A lot of people know Helene Hanff from her book (and the subsequent movie) 84, Charing Cross Road. It tells the story of her long-distance book buying relationship with a bookseller in London during World War II. Fans of that book will know Hanff as a gifted writer with a strong sense of irony and problematic teeth. Underfoot in Show Business is the story of everything that came before.

After high school, Hanff tried college for a year before having to drop out and find a job. But her mother heard about a $1500 fellowship for young playwrights and sent for an application. The family had gone to plays and musicals every week as she was growing up, and Hanff dreamed of being a successful playwright on Broadway. So when she got a letter based on her application from Theresa Helburn, one of the co-producers of the Theatre Guild, Hanff felt like she was well on her way. But that’s because she had yet to learn Flanagan’s Law.

Hanff spent six weeks going into New York City each week to meet with Helburn, to talk about Hanff’s play and how she should rewrite it. After that, she won the fellowship and moved to the city to study playwriting with the Guild. She got an agent, and her plays were shopped to all the producers. None of them sold. But as she kept trying, meeting theatre professionals, being seen eating with them at Sardi’s, working in the publicity department for the Guild, working as an outside reader for Hollywood, and basically trying to survive with her actor friend Maxine on next to no money, Hanff found herself collecting stories about what it was like to fail on Broadway often and with aplomb.

Eventually she found success as a television writer, enough to afford a small apartment of her own and a mouth full of crowns. And when all the television writing moved west and she wanted to stay in her beloved New York, she dusted off her old Broadway stories and started selling them to magazines, and then collecting them into this book. These stories are full of big personalities and surprising twists. Because as her friend and stage manager Bill Flanagan told her, “No matter what happens to you, it’s unexpected.”

I don’t remember how I first stumbled onto the writing of Helene Hanff, but when I did, I devoured everything of hers I could find. And as beautiful as 84, Charing Cross Road is, I think this may be my favorite book of hers. I love hearing the stories of old Broadway and getting the insider tidbits of the flops and the hits. But mostly I love how Hanff could take these stories of her failures and frustrations and turning them into sharply ironic stories that remind me that nothing goes the way you expect in life, but it mostly turns out okay. Fans of theatre will find a lot to love in these stories, and fans of Hanff will just find that you love her more and more as the chapters go by.