Runyon, Damon

8vo (188 x 124mm.), FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR TO FILM PRODUCER DARRYL ZANUCK ("To Colonel Darryl Zanuck | In sincere admiration | and affection | Damon Runyon | 1944") on front free endpaper, original grey cloth lettered in red on upper cover and spine, DUST-JACKET, dust-jacket worn with some loss to spine and extremities frayed with loss

Darryl Francis Zanuck (1902 – 1979) was an American film producer and studio executive (see also lots 55 and 112). He played a significant role in the Hollywood studio system and was awarded three Academy Awards as producer for Best Picture. Damon Runyon, the American newspaperman and author, is best-known for his tales of gamblers, hustlers, actors, and gangsters on Broadway in the Prohibition era. The 1950s musical Guys and Dolls was based on two of his short stories. A year before publication of this book, Zanuck had commissioned Runyon to write an introduction to his book on wartime experiences in Tunisia (published as Tunis Expedition in 1943). Runyon wrote "...no man alive takes his duty to flag and country more seriously than Colonel Darryl Zanuck. ...Were [he] a newspaperman he would probably be one of the greatest war correspondents of this generation".