Back in the '60s, when Woody Allen wanted to learn to dance the swim and the monkey, his friend Jean Doumanian arranged lessons for him. Three decades later Doumanian defended Allen amid the scandal over his romance with Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his longtime love Mia Farrow. Over the years, Allen did Doumanian a few favors too, like performing the Heimlich maneuver when she choked on a piece of bread in 1992. "Woody would call Jean three times a day," says John Logigian, Allen's onetime agent and a former executive at Doumanian's movie production company. "They spent holidays together. They were best friends."

No more. Last year Allen, 66, filed a lawsuit accusing Doumanian, 67, her boyfriend, Jacqui Safra, 54, and their company Sweetland Films of cheating him out of some of his profits from eight of his movies—-close to $10 million, says a source close to Allen. On May 20 they're due to face off in Manhattan supreme court, hardly a happy Hollywood Ending for one of showbiz's most enduring friendships. "They don't talk anymore, and that's sad," says Allen's friend and former producer Robert Greenhut. "Woody's disappointed but he's also angry. He can't believe Jean would want to go through something as public as a trial rather than settle."

The dispute centers on a deal that many a director might envy. In 1993, when Allen and his backer TriStar Pictures parted ways, Doumanian and the deep-pocketed Safra (nephew of the late banking mogul Edmond Safra) offered to finance Allen's movies. From 1994's Bullets over Broadway through 2000's Small Time Crooks, Allen claims, he was promised a salary of up to $2.5 million per film and half of the movies' profits. Plus minimal meddling. "Few people have the kind of deal that Woody had, where he does what he wants and people pay for it," says TIME movie critic Richard Schickel, who produced a recent TV documentary about Allen. "Him and perhaps Spielberg, that's about it."

Then last year Allen's manager Steve Tenebaum hired an auditor to examine Sweetland's books and concluded that Allen wasn't receiving his due. Allen pleaded with Doumanian to take the dispute to private arbitration. "Up until the night before he filed the papers he said, 'Don't make me do this,'" Allen's sister Letty Aronson, 58, who worked as a producer at Sweetland, told the Los Angeles Times. Doumanian denies cheating him and has launched a countersuit claiming that he in fact owes her. Says Logigian: "She feels like somebody stabbed her in the back." Allen tried in vain to heal the wound. "You and Jacqui are wonderful, generous people, and we're having a silly business difference of opinion," he wrote to her last June. "This was supposed to be amusing—-like a Tracy-Hepburn movie—-in court by day, friends by night!" She never replied.

The pair met in Chicago in 1964. Doumanian, a model turned boutique executive, was one of five guests at Allen's 1966 wedding to actress Louise Lasser. After working as a booker for The Dick Cavett Show, she helped launch Saturday Night Live and ran the show during its dismal 1980-81 season, when writers nicknamed her Ayatollah Doumanian for her domineering ways. But she and Allen remained tight. Although they weren't romantic, "there was a real sense of trust between them," says Barbara Kopple, director of a 1998 documentary about Allen. Allen once called Doumanian "the person you want to be with when you're waiting for the results of your biopsy."

Or a scandalous court case. During the bitter custody fight that erupted soon after Allen began seeing Soon-Yi, Doumanian told New York magazine that Farrow "made Woody's life a living hell." The movie deal soon followed. "Jean and Jacqui threw him a life jacket," says Logigian. "If they hadn't, nobody would have."

Backed by DreamWorks for his latest movie, Hollywood Ending, Allen seems outwardly content. He has finally settled into the $17 million Manhattan town-house he bought in 2000, which he shares with Soon-Yi, 31, whom he wed in '97, and their daughters Bechet Dumaine, 3, and Manzie Tio, 2. "It's not a new Woody," says one friend. "It's the same one. He's just living his life and this time letting people in." Doumanian excepted. "They had such good times," says Manhattan restaurateur Elaine Kaufman. "It's too bad there isn't a Solomon who can put them back together."

Samantha Miller
Bob Meadows in New York City