You know the excitement when you discover an author or great book, and all you want to do is rush home and read?  Well, I’m having a bit of that at the moment.  Damon Runyon!! How have I never read him?  I’m reading the short stories that Guys and Dolls is based on – which I’ve seen, loved, been in – and they are fantastic.  The vernacular is so rich and unto itself; there’s practically no tenses and all the women are Dolls or Judys.  It’s killing me!  Here’s a couple examples:

“But I will say that the doll in the club car is worth looking at, and anybody can see that she has plenty of class, although personally I like them with legs that are not quite so spindly.  She is by no means a real young doll, being maybe twenty-five or twenty-six, and anybody can see that she knows what time it is.

Furthermore,  she is very stylish, and even if Harry the Horse is a guy who gives dolls a tumble this is about the last doll you will figure him to tumble, because she looks as if she may be such as doll as will holler for the gendarmes if anybody as much as says boo to her.”

and

“She is tall, and thin, and has a first class shape, and her hair is a light brown, going on blond, and her eyes are like I do not know what, except that they are one-hundred-percent eyes in every respect.”

How great is that? Gendarmes?  One-hundred-percent eyes?  Harry the Horse?  I want to go back in time and be a gambler’s doll on Broadway.  Sigh.  Here’s a clip from the movie; The Sky rolls for souls.