Word: runyon
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...been our custom in past years to foretell of the future for this joyous event, particularly with respect to the $5000 feature race, the Damon Runyon Memorial. In these troublous times, however, all is flux, and we have seen fit to substitute for our predictions the following document...
Singeing in Sing Sing. For the sports-loving, rubbernecking world-at-large, Runyon never failed to raise the curtain with a maximum of gamy drama. "Now the woman and the crumpled little corset-salesman," he choruses in the Snyder-Gray case, "their once piping-hot passion colder than a dead man's toes, begin trying to save their respective skins from the singeing at Sing Sing." "Show us how you struck," the prosecutor orders Judd Gray, and up stands the little salesman, removes his spectacles, and "cocks" the very sash weight with which he bludgeoned his mistress' sleeping...
Please God. Almost in one breath Runyon could bid the world be gay ("This [is] the best show in town") and sonorously reproach its gaiety ("There were men . . . and women . . . standing chin-deep in . . . this bloody trial and giving some offense to high Heaven, it seems to me, by their very presence"). When nine-year-old Lorraine Snyder enters the courtroom, Runyon deftly massages the hearts of a million mothers ("She was, please God . . . a fleeting little shadow . . . and she stood looking bravely into [Justice Scudder's] eyes, the saddest, the most tragic little figure, my friends, ever viewed...
...social snobs, Runyon (who spent $50 on his own shoes) could pause to comment on the fancy shoes being worn by the Marquess of Queensberry; for hero-worshipers he had the right tone of awe ("Now here comes J. Pierpont Morgan himself . . . [and] you see the lightning behind the brows, and sense the thunder in the voice"). To the honest, indignant poor, Runyon gave descriptions of Capone's ill-gotten silken underwear...
While being all things to all men, Runyon succeeded in always keeping his spotlight fixed on the central characters, and his lurid descriptions of them still retain their vitality. But, compared with the cool, intelligent journalism of Trial Reporter Rebecca West, Runyon's reporting is sensationalism cooked to Hearstian taste. Time has dulled the edge of the slangy, informal jargon that won Runyon so many admirers, and his dramatic exclamations pale into mere verbosity when Mrs. Snyder is asked "Why did you kill your husband?" and gives the utterly simple reply...