Chief among these was the Dumont Network series The Adventures of Ellery Queen. When network television production geared up in New York City in the early 1950s, Hanff found a new career writing and editing scripts for many early television dramas. Her plays were admired by some of Broadway's leading producers, but somehow none of them ever made it to the stage, Hanff herself saying her plays specialized in 'plotless charm.' She worked in publicists' offices and spent summers on the ' straw hat circuit' along the East Coast, all the while writing one play after another. She wrote a memoir in 1961 called Underfoot in Show Business that chronicled her struggles as an ambitious young playwright trying to make it in the world of New York theatre in the 1940s and 1950s.

Helene Hanff's 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 New Yorker. She had to abandon this when she realised that her family needed her to be a wage earner. She decided to teach herself, and she established a daily schedule of study. She said that she was resigned to leaving after a year when the money was used. Her family could not fund an expensive education, but Hanff won a scholarship to attend Temple University. However, it was said that he still liked the theatre, and he would swap shirts for a chance to get into a theater. Her father had been a performer, but he settled down to sell shirts. She was born in 1916 to Miriam (born Levy) and Arthur Hanff. She is best known as the author of the book 84, Charing Cross Road, which became the basis for a stage play, television play, and film of the same name. Helene Hanff (April 15, 1916 – April 9, 1997) was an American writer born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Helene hanff