Underfoot in Show Business
"Beautifully done ... I really cannot recommend this book too vigorously" - The Sunday Telegraph
From the author of 84, Charing Cross Road comes another literary jewel of a memoir from Helene Hanff. This is a delightful account of her early days as a struggling writer on the edge of show business.
When Helene became an apprentice playwright with New York's prestigious Theatre Guild, she was high on the champagne of her hopes. What did she care about living chiefly on coffee in meagre bed-sitters when she could always borrow her best friend's best blouse for lunch with a producer, and was meeting awe-inspiring people? She was young, stage-struck and determined have fun.
Brought back into print after several decades in gorgeous hardback gift edition, Underfoot in Show Business is introduced by Helene's cousin Jean Hanff Korelitz, a New York Times best-selling novelist in her own right.
Helene Hanff (1916-97) was an American author, journalist and playwright, who captured the hearts of readers everywhere with her book 84, Charing Cross Road - an account of her love affair with an antiquarian bookshop in London. She was born in Philadelphia but moved to her adopted city of New York, where she studied playwriting and wrote scripts for live television. Later she penned articles for The New Yorker and Harper's magazines before becoming the author of books for adults and children. The New York apartment building where she lived and wrote at 305 E. 72nd Street has been named 'Charing Cross House' in her honour and a bronze plaque next to the front door celebrates her residence; in London a matching plaque on the site of the original building commemorates the bookshop at 84, Charing Cross Road.
Jean Hanff Korelitz was born and raised in New York and graduated from Dartmouth College and Clare College, Cambridge. She is a New York Times bestselling author (The Plot, The Latecomer, Admission), and several of her novels have been adapted for film and television. She has also written a collection of poetry, a novel for middle grade readers and adapted James Joyce's The Dead for the theatre. Korelitz is also the founder of Book The Writer - a New York City-based pop-up book group where readers discuss books in person with their authors.
Bruce Eric Kaplan is an American cartoonist whose single-panel illustrations are frequently published in The New Yorker. His signature style is distinctive and off-beat - often combining dark humour with deceptively simple illustration. Kaplan is also a screenwriter and producer (working on television series Nobody Wants This, Six Feet Under, Girls and Seinfeld too), and has written and illustrated books for both adults and children.