Damon Runyon was a newspaperman and writer. He was best known for his brief tales celebrating the globe of NY City’s Broadway that grew out of the Prohibition period. He created just a little world of personas that live on right now in such traditional movies as Little Miss Marker and Guys and Dolls, both predicated on Runyon’s stories.

Professional Alan Ladd’s Mayfair Productions brought Runyon’s short stories to radio in the first 1950s. Each episode of The Damon Runyon Theater is told through the eyes about The Damon Runyon Theatre, Vol. 1 of the hoodlum with a heart of gold named “Broadway,” who takes the listener inside the world of some of the Big Apple’s toughest yet most alluring perpetrators. Broadway and the countless thugs, touts, dames, and palookas he encounters speak in a solid present-tense Brooklynese that is a delight for the listener to hear.

John Brown played Broadway, and the helping casts were a who’s who of radio, including William Conrad, Alan Reed, Frank Lovejoy, Sheldon Leonard, Hans Conreid, Anne Whitfield, and Ed Begley. The series produced a brief transition to television.

Included here are the next episodes, which shown from October 1950 to January 1951:

“The Hottest Guy in the Globe”

“All Horseplayers Die Broke”

“Princess O’Hara”

“For any Pal”

“A bit of Pie”

“Barbecue”

“The Brain Runs Home”

“Keep ‘Em Yale”

“Old Em’s Kentucky House”

“BLOOD CIRCULATION PRESSURE”

“Lonely Heart”

“Broadway Organic”