Damon Runyon

From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia Alfred Damon Runyon October 4 1880 December 10 1946 was an American newspaperman and shortstory writer 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 demimonde 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 and sentimental 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 His distinctive vernacular style is known as Runyonese a mixture of formal speech and colorful slang almost always in present tense and always devoid of contractions He is credited with coining the phrase Hooray Henry a term now used in British English to describe an upperclass loudmouthed arrogant twit Runyons fictional world is also known to the general public through the musical Guys and Dolls based on two of his stories The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown and Blood Pressure The musical additionally borrows characters and story elements from a few other Runyon stories most notably Pick The Winner The film Little Miss Marker and its two remakes Sorrowful Jones and the 1980 Little Miss Marker grew from his short story of the same name Runyon was also a wellknown newspaper reporter covering sports and general news for decades for various publications and syndicates owned by William Randolph Hearst Already famous for his fiction he wrote a wellremembered present tense article on Franklin Delano Roosevelts Presidential inauguration in 1933 for the Universal Service a Hearst syndicate which was merged with the coowned International News Service in 1937