This kind of celebrity club doesn’t appeal to the average person

In the opening line to the movie “Annie Hall,” Woody Allen tells the audience: “There’s an old joke — um… and it goes like this — ‘I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.”

Currently, Woody Allen is a member of the celebrity club asking for film director Roman Polanski’s release from a fugitive warrant for failing to appear for sentencing after he pleaded guilty to a felony sex crime with a child.

Woody is also a member of Polanski’s predatory-sex club.

Woody Allen’s common-law wife and the mother of his children, actress Mia Farrow, discovered nude photos of her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, in Woody’s apartment. At the time, Allen was 56 and Previn was 21.

In the subsequent custody hearing for the minor children he had with Mia Farrow, Woody Allen testified, “It didn’t occur to me that this would be anything but a private thing.”

Judge Wilk asked him, “Wasn’t that enough, that you would know that you were sleeping with your children’s sister?” Allen answered, “I didn’t see it that way.”

Allen had a vision problem, and it seems Polanski has a memory problem.

At his plea hearing in August 1997, 44-year-old Roman Polanski admitted that in March 1997, at Jack Nicholson’s home, he had sex with a girl when he knew she was only 13.

Under oath, Polanski told the judge: he was guilty of unlawful sexual intercourse/victim under 18; that the plea agreement did not do anything other than drop his five other charges in exchange for his plea to the single crime; he knew he might get prison time; he knew he might be deported because of his guilty plea; and he agreed to do the statutorily required “Mentally Disordered Sexual Offender” evaluation.

The 19-page sentencing report said the 13-year-old victim went with Polanski under the guise that he was going to take pictures of her for the French magazine Vogue Homme. After sharing a bottle of champagne with her, he photographed her topless. Later, he gave her a Quaalude and photographed her fully nude.

After that, Polanski committed the remainder of the crimes he was charged with.

The report also described the horror story of Polanski’s life. As a young boy, he escaped from the World War II Krakow Jewish ghetto in which his family was interred. His father survived concentration camp but his mother did not. After the war, his father remarried and Roman was sent away when he did not get along with his new stepbrother.

The pre-sentence report said, “There is no current religious affiliation. Defendant, born in the Jewish faith, was raised in the Catholic faith, subsequently embracing and then renouncing communism as a substitute faith.”

He first came to the U.S. in 1967 to direct “Rosemary’s Baby,” a film about the incarnation of Satan, starring Mia Farrow as Rosemary. One year later, Polanski’s pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by Charles Manson’s followers.

The pre-sentence report contained many character letters, including one from Mia Farrow, and concluded with the probation officer’s recommendation that Polanski receive no jail time.

Polanski, though, had already fled the country before the report was submitted to the court.

Hollywood celebrities destroy themselves by making up their own rules, and frankly, the rest of us can see we wouldn’t want to be members of their club.

Sharman’s column appears each Tuesday.