Helene Hanff - on tape

A lot of people have emailed me to tell me that, having seen the film of '84' starring Anne Bancroft as Helene, they hear only Anne's voice in their heads when they read Helene's books. Many have said that they would love to know what Helene's actual voice sounded like. Well, to all those who wondered, your luck is in! :-)

Sometime in the early 1980s, Susan Sieffermann in Decatur, Illinois, USA, turned on her tv one evening and heard Helene's name, and ran to grab a cassette tape and a tape recorder. This page contains a few snippets from the half hour television interview which Susan saw - the Dick Cavett show. Susan sent me a copy of this tape recently, and I've captured some of it digitally so that others can hear Helene's voice and natural humour for themselves.

Thanks, Susan!

The files were created using Microsoft Sound Recorder (the freebie package that comes with Windows) and have been saved in as small a format as possible. To hear a sound clip, click on a link below:

Brief description of sound file	Size of file	Length of clip	Link
Success	97 KB	9 secs	Success.wav
How it came about that Helene finally went to London	321 KB	30 secs	London.wav
About Helene's radio show in the UK in the early 1980s - part one	439 KB	41 secs	Radio-1.wav
About Helene's radio show in the UK in the early 1980s - part two	517 KB	48 secs	Radio-2.wav
Removing clothing when typing in the middle of a heatwave	465 KB	43 secs	Heatwave.wav
Helene's thoughts on what her neighbour might have seen...	438 KB	41 secs	Prime.wav

(To anyone official within television, my apologies if this is breaking the bounds of copyright. If so, please contact me by email and I will remove the sound clips: Angela.Garry@Virgin.Net.)