The daffy Jills and Jacks of Broadway, the people of the racetracks and back-room crap games are gathered here in twelve of Damon Runyon’s most hilarious stories. Here is Ambrose Hammer, the newspaper scribe who tangles with a strip-dancer, a talking parrot, and a character whose noggin meets with the proverbial blunt instrument. Here is Fatso Zimpf, the horse-player who doubles for Santa Claus in Palm Beach and saves the romance of a beautiful but dumb zillionaires. And then there is “The Sky,” King of the galloping dominoes, who bets his soul against a two-dollar bill and winds up as the drummer in a street-corner mission band. In short, here is a collection of swift stories about sentimental toughs with down-to-earth vigor and lusty laughter. Even the briefest acquaintance with them will show why Damon Runyon’s public is so fantastically loyal.
Author
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.
