Editing Damon Runyon (section)

{{short description|American writer (1880–1946)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=July 2023}}
{{Infobox person
| name         = Damon Runyon
| image        = DamonRunyon.jpeg
| imagesize    =
| caption      =
| birth_name   = Alfred Damon Runyan
| birth_date   = {{birth date|1880|10|4}}
| birth_place  = [[Manhattan, Kansas]], U.S.
| death_date   = {{death date and age|1946|12|10|1880|10|4}}
| death_place  = New York City, U.S.
| occupation   = Writer, journalist
| years_active = 1900–1946
}}
'''Alfred Damon Runyon''' (October 4, 1880<ref>{{cite news | title = Birth Announcement | publisher = The (Manhattan, Kansas) Nationalist | date = October 7, 1880}}
</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.cityofmhk.com/DocumentCenter/Home/View/1049 |title=Archived copy |access-date=September 10, 2014 |archive-date=September 10, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140910195645/http://www.cityofmhk.com/DocumentCenter/Home/View/1049 |url-status=dead }}</ref> – December 10, 1946) was an American journalist and short-story writer.<ref>{{cite book|title=Detective stories |author= Philip Pullman, Nick Hardcastle|year=1998|publisher=Kingfisher Publications|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6OsgjZkA_pEC&pg=PA96|isbn=0-7534-5636-2}}</ref>

He was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of [[Broadway theatre|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.<ref>Webber, Elizabeth; Feinsilber, Mike (1999). [https://books.google.com/books?id=ACB81ZeNN5sC&pg=PA479&q=runyonesque Merriam-Webster's dictionary of allusions], pp. 479–480. {{ISBN|978-0-87779-628-2}}.</ref> He spun humorous and sentimental tales of [[gamblers]], hustlers, actors, and gangsters, few of whom go by [[square (slang)|"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 [[Contraction (grammar)|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".<ref>{{cite web|url = http://www.ebooks-library.com/author.cfm/AuthorID/900 |title = Damon Runyon|work = Authors|publisher = The eBooks-Library|access-date = July 20, 2008}}</ref> The musical additionally borrows characters and story elements from a few other Runyon stories, most notably "Pick The Winner". The film ''[[Little Miss Marker (1934 film)|Little Miss Marker]]'' (and its three remakes, ''[[Sorrowful Jones]]'', ''[[40 Pounds of Trouble]]'' and the 1980 ''[[Little Miss Marker (1980 film)|Little Miss Marker]]'') grew from his short story of the same name.

Runyon was also a newspaper reporter, covering sports and general news for decades for various publications and syndicates owned by [[William Randolph Hearst]]. Already known for his fiction, he wrote a noted "present tense" article on [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt]]'s Presidential inauguration in 1933 for the Universal Service, a [[Hearst Corporation|Hearst]] syndicate, which was merged with the co-owned [[International News Service]] in 1937.