Damon Runyon was a journalist and writer of short stories whose writing was so beloved by audiences of his generation that a "Damon Runyon Character" became an instantly recognisable category describing a certain social type from Brooklyn or Midtown Manhattan; in a word: "Runyonesque". These stories depicted the murky world of 1920s and '30s Broadway, featuring gangsters, socialites, actors, and hustlers. The distinctive mix of formal speech and 1920s slang which these characters employed became known as "Runyonese," and defined the linguistic aesthetic of his era for decades to come.
In 1950, Runyon's visions of Broadway were immortalised in Frank Loesser's musical, Guys and Dolls, which is based on two of Runyon's stories: "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" (1933) and "Blood Pressure" (1930). In 1955, Guys and Dolls was made into a film starring Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, and Jean Simmons. To date, twenty of Runyon's stories have been adapted into films.
