Damon runyon biography
Damon Runyon was born Alfred Damon Runyan on October 4, , in Manhattan, Kansas.
When Runyon was two his father was forced to sell his newspaper, and the family moved further west, eventually settling in Pueblo, Colorado in , where Runyon spent the rest of his youth.
By most accounts, he attended school only through the fourth grade and then, seeking a career, moved into the newspaper trade working for his father.
In , still a teenager, Runyon sought to broaden his horizons and enlisted in the U.S. Army to fight in the Spanish–American War. After his service he returned to Colorado and worked for several local newspapers. Runyon’s expertise was covering the semi-professional teams in Colorado; for a man who would become indelibly linked to sports he endured a notable failure in an attempt to organize a Colorado minor baseball league. It lasted less than a week. In Runyon moved to New York City to work for the William Randolph Hearst newspaper chain, writing a daily column in The New York American. Here, in his first New York byline, his name was changed once more. The editor decided to drop the "Alfred" and run with the soon to be famous moniker “Damon Runyon." Promoted to be the Hearst newspapers' baseball columnist he developed his trademark knack of spotting the eccentric and the unusual, on the field or in the stands, and Runyon generally re-wrote and revolutionized the way baseball was covered in newspapers and shared this style with its adoring millions of fans.
But Runyon was more than a great sports writer. His plays and essays became legendary ways of looking that bit differently at America, of soaking up the atmosphere of a glamorous and rip-roaring age and distilling it into black and white type.
Of course, the cliché about newspapermen and writers is that they are heavy drinkers, chain-smokers, gamblers and obsessively chase women with a sideline in gathering info and actually getting something written just before the deadline hits. And,
Damon Runyon
Alfred Damon Runyon was born October 8, in Manhattan, Kansas. He grew up in Kansas and Pueblo, Colorado and followed his father into the newspaper business.
He joined the army during the Spanish-American War and spent time in the Philippines and following his stint in the army Runyon came back to the newspaper business in Colorado.
It was when he moved east to New York. It took almost a year to settle into a regular full time job. He was hired by the Hearst organization to work as a sports reporter on their morning paper The New York American.
Runyon was a prolific writer – wrote about all the big time sports celebrities and events as well as major court cases such as the Lindberg kidnapping case and trial.
He wrote regular columns for the Hearst newspapers while at the same time turning out great numbers of short stories. Damon Runyon’s short stories reflected Broadway people he hung out with at Lindy’s Delicatessen and those were mixed with characters that met outside Lindy’s, and followed a floating crap game.
Many of his sports stories dealt with rich horse owners such as Jock Whitney while on his Broadway beat it was gangsters, touts and gamblers.
Some of the movies adapted from Runyon stories during his lifetime were Lady for a Day, Little Miss Marker, Shirley Temple, and The Big Street with Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda.
The best known adaptation of his work was a play, which was later made into a Movie, Guys and Dolls, opened on Broadway at the 46th Street Theatre November 24,
The play was directed by George S. Kaufman and was peopled with Runyon’s off beat characters Nathan Detroit, Sky Masterson, Sara Brown, Miss Adelaide, Nicely-Nicely, Harry the Horse, Big Julie and others.
The trouble with Breslin’s story was that the huge number of minor characters introduced seemed to dominate the narrative while Damon Runyon as a real person was never fleshed out and came off as little more than a sketch.
The reader never gets the cha
Runyon, Damon,
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Dates
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Biography
Damon Runyon, American journalist and short-story writer, was born 4 October, , in Manhattan, Kansas to Elizabeth and Alfred Lee Runyan, a printer and newspaper publisher. In , Runyon enlisted in the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War and served in the Philippines. After the war, he worked for a number of newspapers in various small towns in Colorado before he was hired in as a reporter for the Denver Post. He worked briefly in as a reporter for the San Francisco Post before returning to Denver to work for the Rocky Mountain News, where he covered sports, crime, and court stories. In addition to his newspaper duties, Runyon wrote short stories and poems for national magazines, including Harper’s and McClure’s. In , Runyon moved to New York to work as a sportswriter for the New York American. Runyon published a collection of poems, The Tents of Trouble, in , and during the ’s and ’s, he published many short stories. In he published Guys and Dolls, which was made into a popular Broadway musical and film. Motion picture adaptations of two other stories, “The Lemon Drop Kid” and “Little Miss Marker,” appeared in Runyon died 10 December in New York City.
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Damon Runyon
American writer (–)
Damon Runyon | |
|---|---|
| Born | Alfred Damon Runyan ()October 4, Manhattan, Kansas, U.S. |
| Died | December 10, () (aged&#;66) New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, journalist |
| Years&#;active | – |
Alfred Damon Runyon (October 4, – December 10, ) was an American journalist and short-story 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 Brooklyn or Midtown Manhattan. The adjective Runyonesque refers to this type of character and the type of situations and dialog that Runyon depicts. 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 the 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 the upper-class version of a loud-mouthed, arrogant twit.
Runyon's 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 three remakes, Sorrowful Jones, 40 Pounds of Trouble and the Little Miss Marker) grew from his short story of the same name.
Runyon was also a newspaper reporter, covering sports and general news for deca