 Remember a Hallmark card when you carry enough to send the very best The makers of Hallmark cards bring you a true story from the life of Damon Runyon starring Gene Fowler and Van Heflin On the Hallmark Hall of Fame Here's our distinguished host mr. Lionel Barrymore Ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Hallmark Hall of Fame Tonight a true story for the life of Damon Runyon Reporter columnist and one of the greatest short story writers of modern times and Here to tell it one of Damon Runyon's friends the author and journalist and reporter Gene Fowler and to star in the role of Damon Runyon Van Heflin Alfred Damon Runyon was born in 1880 in Manhattan, Kansas His father his grandfather and his great-grandfather were editors and publishers of newspaper When he was 12 the family moved to Pueblo, Colorado Runyon was a shy sensitive boy and his ambition was to be a newspaper man One summer after he'd become a reporter on the Denver Post He went to nearby Eldorado Springs on an assignment And it was there that Damon Runyon met Gene Fowler I was 13 at the time and plenty impressed And maybe Runyon was impressed too because some years later after he'd gone east and made his mark He sent for me and gave me my start on the New York American Damon Runyon and I were friends for 43 years But I'm not sure I ever really know him. It seems to me only his readers knew him The people who bought his short stories by the millions and paid countless dollars to see the motion pictures that were made of them But for all his shyness for all his sensitivity and vanity The demon was a man with a heart Well, we used to call him the demon because in his dignified manner he was anything but Damon was a man talked very little but listened a great deal And what he heard he wrote and what he wrote more such interesting titles as guys and dolls Blue plates special in the old dolls house little miss marker remember Shirley Temple in that one and many many others And the locality stories. Well, it was always the same Broadway Damon Runyon's Broadway that remarkable stretch of pavement between Columbus Circle and Times Square And Damon Runyon wrote about it and made it come alive But the story I want to tell you tonight wasn't written by Runyon It's a story that actually happened to him and one that I think tells more about the demon than any of us who knew him could tell It began in Hollywood at a party and he was a cliche Damon was at the pinnacle of his career Everybody's happy about a new Runyon picture. They've just finished. That's Damon Runyon over there Blonde man rimless glasses medium build always dressed like that dapper love clothes I think he must have owned a hundred suits 40 top coats What do you think you'd be going back to New York Damon? Oh Pretty soon, I guess Can't stay away from Broadway very long can you I don't know You can get used to anything if you try are you used to California? Well, I've been working on it very hard Well, we like you here Damon wish we could get you to stay here all the time We like you as much as those literary critics in England who say you're as important to American literature as factory and Dickens under there Yes, I read that now don't laugh at all