Damon Runyon
Such volumes as
Guys and Dolls
(1931), the basis for a musical of the same name on Broadway, collect stories of known American writer Alfred Damon Runyon about the underworld of New York.
A family in Manhattan, Kansas, reared this newspaperman. His grandfather, a printer from New Jersey, relocated to Manhattan, Kansas in 1855, and his father edited his own newspaper in the town. In 1882, people forced father of Runyon forced to sell his newspaper, and the family moved westward. The family eventually settled in 1887 in Pueblo, Colorado, where Runyon spent the rest of his youth. He began to work in the newspaper trade under his father in Pueblo. People named a field, the repertory theater company, and a lake in his honor. He worked for various newspapers in the area of the Rocky Mountains and let stand a change in the spelling of his last name from "Runyan" to "Runyon."
In 1898, Runyon enlisted in the Army to fight in the Spanish-American War. The service assigned himto write for the Manila Freedom and Soldier's Letter.
He was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To New Yorkers of his generation, a "Damon Runyon character" evoked a distinctive social type from the Brooklyn or Midtown demi-monde. The adjective "Runyonesque" refers to this type of character as well as to the type of situations and dialog that Runyon depicted. He spun humorous tales of gamblers, hustlers, actors, and gangsters, few of whom go by "square" names, preferring instead colorful monikers such as "Nathan Detroit," "Benny Southstreet," "Big Jule," "Harry the Horse," "Good Time Charley," "Dave the Dude," or "The Seldom Seen Kid." Runyon wrote these stories in a distinctive vernacular style: a mixture of formal speech and colorful slang, almost always in present tense, and always devoid of contractions.
Runyon was also a newspaperman. He wrote the lead article for UP on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Presidential inauguration in 1933.
Runyon died in New York City from throat cancer in late 1946, at age 66. His body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered from an airplane over Broadway in Manhattan by Captain Eddie Rickenbacker on December 18, 1946. The family plot of Damon Runyon is located at Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, NY. After Runyon's death, his friend and fellow journalist, Walter Winchell, went on his radio program and appealed for contributions to help fight cancer, eventually establishing the “Damon Runyon Cancer Memorial Fund” to support scientific research into causes of, and prevention of cancer.
“New York is the place where everyone will stop a championship fight to look at an usher giving a drunk the bum's rush.”
“I long ago came to the conclusion that all life is 6 to 5 against.”
“The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.”
“Well, now, Dobber has a pretty fair sort of memory, and he says that Miss Sarah Brown tells The Sky that since he seems to know so much about the Bible, maybe he remembers the second verse of the Song of Solomon, but the chances are Dobber muffs the number of the verse, because I look the matter up in one of these Gideon Bibles, and the verse seems a little too much for Miss Sarah Brown, although of course you never can tell.”