Damon Runyon
Damon Runyon, born Alfred Damon Runyan in 1884 in Manhattan, Kansas, was a prominent American writer and journalist known for his unique style and portrayal of New York City's underground culture. After a challenging childhood marked by the loss of his mother, Runyon began his career as a reporter in Colorado and later moved to New York City, where he worked as a sportswriter. He became widely recognized for his ability to blend journalism with storytelling, focusing on the colorful characters surrounding the sports scene rather than the games themselves.
Runyon's work featured a distinctive narrative style that combined slang and formal speech, vividly capturing the essence of the people he wrote about, including characters from organized crime and police corruption. His most famous collection, "Guys and Dolls," inspired a successful Broadway musical and film. Throughout his career, he published numerous short stories in renowned magazines, and his work extended to radio and television adaptations, enhancing his celebrity status in the 1930s and beyond. Runyon's contributions to literature and sports journalism were recognized with awards, including the Taylor Spink Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1967.
Damon Runyon
American poet, short fiction writer, and reporter.
- Born: October 4, 1884
- Birthplace: Manhattan, Kansas
- Died: December 10, 1946
- Place of death: New York, New York
Biography
Damon Runyon was born Alfred Damon Runyan in 1884 in Manhattan, Kansas, to Elizabeth and Alfred Lee Runyan. His father was a printer and newspaper publisher. Due to his mother’s ill health, the family moved to the drier climate of Pueblo, Colorado, in 1887. Runyon’s mother died when he was seven years old. At the age of fifteen, Runyon was a junior reporter for the Pueblo Evening Press. After becoming a regular reporter, one of his published articles appeared with his name spelled “Runyon” instead of “Runyan.” He chose to use the name “Runyon” for the rest of his life.
In 1898, Runyon enlisted in the US 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. In 1905, he was hired as a reporter for the Denver Post. Upon losing that job in 1906, he worked as a reporter for the San Francisco Post, but soon returned to Denver to work for the Rocky Mountain News. Runyon covered sports, crime, and court stories. As his popularity grew, he was appointed a director of the Denver Press Club in 1908. In addition to his newspaper duties, Runyon wrote short stories and poems for many national magazines, including Harper’s Weekly and McClure’s.
Plagued by a lifestyle that revolved around heavy drinking and gambling, Runyon realized that he must make some changes in his life. In 1910, he moved to New York City to work as a sportswriter for the New York American. Shortly thereafter, he dropped his first name, Alfred, from his byline. In 1911, he married Ellen Egan, with whom he had two children, Mary and Damon, Jr.
In 1911, Runyon published his first book, The Tents of Trouble, a collection of poems. As a reporter in New York, he covered the New York Giants baseball team until 1920. His journalism focused on the people who played, managed, and attended the games instead of the games themselves. To develop his stories, he frequented the nightclubs, betting parlors, and other hangouts of the characters he wrote about.
During the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, Runyon published numerous short stories in major magazines, particularly Cosmopolitan and Collier’s. After his first marriage ended, Runyon married Spanish dancer Patrice Amati del Grande in 1932. Later that year, he published a collection of his stories, Guys and Dolls. The book was made into a very successful Broadway musical and film. In addition, the popular motion picture adaptations of two of his stories, “The Lemon Drop Kid” and “Little Miss Marker,” were released in 1934. By the late 1930’s, Runyon was a national celebrity.
Using a unique style of writing about past events in the present tense, combined with a mixture of slang, formal speech, and a myriad of interesting characters, such as Dave the Dude, Harry the Horse, Lemon Drop Kid, and Dream Street Rose, Runyon opened America’s eyes to the underground world of police corruption and organized crime in New York City. Many of his stories were performed on Damon Runyon Theater, a program that aired on radio from 1949 to 1951 and on television in 1955. In 1967, Runyon was awarded the Taylor Spink Award for baseball journalism by the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Author Works
Fiction:
Guys and Dolls, 1931
Blue Plate Special, 1934
Money from Home, 1935
More Than Somewhat, 1937
Furthermore, 1938
Take It Easy, 1938
My Wife Ethel, 1939
My Old Man, 1939
The Best of Runyon, 1940
Damon Runyon Favorites, 1942
Runyon à la Carte, 1944
The Damon Runyon Omnibus, 1944
Nonfiction:
Short Takes, 1946
Plays:
A Slight Case of Murder, 1940 (with Howard Lindsay)
Poetry:
The Tents of Trouble: Ballads of Wanderbund, and Other Verse, 1911
Rhymes of the Firing Line, 1912
Bibliography
Breslin, Jimmy. Damon Runyon: A Life. Houghton Mifflin, 1991. A biography of Runyon by fellow journalist Jimmy Breslin.
Gopnik, Adam. "Talk It Up: Damon Runyon's Guys and Dolls." The New Yorker, 2 Mar. 2009, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/03/02/talk-it-up. Accessed 26 June 2017. An overview of Runyon's work focusing mainly on his unique use of language.
Howard, Trustin. Winchell and Runyon: The True Untold Story. Hamilton Books, 2010. A biography of Runyon and Walter Winchell, focused on the friendship between the two.