Damon Runyon is "Jack the Bookie", he was a newspaperman and writer who died in 1946. He was well known for his short stories which celebrated the world of Broadway in New York City and grew t become the Prohibition era.
To New Yorkers a "Damon Runyon character" brought to mind a characteristic communal type from the Brooklyn or Midtown demi-monde. The "Runyonesque" referred to a character and the type of situations and dialog that Damon Runyon portrays.
He twisted many tales of gamblers, hustlers, actors, and gangsters, some of them had "square" names, instead of colorful monikers such as "Nathan Detroit," "Big Jule," "Harry the Horse," "Good Time Charley," "Dave the Dude," or "The Seldom Seen Kid."
Damon Runyon wrote many of these stories in his own individual vernacular style which presented a mixture of formal speech and colorful slang. These stories were always in present tense, and always devoid of retrenchment.
Damon Runyon was also one of the U.S.’s best paid sports writers. He had written stories about popular people like Chicago O’Brien and Jack the Bookie.
