Word: runyon
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...movie version is best when it stays closest to the stage show, which, fortunately, it does much of the time. The book, first pieced together by Abe Burrows and Jo Swerling from some Damon Runyon stories, suffers very little in the transition. It still traces the frantic efforts of Nathan Detroit the manager of "the oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York," to find a home for his business activities safe from annoying policemen. Detroit thinks his rent-money problem is solved when he bets one of his customers, Sky Masterson, that Sky cannot take a certain female...
Guys and Dolls (Samuel Goldwyn; M-G-M), as a Broadway musical, had all the vulgar swagger of a fink* with his mink at 4 a.m. on the crosstown, and a lot more salt than the lox in Lindy's. It was not really Runyon, just as Runyon was not really Broadway, but as a pinstriped fairy tale with garlic on its breath, it made an honest-to-Gotham hit, and it ran for three years...
...only acts as if he can't tell a Greek roll from a bagel; he sings as though his mouth were full of ravioli instead of gefullte fish. Stubby Kaye and B. S. Fully, both from the Broadway cast, suggest best of all the seraphic moldiness of Runyon's ronyons...
...carry its weak parts. It starts with one of the friskiest and funniest ballets ever seen on screen: a sort of midtown montage of pimps and policemen, dips and drabs, teens and touts that comes to a climax in a hilarious antiphony of horse-players as they peruse what Runyon called "the morning bladder." In fact, from first to last-and the last dance is a thrilling choreography, set in a picturesque sewer, of the primordial rite of dice-Michael Kidd has staged his ballets even more effectively than he did on Broadway. Frank Loesser's lyrics are classy...
...Damon Runyon in the New York American, Oct. 11, 1923 This is the way old Casey Stengel ran his team home for his sixth pennant in seven years. This is the way Casey came down the stretch, running his team, the flag still hobbling like a loose ball among the leaders of the American League...