Underfoot in Show Business by Helene Hanff

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

 

I first encountered Helene Hanff’s writing in the delightful 84, Charing Cross Road which was composed of letters she wrote to a bookseller in London and his responses.  They formed a fast friendship, one that was later portrayed in the movie of the same title and starring Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft. (I can’t resist adding that I was not the only one charmed by the book.  Anne Bancroft loved it, and so her husband Mel Brooks bought the screen rights for her as a birthday gift.)

 

While that is by far her best-known book, she did write others including Underfoot in Show Business. I love this book for many different reasons.

 

First and foremost, Hanff has a wonderful way of telling a story.  As the book opens, it’s the end of the Great Depression. Helene has had to drop out of college and go to work as a typist in the basement of a diesel-engine school for twelve dollars a week “and all the grease I could carry home on me.” She wants desperately to become a playwright, so she writes plays in her spare time. She enters a contest for young authors with a $1500 fellowship as a prize, and ends up moving to New York where she writes plays, takes odd jobs, and scratches out a living among all the other aspiring actors and playwrights. Helene budgets very carefully, figuring out not only rent but the prospect of attending functions where free food is available.  And, of course, cigarettes.

 

What could have been a dreary tale is instead a comedic adventure in Hanff’s capable hands. Her first garret turns out to a be in a red light district, a fact she discovers only when a man knocks on her door at 1 a.m. and asks if she’s open for business. Her second apartment is more respectable but caters to elderly women.  This means one needs to get used to seeing men carry out black body bags at regular intervals.  On the plus side, it also means that there’s a steady flow of merchandise for sale, cheap.

 

This book let me learn a bit more about the ultra-private Helene, as well as giving me insight into the way theatre works. It’s not all opening nights and reviews, but hard work behind the scenes for plays that may be a hit or a flop. When Helene does find lucrative work, it’s in the new medium of television where she writes and edits scripts for some of TV’s Golden Age shows. She drops some famous names but she’s no gossip; she guards their privacy as she does her own.

 

This may be one of my favorite books of the year.