Underfoot in Show Business

by Helene Hanff

Paperback, 2007

Status

Available

Call number

921

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Moyer Bell and its subsidiaries (2007), Paperback, 177 pages

Description

In her spirited, witty and vastly entertaining memoir, Helene Hanff recalls her ingenuous attempts to crash Broadway in the early forties as one of "the other 999." Naive, nearsighted, frequently penniless but hopelessly stage-struck, she found her life governed by Flanagan's Law: "No matter what happens to you, it's unexpected." Therefore, as a prize-winning Theatre Guild prot�g�e with a brilliant future, Helene naturally found that all the producers who were going to produce her plays didn't, and all the agents who were going to sell her plays couldn't. Together with her best friend Maxine, an aspiring actress consigned to playing the comedy-ing�nue in plays that regularly folded after five performances, she cultivated the "delicate, illegal art of getting everything for nothing"-from free seats to every Broadway show and neighborhood movie and borrowed outfits from Saks to voice lessons for Maxine and Greek lessons for Helene. To keep body and soul together until Broadway fame arrived, they devised an economic survival system that embraced such unlikely jobs as taking street-corner.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member antiquary

Not as funny as some reviewers say, but since they say it is the funniest book they've ever read, it is still fairly amusing, though with a bitter edge, as the author notably failed to become a Broadway playwright and barely survived on the fringes of show business. The funniest part, for me, is

her description of serving as "outside reader" for Tolkien's LOTR, which she absolutely hated.
As I love it, and it became wildly successful, I find her comments very amusing.

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LibraryThing member Figgles

Gorgeous little book tells of the author's attempts to make it as a playwright in NY in the 1940's and 1950's. Funny and poignant. Worth reading and re-reading for many reasons, not the least the chapter describing the first opening of Oklahoma!. Pre-dates her more well known "84 Charing Cross

Road".

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LibraryThing member jcbrunner

Underfoot in show business is Hanff's account of her failed start as a play writer who moonlights as a script reader for movie studios and then discovers her talent as a TV writer. Unfortunately, the industry moves from NY to LA which robs Hanff of her success (as she is unwilling to leave New

York).

As always, following her ups and downs is hilarious and bittersweet. In no way is reading her "mental torture", which she claims to have experienced in speed-reading and summarizing Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, charging 40 dollars extra to the studio (duly paid). Still her later works are a bit better,

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LibraryThing member armbrusm

Loved it even more than 84 Charing Cross Road. What a delight!

LibraryThing member Jaylia3

A total pleasure

LibraryThing member clue

Helene Hanff is best known for her much loved memoir [84 Charing Cross Road]. This book, also a memoir, was published almost a decade previously. This is about Hanff's life in the forties and early fifties when she is trying to become a playwright and writer in New York City.

The first half of the

book is about the early years when just surviving is being successful. The last half of the book is about the period when she has begun to become established and I found it the most interesting. I particularly enjoyed reading about her experience as an outside writer, a person who is the first reader of a manuscript for a publisher. One of those she read was [The Lord of the Rings]!

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LibraryThing member bell7

As a young adult, Helene Hanff won a contest and a $1,500 prize from the Theatre Guild that sent her to New York and an attempt to make it as a playwright in the 1940s. But as she tells you at the beginning, she completely failed at this and learned the "immutable truth" of Flanagan's Law:

"whatever happens to you, it's unexpected."

Hanff's memoir is an absolute delight. She may not have made it as a playwright, but her stories of dealing with agents and producers, becoming friends with a usually-out-of-work actor named Maxine, or the shenanigans an aspiring playwright goes through to have a roof over her head and still watch as many shows as possible, are unfailingly entertaining and frequently hilarious.

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LibraryThing member grandpahobo

Witty, funny and a great insight into New York and the theater industry in the 40's and 50's.

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