27 Facts About Damon Runyon

1.

Alfred Damon Runyon was an American newspaperman and short-story writer.

2.

Damon Runyon was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era.

3.

Damon Runyon 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.

4.

Damon Runyon was a newspaper reporter, covering sports and general news for decades for various publications and syndicates owned by William Randolph Hearst.

5.

Damon Runyon was born Alfred Damon Runyan to Alfred Lee and Elizabeth Runyan.

6.

Damon Runyon's grandfather was a newspaper printer from New Jersey who had relocated to Manhattan, Kansas, in 1855, and his father was the editor of his newspaper in the town.

7.

In 1882 Damon Runyon's father was forced to sell his newspaper, and the family moved westward.

8.

The family eventually settled in Pueblo, Colorado, in 1887, where Damon Runyon spent the rest of his youth.

9.

Damon Runyon began to work in the newspaper trade under his father in Pueblo.

10.

Damon Runyon's expertise was in covering the semi-professional teams in Colorado.

11.

Damon Runyon briefly managed a semi-pro team in Trinidad, Colorado.

12.

Damon Runyon was the Hearst newspapers' baseball columnist for many years, beginning in 1911, and his knack for spotting the eccentric and the unusual, on the field or in the stands, is credited with revolutionizing the way baseball was covered.

13.

Damon Runyon is a member of the International Boxing Hall Of Fame and is known for dubbing heavyweight champion James J Braddock, the "Cinderella Man".

14.

Damon Runyon frequently contributed sports poems to the American on boxing and baseball themes and wrote numerous short stories and essays.

15.

Gambling, particularly on craps or horse races, was a common theme of Damon Runyon's works, and he was a notorious gambler.

16.

Damon Runyon had promised her in Mexico that if she would complete the education he funded for her, he would find her a dancing job in New York.

17.

Damon Runyon became his companion after he separated from his wife.

18.

Damon Runyon died in New York City from throat cancer in late 1946, at age 66.

19.

Damon Runyon's body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered from a DC-3 airplane over Broadway in Manhattan by Eddie Rickenbacker on December 18,1946.

20.

The family plot of Damon Runyon is located at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York.

21.

The English comedy writer Frank Muir comments that Damon Runyon's plots were, in the manner of O Henry, neatly constructed with professionally wrought endings, but their distinction lay in the manner of their telling, as the author invented a peculiar argot for his characters to speak.

22.

Damon Runyon avoided the conditional, using instead the future indicative in situations that would normally require conditional.

23.

Bentley notes that Damon Runyon's "telling use of the recurrent phrase and fixed epithet" demonstrates a debt to Homer.

24.

Damon Runyon typically avoided contractions such as "don't" in the example above, which contributes significantly to the humorously pompous effect.

25.

Damon Runyon describes himself as "being known to one and all as a guy who is just around".

26.

The bulk of Damon Runyon's work had been untapped by radio, and the well was deep.

27.

Damon Runyon Theatre aired on CBS-TV from 1955 to 1956.