Damon Runyon

I have seen them a long time ago but don't have them on me, I think he was one writer who rated Les Darcy very highly but I may be wrong. I read some of his newspaper articles today and found him very good and he dismissed the idea that Harry Wills was as great as we are led to believe these days and the case he put forward seemed impossible to argue against... I think he is the best of the early American boxing commentators, higher for sure than Fleisher.

 

Runyon, Alfred Damon
his birth name was Runyan

Born: October 8, 1881, Manhattan, KS (his date of birth is confirmed by the June 2, 1900 census.)
Died: December 10, 1946, NYC, age 65,---d. developed throat cancer, 1938, lost speech, 1944, after operation.

New York sports writer / free-lance book author;
Pueblo (CO) Chieftain
Denver Post
Denver (CO) Rocky Mountain News, 1906-10
Denver News-Times, March 1908
San Francisco Post
Arrived NYC, 1911,
New York American, 1911-1933?
served 1912-16 as Hearst foreign correspondent in Mexico & Europe.
Stopped writing baseball, September, 1917,
columnist and feature writer for King Features, International News Service, 1918-45;
film producer at RKO and Twentieth Century-Fox, 1942-43;
contributor of short fiction to Cosmopolitan, Saturday Evening Post, and Collier's.

Made his name as author of novels with colorful Broadway characters. Many of his novels were used for movies, such as:

Lady For A Day, 1933
Little Miss Marker, 1934, with Shirley Temple
A Slight Case of Murder, 1938
Double Indemnity 1944
Lemon-Drop Kid, 1951
Guys & Dolls, 1955
Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown, 1955

Wikipedia
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The recipient of the 1967 J.G. Taylor Spink Award was Damon Runyon.

A reporter, sports columnist, and popular short story writer, Damon Runyan was described by Connie Mack as "a master of characters and plots such as we see every day in our grandstands." Runyon was a moody man who always showed just a hint of a smile. As Fred Lieb recalled, "you felt he was laughing at the world, not with it."

Born in Manhattan, Kansas, in 1884, Runyon arrived in New York in 1910 and covered the New York Giants for the New York American from 1911-1920. As author Gene Fowler put it, Runyon "underscored excitement by casting his stories in the present tense." Runyon was responsible for nicknaming Brooklyn manager Wilbert Robinson "Uncle Wilbert."

Following his career as a baseball reporter, Runyon turned to literature. Called "a master of the art of anonymity in the first person," Runyon became best known for his short stories that later became successful musicals and movies such as Guys and Dolls and Little Miss Marker. In the language of Reader's Encyclopedia, he "interpreted the semiliterate in slangy Americanese and with unusual observation."

Throat cancer in 1944 left Runyon unable to speak, but he continued to write until his death in December of 1947.

 

Biography Resource Center:
Source: Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2003.
Damon Runyon was one of America's most popular newspaper columnists and sports writers from the time of the Jazz Age through World War II. He is best known as a humorist who popularized a colorful first-person idiom called "Runyonese" in his short stories of life on Broadway. Consisting largely of urban colloquialisms, Runyonese is the common dialect of an array of comical lower-class gangland characters. Although Runyon based many of his fictional characters on such figures as journalist Walter Winchell and mobster Al Capone, his short stories offered readers a highly romanticized version of their world. In their day, Runyon's stories were quite popular in the United States and Great Britain, and theater audiences still enjoy the hoodlum heroics of Guys and Dolls, the popular musical comedy based on Runyon's fiction.

Runyon was raised in Pueblo, Colorado, where he lived with his widowed father, an itinerant newspaper printer and editor. Runyon quit school in the sixth grade and went to work as an errand boy on a local newspaper--by the age of fifteen he was a full-time reporter. When the United States went to war against Spain in 1898, Runyon was eager to enlist even though he was a few months short of eighteen years, the required age to join. Runyon traveled to Minnesota, lied about his age, and ended up serving in the Philippines with the Thirteenth Minnesota Volunteers. Runyon's experiences in the war, along with his early exposure to gambling and drinking and his work in journalism, were to shape his writing career and provide fodder for future works, including The Tents of Trouble: Ballads of the Wanderbund and Other Verse, and Rhymes of the Firing Line.

Between 1900 and 1906 Runyon spent time riding the rails and working a variety of newspaper jobs. The hobos that he met and the stories that he heard were later to find their way into his writing. He lost a few of the newspaper positions due to his heavy drinking. In 1906 he landed a position with the Denver Rocky Mountain News and stayed there for four more years. During this time, he met and later married Ellen Egan, a society reporter for the Denver paper. Their marriage produced two children: Mary (born in 1914) and Damon, Jr. (born in 1918 and later to follow in his father's and grandfather's footsteps as a journalist). During this time, Runyan swore off alcohol and remained sober for the rest of his life.

In 1911 Runyon was hired as a sports writer for the Hearst-owned New York American. Runyon's move to the East marked a lucrative turning point in his journalistic career. His sharp eye for detail and vigorous writing style landed him top reporting assignments, and he was versatile enough to give equally vivid accounts of everything from baseball games to murder trials. His flamboyant style made everything he covered, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, an event.

As a sportswriter, Runyon wrote regular columns and differed from his peers in that he provided a glimpse into the lives of the players as humans, rather than relying on statistics and play-by-play recitations to report sports events. According to Paul J. Sandin in Dictionary of Literary Biography, "Runyon shunned the box scores, round-by-round accounts, and the win-place-shows in favor of more colorful descriptions of the people involved in the events. He noticed the small details. And readers could not wait to read the column".

Early in his career Runyon experimented with several short story forms. Most of the tales were simple, local color stories drawn from his childhood memories of frontier towns. A few of these early works were published in national magazines, but received little attention. In 1929 Runyon wrote the first of his Broadway stories, "Romance in the Roaring Forties." The "guys and dolls" of his Broadway beat fascinated readers, and demand for his short stories grew. As his popularity increased, several of his stories were made into motion pictures: Lady for a Day, adapted from "Madame La Gimp," was very successful, and Little Miss Marker launched the career of Shirley Temple. In addition to his many collections of stories, such as Guys and Dolls, Blue Plate Special, and Money from Home, Runyon published selections of his best-liked newspaper columns in Short Takes and in My Old Man, which contained both authentic and fictional sketches of his father. Short Takes prompted a famous self-deprecating review of his own book, in which he said: "It contains enough gummed-up syntax to patch hell a mile." Other favorite columns, featuring the humorous domestic tribulations of Ethel and Joe Turp, were collected as My Wife Ethel. Many of Joe's and Ethel's amusing conversations dealt with contemporary political and social issues. These three collections of Runyon's newspaper work represent only a small part of his prolific journalistic career; by his own estimation, Runyon wrote over eighty million words. He continued writing until his death from cancer in 1946.

Runyon's most enduring literary contributions are his Broadway stories. Though narrow in scope and often repetitive, these stories depict an American subculture similar in appeal to that of the American cowboy. Throughout his career, he portrayed members of the gangster community as unlikely heroes and heroines living on the periphery of mainstream society. Much of the satirical humor of Runyon's stories is provided by this juxtaposition of underworld characters with the rest of society. According to some critics, these tales contain subtle social commentary that often reveals the pretensions and hypocrisy of "respectable" people. All of Runyon's Broadway fiction is told from the point of view of an unnamed narrator who, by happenstance, becomes involved with thugs, touts, gamblers, and various petty criminals.

Assessing The Best of Damon Runyon in the New York Times Book Review, Fred T. Marsh noted that Runyon's narrator "emerges as not only the most interesting guy in the book, but as an unforgettable mug in the rogues' gallery of American fiction." Critics suggest that Runyon's consistent use of the present tense in the Broadway stories reflected the speech patterns of the hobo and underworld subcultures. The present tense narration diminishes the importance of time, thus expediting the action of the story. Runyon's underworld idiom, Runyonese, is the most prominent element of his style, and is based on the clang of actual gangsters with whom he was acquainted. "****** business," "fuzz," "shoo-in," and "shiv" are but a few of the gangland terms he popularized in his fiction, as well as several of his own invention, such as "hotsy totsy" and "phonus balonus."

Throughout his career, Runyon was primarily reviewed in terms of his journalistic prowess and versatility, and his short stories were frequently dismissed as popular entertainment for the semiliterate. Although he was never considered a serious fiction writer during his lifetime, critics today find Runyon to be a natural story teller, similar to O. Henry and Mark Twain. Jean Wagner has demonstrated that many critics have failed to see the satirical social comments artfully hidden beneath the lighthearted gangland antics of his stories. In The World of Damon Runyon, biographer Tom Clark has attributed Runyon's lack of scholarly acceptance to his unusual role-reversal that placed "criminals and `legitimate people' on unfamiliar sides of the sympathy meter."

Runyon was consistently praised by his colleagues for his unique writing style, and respected Hearst editor Arthur Brisbane called him "America's greatest reporter." As a journalist, Runyon reported some of the most exciting news events of the early twentieth century, such as the Lindbergh kidnapping and the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. In his fiction he portrayed the complexity of human nature, using his keen reporter's eye to humorously chronicle a lost American subculture.

 

FINGER OF SUSPICION IS POINTED AT FIGHT, BUT NOTHING CAN BE PROVED
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Wise Ones Think It "One of Those Things" and All Agree That Packey and Mike Did Not Merit a 50,000 Crowd and a $100,000 Gate.
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IT ISN'T A GOOD BATTLE, BUT SCENE IS WONDERFUL
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50,000 People, Including 5,000 Women and Folks From All Walks of Life, See Rather Polite Irish Quarrel.
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BY DAMON RUNYON.

NEW YORK, Sept. 11.--Along about the sixth round of the exhibition between Packey McFarland of Chicago and Mike Gibbons of St. Paul down at Brighton Beach tonight a loud-voiced man rose from a ringside seat and let forth a roar that reverberated up and back and far out over the biggest crowd that ever saw a fistic event in America.

"Gents," said the man ho****ly, "this is a grand picture show, but I came to see a fight."

And from the murmur that responded to his cry it was apparent that many others present echoed those sentiments.

The McFarland-Gibbons affair may have been a fair boxing exhibition, and certainly is contained nothing that could offend the finer feelings of any of the thousands of women present, but as a fight it was not much. It was a ten-round no-decision affair, and no-decision would be about accurate, but if a decision must be given a draw is not unfair to either man.

They were both on their feet and fighting at the finish. There had been no damage inflicted on either side and neither man had any distinct advantage at any stage of the contest.

PACKEY DESERVES CREDIT.

Perhaps McFarland should have the decision for the showing that Mike Gibbons made as compared to his previous form, especially when it is considered that the Chicagoan was doing a come-back after two years retirement, was boxing a man reputed to be one of the greatest fighters in the world, and for the reason that Mike should have done better, but, all things considered, it was an even proposition. It was in many ways a big disappointment.

As long as it is remembered by the sporting world there will undoubtedly be many who will claim that it was "one of those things," as matches made with a previous understanding as to the result are called by sporting men, but there is no way of proving it.

The charge has been openly made by a recognized authority for weeks past that the men would not try to-night, and there has even been a rumor around to the effect that McFarland had made Gibbons put up a cash deposit with a mutual friend in Chicago to guarantee against a knockout, but here again is something that cannot be substantiated.

There are always rumors of this kind going around before a big match, and perhaps the only result that would have prevented criticism of the affair to-night would have been a knockout for Gibbons. Certainly a knockout by McFarland would have been looked on askance, and it may be that the men were trying desperately, but if so their best efforts will receive many a knock for many a day to come.

FIGHTERS PAID IN ADVANCE.

McFarland got $17,500 for this match. Gibbons received $15,000. They got the cash in advance. No phase of a championship was involved. McFarland was a supposed lightweight when he was at his best, while Gibbons rates as a middleweight. As a sporting proposition few critics ever saw a justification for the match save as a money-getter, and it got the money from the public to-night.

The slashing Mike Gibbons, sometimes styled the St. Paul phantom and the Gopher State ghost, was unable even to outreach the Chicago man, fresh from a two-year retirement and with a light roll of fat about his middle. It was generally figured that Packey might outbox Gibbons because Packey was one of the cleverest men in the world, but it was thought that Mike would at least jar the pride of the Stock Yards with that famous man-dropping punch if he could get it over. He did get it over, but he did not get it over with any force and it failed to rock McFarland at any stage.

As a little sidelight to the affair, the face of the once terrible Terry McGovern, who sat right behind Gibbons' corner, was a profound study throughout the fight. The former champion and one of the greatest fighting men of his inches that ever crawled through the ropes would look first at one and then at the other and then he would shake his head as if he could scarcely credit what he saw.

IT WAS NOT A GOOD FIGHT.

It was not a good fight, but it was set in marvelous surroundings. It marked high tide in boxing history in point of attendance. It was held in the center of probably 50,000 persons under a star-studded sky in sound of the ocean breakers pounding the board walks of Brighton, and among those 50,000 persons were handsomely gowned women and whole acres of notables of the sporting, political, dramatic and social worlds. If it was, as many whisper, "one of those things" it demonstrates the old adage that New York will stand for anything, for the public life of New York was strongly represented.

It would be unfair to say that everybody was dissatisfied with the bout. Many thought, and many said, that it was a good fight, but from the mouths of the wise men of the game scattered through the arena rose the sibilant whisper of suspicion even in the first few rounds. However, at the very same moment could be heard around the press bench the voices of some very great sporting authorities dictating tales to their newspapers that are bound to give the readers the impression that a most thrilling struggle occurred down yonder by the waves.

The advance guard began streaming down to Brighton Beach early in the afternoon and spent the balance of the day marching up, and down the board walk or sitting in the cafes. Every sporting notable of the East could be found in the crowds collected along the board walk, while every express train that came thundering down the elevated road added to the jam.

The crowd exceeded all guesses; the gate receipts were above all conjecture. Most sporting men thought that the Marshall brothers were insane when they paid $32,500 to the boxers, besides spending at least $15,000 more to carry out the fight, but the gamble won. For a fight that had no bearing upon any championship the result was astounding.

Tommy Burns, ex-heavyweight champion, shoved his burly bulk through the throng. Tom Powers, the joys and glooms man, wielded a sketching pencil from a place close up. It was what might be called a cosmopolitan congregation.

At two minutes after 10 o'clock a roar from the crowd told of the coming of one of the principals. McFarland clambered into the ring as a wave of applause swept down over the throng. Packey was dressed in a pair of blue serge pants as he came in and wore a jersey. His hands were bandaged. When he stripped off his pants a pair of green trunks showed. Packey weighed 152 in full ring costume and Gibbons 153. This was ringside weight.

McFarland's seconds were Johnny McFarland, his cousin; Ike Bernstein, his trainer, and Emil Thiry, his business manager. Billy Gibson, a personal friend, also attended Packey.

Gibbons came in three minutes later, and there was another burst of applause. Mike wore a pair of black pants and a gray sweater. He walked over to Packey's corner and felt of the bandages, but they exchanged not a word.

PACKEY GETS MOST APPLAUSE.

Joe Humphreys fired more shots and announced that **** Peters and Johnny Green would fight a ten-round go immediately after the main event. Then he gave the weights and introduced Gibbons as the St. Paul wizard. McFarland was presented as Chicago's fighting Irishman and received a greater reception than Mike.

At 10:12 the men stepped to the center of the ring with their handlers and received instructions from Joe, while a horde of photographers aimed cameras at them. "Hurry up there," said Humphreys. After a short consultation the ring was cleared at 10:14.

Gibbons was the first to lead and missed with a left. Packey was then short with a left lead and Gibbons landed a light left twice to the face. At close quarters McFarland worked two rights to body. A clinch followed, and as they broke Gibbons sent a right to the head and they clinched.

MIKE'S LEFT WILD.

Gibbons seemed to be a little wild, especially when he tried a left swing, and McFarland reached a long left to the head. Mike's celebrated right hand seemed to drift a little forward and beyond Packey's head, which caused a slight murmuring from the crowd.

"I don't like the looks of that," was the comment from one of the men on the press bench, and there was a general whispering.

Packey got home a nice left at the start of the next round and then got in a left hook. For a man in Mike's apparent condition his blows seemed to lack the snap and accuracy with which the New York fight fans are familiar. Once in the second he whaled Packey on the side of the head with a right chop which usually is his "Sunday punch," but it seemed to drop lightly.

During the third round the crowd again began to murmur. Both got home light blows to face, but when Mike missed a right hook by a couple of feet the murmur broke very audibly. Packey hit Mike a couple of open-handed punches, but there was some nice boxing at close quarters, but nothing damaging on either side.

 

WHISPER IN CLINCH.

When they dropped into a clinch in the fourth some one yelled: "Look at them talking; oh, look at 'em!"

If they were conversing their words couldn't be heard.

"He's whispering right in his ear," said the same voice, meaning that Mike was doing the whispering.

"Good boy, Packey; you've got him," came a cry from the audience as the fourth round closed, but there was a note of derision in the cry.

The complaints of the crowd became more pronounced as the men went through the early stages of the fifth. In that round, however, Gibbons let loose a left that looked to be about the hardest punch that had been started, but it did no damage. The old rip and dash of the St. Paul man was entirely missing. Mike has fought some corking fights around New York and some bad ones, but up to the fifth he showed none of the class that he indubitably possesses when he is trying.

The same might be said of McFarland. Never a hard puncher or knocker out, he has nevertheless displayed much more form than he displayed in the early rounds to-night.

PACKEY EARNS SHADE.

McFarland had a shade in the fifth, however, because he did most of the leading. It was about the first round that could reasonably be given to either man.

In the sixth McFarland hit Gibbons a little low, but apologized. There was a close exchange in McFarland's corner, but the blows that landed fell on elbows. Mike missed badly in this round, but he opened an old cut under his right eye.

In the seventh blood showed over Gibbons' left eye, and trickled down his nose. He had evidently been butted. Whenever they clinched thereafter Mike wiped the blood off on Packey's shoulders. Packey seemed a bit weary from the exertion and it was Mike's round. There seemed to be more drive to his punches during this session than before.

In the eighth Gibbons missed with both hands. In fact, the story would have to be a narrative of misses if an attempt were made to detail every lead. Blows with which Gibbons has knocked men cold from a distance of six inches fell without apparent weight upon Packey's head.

The ninth and tenth produced more slugging than any of the other rounds. In the tenth especially Gibbons put some steam behind his blows, and Packey landed with more strength than usual. The Gibbons right began dropping alongside Packey's head, and Packey fought hard in the clinches, but at the finish both men seemed fresh, and certainly neither was damaged.

When the gong sounded two loud notes at the close of the last round Packey made a move as if to hit Gibbons when Mike was walking toward his corner. Mike bristled, and there was a suggestion of further hostilities, but Packey's seconds pulled him away.

Afterwards Packey walked over to Gibbons and they shook hands. Some one asked McFarland what Gibbons said to him, and the Chicagoan replied:

"He said I was the best boy he ever boxed."

"Why did he say that?" demanded the interrogator.

"Because he is a gentleman," answered McFarland.

Packey remained in the ring some time after Gibbons left, posing for pictures and receiving the plaudits of the crowd.

Packey's friends were evidently firmly convinced that he had won, and Packey apparently thought so himself. He was jubilant and a little vengeful.

"Who's the big stiff now?" he asked some one in the audience, evidently meaning that he had been so defined.

 

As always Senya gets the goods and delivers.

 

He is a goldmine of info.:good

 

To be honest, I liked early Bill McGeehan style of writing the best. Sure, Runyon's writing and his attention to minor details is very nice, but McGeehan's metaphors and vocabulary were the best, in my opinion. Compare:

BRITT TASTES THE BITTERNESS OF DEFEAT
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"The Pride of California" Has Fallen and Will Never Fight Again.
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By W. O. M'GEEHAN.

Jimmie Britt's star has set. He can never retrieve the final defeat he met at Colma yesterday. He is out of the game forever, a fallen champion. Despite the two shady incidents in Britt's career, there was little cheering when he was knocked to the mat gasping for the last time. It was as pathetic as the end of John L. Sullivan at New Orleans, and the defeat hurt Britt as cruelly as did John L's hurt him.

In the first round Britt saw that McFarland was his master. So did Spider Kelly. You could read it in his face. There was nothing for Britt to do but to "die game." He did it, and it was not pretty to watch. The Californian was as much outclassed by McFarland as he was by Gans. This time, however, he determined to take his medicine.

To all intents Britt was finished in the fifth round. He lay writhing in a half-conscious condition on the mat when the gong sounded. His seconds rushed out of his corner and carried him to the chair. He was dazed and half blinded then. Somehow they restored him and he was flung back into the ring for McFarland to tear to pieces coolly and systematically. From the ringside his father and his brother Willus shouted to him to "be game." Spider Kelly sat silent. He knew that his protege was doomed.

With the fury of desperation Britt rushed at McFarland, who was cool as an iceberg. The young Easterner seemed to know every trick in the game. Britt's rushes were like those of a wounded bull sweeping blindly on the matador, who knows just how to dodge the rush and when to thrust the sword home.

HE TRIES TO DIE GAME.

Britt seemed to forget everything in that sixth round except that he was to die game. He rushed at McFarland blindly and desperately, apparently eager to have it over with. An expression of agony was stamped on his face. He was thinking then of the bitterness that the defeat would bring to him. No more for him the consciousness of admiring eyes as he strutted down the street, no more the "pride of California" announcement that was music in his ears.

From the ringside his brother was shouting in a frenzy, "Be game you ---! Fight, you ---!" Old man Britt sat chewing his mustache and trying to keep back the tears.

Jimmy went down under a shower of blows, but he staggered to his feet again, lashing about him like a wounded animal. Cool as a surgeon in the operating room McFarland met him, evading the wild swings and Britt went down again.

Still Willus Britt shouted like a madman, "Be game, you ---! Fight, you ---!" And old man Britt's ruddy face grew ashen. It was not pleasant to watch.

Slowly Britt dragged himself from the mat and tried to brace himself firmly on his feet. But he was tottering like a tree about to fall. Willus Britt thrusting his head through the ropes yelled at him furiously. Old man Britt tried to look stolid, but his face was as gray as his mustache.

McFarland put the final touches on his work coolly and wickedly and the "pride of California" sank for the last time an inert, gasping mass of humanity. The time keeper began to reel off the count monotonously.

"Fight, you ---! Be game, you ---!" shouted Brother Willus.

"One, two, three, four ---" counted Referee Welsh, waving his arm. Britt writhed on the mat and turned over in a desperate effort to rise.

"Five, six," counted the referee, relentlessly, as the voice of fate. With a groan old man Britt jumped out of his chair and climbed into the ring. He picked up the fallen "pride of California" and carried him to his corner. Welsh raised McFarland's arm and the boy who will some day be lightweight champion of all champions danced about the ring in glee.

For a while Britt sat in his chair dazed and panting. Then he recovered suddenly to realize that his reign was over.

His father and some friends were trying to console him, but he realized and he knew. The victor rushed over to shake hands with him and Britt extended his arm mechanically. "You fought a great fight," said McFarland.

Britt said nothing until his father tried to soothe him again. Then he gasped, "Oh, what's the use of talking. I'm out of it forever."

The "pride of California" is a lost title. The possessor went down before a boy who is a marvel. Not 20, he has all the cleverness and ring generalship of Gans and, all his coolness. Some day he will meet the wonderful negro--not for some time--and Gans will also learn what it is to taste the bitterness of the final defeat.

To get back to the Rue de Fillmore once again, the fight showed that the jinx is off T. Clarence McGrath. For the first time in lo these many years he was behind a winner. Ever since one Monroe was chloroformed in two acts T. Clarence has been consistently behind the losers. He was with McFarland this time. Tim did not waste much time lingering in the cabbage belt after the go. He made a hot foot for the Rue de Pacific, where he is now established in the philanthropic business of preparing benzine for the mariners of Evans' fleet.

 

Senya, kudos for all this information coupled with your tirelessness typing
all this. With guys like you we wouldn't need a proof reader...

 

Nice work ! :good

 

Keep in mind MCGEEHANs feelings toward boxing.
"The manly art of modified murder"

 

What?

 

Anybody want to help me break the news to senya?
Just for old time's sake!

 

I didn't understand what you were trying to imply. I heard that phrase

but I don't know what he was feeling toward boxing, I'm more familiar with his early career than with his later writings.