A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Birthplace:
Manhattan, Kansas, USA
Born:
October 4, 1884
Died:
December 10, 1946
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Alfred Damon Runyon (October 4, 1880 – December 10, 1946) was an American newspaperman and short-story writer. 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 and sentimental 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". His distinctive vernacular style is known as "Runyonese": a mixture of formal speech and colorful slang, almost always in present tense, and always devoid of contractions. He is credited with coining the phrase "Hooray Henry", a term now used in British English to describe an upper-class, 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". The musical additionally borrows characters and story elements from a few other Runyon stories, most notably "Pick The Winner". The film Little Miss Marker (and its two remakes, Sorrowful Jones and the 1980 Little Miss Marker) grew from his short story of the same name. Runyon was also a well-known newspaper reporter, covering sports and general news for decades for various publications and syndicates owned by William Randolph Hearst. Already famous for his fiction, he wrote a well-remembered "present tense" article on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Presidential inauguration in 1933 for the Universal Service, a Hearst syndicate, which was merged with the co-owned International News Service in 1937.
Author:
1938 A Slight Case of Murder
Producer:
1938 A Slight Case of Murder
1942 The Big Street
1944 Irish Eyes Are Smiling
Short Story:
1934 The Lemon Drop Kid
1938 A Slight Case of Murder
1942 The Big Street
1944 Irish Eyes Are Smiling
1951 The Lemon Drop Kid
1968 Talisman
Story:
1933 Lady for a Day
1934 Little Miss Marker
1934 Midnight Alibi
1934 Million Dollar Ransom
1934 No Ransom
1934 The Lemon Drop Kid
1935 Hold 'Em Yale
1935 Princess O'Hara
1935 Professional Soldier
1938 A Slight Case of Murder
1939 Joe and Ethel Turp Call on the President
1941 Tight Shoes
1942 Butch Minds the Baby
1942 The Big Street
1943 It Ain't Hay
1944 Irish Eyes Are Smiling
1949 Sorrowful Jones
1950 Johnny One-Eye
1951 The Lemon Drop Kid
1953 Money from Home
1955 Guys and Dolls
1961 Pocketful of Miracles
1968 Talisman
1980 Little Miss Marker
Theatre Play:
1933 Lady for a Day
1934 Little Miss Marker
1934 Midnight Alibi
1934 Million Dollar Ransom
1934 No Ransom
1934 The Lemon Drop Kid
1935 Hold 'Em Yale
1935 Princess O'Hara
1935 Professional Soldier
1938 A Slight Case of Murder
1939 Joe and Ethel Turp Call on the President
1941 Tight Shoes
1942 Butch Minds the Baby
1942 The Big Street
1943 It Ain't Hay
1944 Irish Eyes Are Smiling
1949 Sorrowful Jones
1950 Johnny One-Eye
1951 The Lemon Drop Kid
1952 Stop, You're Killing Me
1953 Money from Home
1955 Guys and Dolls
1961 Pocketful of Miracles
1968 Talisman
1980 Little Miss Marker
Writer:
1933 Lady for a Day
1934 Little Miss Marker
1934 Midnight Alibi
1934 Million Dollar Ransom
1934 No Ransom
1934 The Lemon Drop Kid
1935 Hold 'Em Yale
1935 Princess O'Hara
1935 Professional Soldier
1938 A Slight Case of Murder
1939 Joe and Ethel Turp Call on the President
1941 At the Stroke of Twelve
1941 Tight Shoes
1942 Butch Minds the Baby
1942 The Big Street
1943 It Ain't Hay
1944 Irish Eyes Are Smiling
1949 Sorrowful Jones
1950 Johnny One-Eye
1951 The Lemon Drop Kid
1952 Bloodhounds of Broadway
1952 Stop, You're Killing Me
1953 Money from Home
1955 Guys and Dolls
1961 Pocketful of Miracles
1968 Talisman
1980 Little Miss Marker
1989 Bloodhounds of Broadway
2005 Three Wise Guys
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.