1946 If Damon Runyon is remembered at all, it is primarily as the author of the short story (in fact two of them) later adapted as the movie and stage musical Guys and Dolls.
Runyon (1880–1946), the laureate of Manhattan, was, ironically, born in Manhattan: the difference being that it was Manhattan, Kansas. The Runyons were a newspaper family and, after some service in the Spanish–American War, Damon moved to New York, where he became a sports journalist, specialising in boxing and baseball. His chosen friends – outside the newsroom and the sports arena – were mobsters, bootleggers and what were euphemistically called ‘colourful’ metropolitan types.
In addition to his reportage, Runyon wrote short stories for the papers, centred around characters such as Harry the Horse, Liverlips Louie, the Lemon Drop Kid and Nick the Greek (Runyon was masterfully creative with nicknames – it was he who gave heavyweight champion James J. Braddock the label ‘Cinderella Man’). Runyon’s narratives, invariably comic in tone, were rich in slang and comically romanticised criminality.
Runyon died of throat cancer. The obituaries were instructed to say so. As his son, Damon Runyon Jr., records: ‘As far as I know my father was the first person of note whose death was attributed publicly and bluntly to cancer.’ Runyon Sr. hated the common euphemism ‘lingering illness’.
On 11 December 1946, to the family’s distress (‘a shocking breach of trust’), Runyon’s comrade in the newspaper world, Walter Winchell, could not resist the scoop of releasing – the day after Runyon’s death – his final wishes as to the disposition of his body. He wanted to be cremated, and his ashes thrown from an aeroplane over Manhattan.
It involved the family in vexing disputes with the authorities, who had strict sanitary rules against the dumping of dirt (however distinguished). On 18 December the First World War ace, Eddie Rickenbacker (about whom Runyon had written a book in 1942), arranged for Eastern Airlines, of which he was CEO, to do as Runyon had wished. Rickenbacker himself tipped the ashes from the urn as the plane wheeled around the Statue of Liberty.
Runyon, shortly before he died, said that he when he ‘woke up dead’ he hoped to find himself with a good hand in an infernal poker game.