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Runyon had signed his first sports story for Hearst's old New York American with his full name, and Sports Editor Harry Cashman, striking out the Alfred, told him, "From now on you're Damon Runyon." The byline was to make him several millions as a war correspondent, fictioneer, movie producer, columnist, all-round reporter and tamperer with the language. His Broadwayese delighted Britons as well as Americans; and grammarians were alarmed by the numbers who preferred Runyon's English to the King's. Webster never told them that a G was $1,000, a wrong gee a no-good guy, a glaum a good look.
Hokum & Horseplay. To his celebrity friends, to budding sportswriters and the pathetic heavyweights he fed in the forlorn hope of some day owning a champ, Runyon was a hokum-laden, horseplaying, teetotaling, coffee-drinking (up to 40 cups a day, some said) legend. It was a legend clad neatly and gaudily in $200 suits, loud Charvet ties, studs and cuff links made out of gold pieces—and shoes at $50 a pair, broken in for him by the late Hype Igoe, a sports scribe who also wore size 5B. Like most rich Broadwayites, Runyon commuted from Manhattan to Miami, and could "remember when Miami Beach was so quiet you could hear the jellyfish walking along the ocean sands."
It was almost that quiet in the hospital room last week. The Dialogue with Death, which he didn't have time to deliver, he had already written. "'Oh, hello,' I said. 'Hello, hello, hello. I was not expecting you. I have not looked at the red board lately and did not know my number was up. If you will just hand me my kady and my coat I will be with you in a jiffy.'"