Helene Hanff
Helene Hanff | |
---|---|
Born | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States | April 15, 1916
Died | April 9, 1997 New York City, United States | (aged 80)
Occupation | Screenwriter, writer |
Nationality | American |
Helene Hanff (April 15, 1916 – April 9, 1997) was an American writer born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is best known as the author of the book 84, Charing Cross Road, which became the basis for a stage play,[1] television play, and film of the same name.
Early life
She was born in 1916 to Miriam (born Levy) and Arthur Hanff. Her father had been a performer, but he settled down to sell shirts. However, it was said that he still liked the theatre, and he would swap shirts for a chance to get into a theater. Her family could not fund an expensive education, but Hanff won a scholarship to attend Temple University. She said that she was resigned to leaving after a year when the money was used up. She decided to teach herself, and she established a daily schedule of study. She had to abandon this when she realized that her family needed her to be a wage earner.[2]
Career
Helene Hanff's literary career saw her move from unproduced playwright to writer of some of the earliest television dramas to becoming a noted writer and personality in her own right, as a quintessential
When network television production geared up in
84, Charing Cross Road
The epistolary work 84, Charing Cross Road[5] was first published in 1970. It chronicles Hanff's 20 years of correspondence with Frank Doel, the chief buyer for Marks & Co, a London bookshop. She depended on the bookshop—and on Doel—for the obscure classics and British literature titles that fueled her passion for self-education. She became intimately involved in the lives of the shop's staff, sending them food parcels during Britain's postwar shortages and sharing with them details of her life in Manhattan.
Due to financial difficulties and an aversion to travel, she put off visiting her English friends until too late; Doel died in December 1968 from
In the 1987 film adaptation
Additional books
Hanff later put to good use her obsession with British scholar Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in a book called Q's Legacy (1985). The book serves as background to 84 and also recounts the aftermath of Duchess. Other books include Apple of My Eye (1977 and updated in 1988),[8] an idiosyncratic guide to New York City; Letter from New York (1992), which reprinted the five-minute talks that she gave each month on the BBC's Woman's Hour radio broadcasts between 1978 and 1984; and Underfoot in Show Business (1961, reissued 1989).[9] Underfoot in Show Business was adapted as a stage play by Charles Leipart and premiered in 2008 at the Devonshire Theatre in Eastbourne, UK, directed by David Giles.
Personal life
Hanff never married. In the 1987 84 Charing Cross Road movie, a photo of a US serviceman is shown in her apartment during the period of World War II, a portrait at which she smiles fondly, suggesting to the viewer that Hanff remained unmarried owing to this naval officer's death. No such person is mentioned in her autobiographical Underfoot, and none of her writings suggests that she ever had any lasting or even short-term romantic relationship with any person. However, writer Al Senter claimed that she mentioned a long affair with an unnamed 'prominent American' during a conversation with one of the co-founders of Marks and Co,[10] and one obituary of her asserted that 'there were romances'.[11]
Death and legacy
Hanff died from diabetes six days before her 81st birthday in 1997 in New York City. The apartment building where she lived at 305 E. 72nd Street has been named "Charing Cross House" in her honor. A bronze plaque next to the front door commemorates her residence and authorship of the book. In London, a bronze plaque on the site of the original building commemorates the bookshop at 84, Charing Cross Road.
Stephen R. Pastore published a biography, Helene Hanff: A Life, in 2011 based on interviews that he had conducted with her.[12]
References
- ^ Play for Today: Season 6, Episode 484, Charing Cross Road Archived March 20, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. IMDb. Retrieved December 25, 2014
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/66166 https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/66166, retrieved November 18, 2021)
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- ^ "BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs, Helene Hanff". BBC. Retrieved November 18, 2021.
- ISBN 0-233-96330-8
- ISBN 0-397-00976-3.
- ISBN 978-0-7864-5309-2.
- ISBN 978-0-918825-73-5.
- ISBN 978-1-78625-618-8.
- ^ Senter, Al (2015). 'Yours Faithfully', essay in '84 Charing Cross Road Programme'. The Salisbury Playhouse.
- ^ Roose-Evans, James (April 14, 1997). "Obituary: Helene Hanff". The Independent newspaper, UK.
- ISBN 0-9829579-3-9.
External links
- Obituary in The Independent Helene Hanff biography by James Roose-Evans
- 84 Charing Cross Road – Play for Today, 1975 at IMDb
- 84 Charing Cross Road – film, 1987 at IMDb
- Finding aid to Helene Hanff papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
- "Where Helene Hanff Lived". YouTube. Stacy Horn. December 19, 2013.
- "Helene Hanff Author Spotlight". YouTube. abookolive. January 23, 2022.