody Allen may have played a part, but despite what some may have thought, there was no anti-Semitism involved. Despite his French-sounding new name, Previn, like Woody, had Jewish ancestry.

Andre married wife #4 in 1982, and wife #5 (Anne-Sophie Mutter, a violinist) lasted from 2002 to 2006. Previn and Mutter still performed concerts together, while he continued to rage at Woody Allen for being SUCH an insensitive fellow. As for his adopted daughter Soon-Yi, Andre declared, ""She does not exist."

It's just a bit peculiar that a man who divorced a pregnant wife, cheated on his second wife, and ended up with five failed marriages, became such an outspoken defender of what is right or wrong in relationships.

But let's admire the man's trinkets, which include 4 shiny Oscars and 10 shiny Grammy awards. I have a few of his classical CDs, as both pianist and conductor, and he deserves credit for being taken seriously when snobs could have considered him just a more pedigreed Peter Nero and a minor movie music arranger.

He produced a bunch of children, adopted a few more, and if there were still record stores, you might be able to find that very admirable and prolific number of vinyl albums and CDs that he produced in his long lifetime, which extended from April 6, 1929 to today, February 28, 2019.