Damon Runyon Trailers
Three Wise Guys TrailerBloodhounds of Broadway TrailerLittle Miss Marker Trailer
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.
Most Popular Damon Runyon Trailers
Total trailers found: 30
12 July 1934
An elderly woman provides an alibi to a man she scarcely knows who is on trial for murder of his girlfriend's racketeer father.
01 December 1939
Joe and Ethel Turp are up in arms when their faithful old mailman is fired. Unable to get satisfaction on a municipal level, Joe and Ethel plead their mailman's case to the President himself.
07 October 1934
In this family comedy, the wealthy executive of a steel company must endure life with a strict, teetotaling wife, a wild daughter, and a deadbeat son.
14 November 1952
A musical comedy based on several Damon Runyon short stories. When a bookie on the run, Robert 'Numbers' Foster, falls for a pretty country songbird, Emily Ann Stackerlee , he'll do anything to help her make it big -- including a stint in jail to pay for his crimes.
27 December 1935
Mercenary Donovan is hired to kidnap King Peter II. He learns that the party in power is evil and that the King is in danger, so kidnaps the King to keep him safe while a revolution is planned.
30 November 2005
On Christmas Eve, three hired killers give chase after unwittingly aiding the pregnant girlfriend of one of their targets.
18 December 1961
A New York gangster and his girlfriend attempt to turn street beggar Apple Annie into a society lady when the peddler learns her daughter is marrying royalty.
04 July 1949
A young girl is left with the notoriously cheap Sorrowful Jones as a marker for a bet. When her father doesn't return, he learns that taking care of a child interferes with his free-wheeling lifestyle.
23 December 1955
In New York, a gambler is challenged to take a cold female missionary to Havana, but they fall for each other, and the bet has a hidden motive to finance a crap game.
10 December 1952
With the end of Prohibition a former bootlegger and his wife attempt to go straight. Remake of the 1938 film "A Slight Case of Murder".
19 October 1944
Climbing to fame, Irish-American composer Ernest R. Ball romances a showgirl, who catches the eye of an underworld character.
21 March 1980
Sorrowful Jones is a cheap bookie in the 1930s. When a gambler leaves his daughter as a marker for a bet, he gets stuck with her.
05 May 1950
Johnny One-Eye was adapted from one of Damon Runyon's lesser-known stories. Martin Martin and Dane Cory were former partners in crime who have long since split up.
20 March 1942
Aloysius 'Butch' Grogan leads a life of criminal activities motivated to provide for a widow and her child.
03 November 1989
This musical is based on four short stories by Damon Runyon. In one tale, gambler Feet Samuels sells his body to science just as he realizes that Hortense loves him and that he would rather live than die.
02 April 1951
When the Lemon Drop Kid accidentally cheats gangster Moose Moran out of his track winnings, the Kid promises to repay Moose the money by Christmas.
31 March 1935
When King's beloved horse dies, Princess tries to purchase a new nag, and that's how she inadvertently gets her hands on a "stolen" race horse.
13 September 1933
Apple Annie is an aging New York City fruit seller whose daughter Louise has been raised in a Spanish convent since she was an infant.
13 August 1942
Meek busboy Little Pinks is in love with an extremely selfish nightclub singer who despises and uses him.
13 June 1941
A crook with big feet buys shoes that are too tight from a salesman, then decides to use the store as a front for illegal gambling.
26 February 1938
Former bootlegger Remy Marco has a slight problem with foreclosing bankers, a prospective son-in-law, and four hard-to-explain corpses.
22 February 1943
Abbot and Costello must find a replacement for a woman's horse they accidentally killed after feeding it some candy.
27 April 1935
A pretty young socialite falls for a charming but shady hustler, who abandons her when he finds that she has been disowned by her wealthy father.
31 December 1953
Herman owes a lot of gambling debts. To pay them off, he promises the mob he'll fix a horse, so that it does not run.
27 September 1934
The Lemon Drop Kid is a fast-talking racetrack bum who swindles $100 from an old, ailing man. He takes it on the lam with his sidekick, The Professor.
01 June 1934
Big Steve Halloway, gambler and proprietor of New York's Horseshoe Cabaret, is in desperate need of money.
18 April 1934
Well respected local good guy, "Feet" Samuels finds himself heavily in debt due to an uncharacteristic gambling binge.
01 September 1934
To stop his mother from marrying a man he doesn't like, a young millionaire hires an ex-con in helping him fake his own kidnaping.
15 November 1941
This entry in Warner's "Broadway Brevity" series of shorts is based on Damon Runyon's short story, "The Old Doll's House".
