All Things to All Men

TRIALS AND OTHER TRIBULATIONS (285 pp.)--Damon Runyon--Lipplncotf ($3).

"A big murder trial possesses some of the elements of a sporting event," wrote the late Damon Runyon. "I am not one of those who criticize the curiosity of the gals who storm the doors of the court room. . . . If I had not seen them, I know I would have been consumed with curiosity to peer at Mrs. Snyder and Judd Gray. . . . It is only a slight variation of the same curiosity that makes me eager to see . . . a great baseball player."

Catering to the public love of murder was one of the things which made Hearstling Damon Runyon's name a byword of the '20s and '30s. Trials and Other Tribulations reprints his grandstand reports of three notorious murder trials (Hall-Mills, Snyder-Gray, Arnold Rothstein), plus the spicy matrimonial case of "Daddy" and "Peaches" Browning, the suit for income tax that sent Al Capone to Alcatraz, and the Senate investigation of the House of Morgan (complete with midget). Last but not least, the reader will have ample opportunity to put Runyon himself on trial and observe the technique of a brilliantly smart operator.

Singeing in Sing Sing. For the sports-loving, rubbernecking world-at-large, Runyon never failed to raise the curtain with a maximum of gamy drama. "Now the woman and the crumpled little corset-salesman," he choruses in the Snyder-Gray case, "their once piping-hot passion colder than a dead man's toes, begin trying to save their respective skins from the singeing at Sing Sing." "Show us how you struck," the prosecutor orders Judd Gray, and up stands the little salesman, removes his spectacles, and "cocks" the very sash weight with which he bludgeoned his mistress' sleeping husband. "[He] has," notes Runyon, "a sash-weight stance much like the batting form of Waner, of the Pittsburgh Pirates. . . . He is a right-hand hitter." And for the thousands of women whose interest in the Pirates is small, Runyon has other generous helpings to spoon out. "Mrs. Snyder," he notes, "the woman who has been called a Jezebel [came] stepping along briskly in her patent-leather pumps. . . . She has a good figure. . . and I thought she carried her clothes off rather smartly. . . . Her eyes are blue-green, and as chilly looking as an ice-cream cone."

Please God. Almost in one breath Runyon could bid the world be gay ("This [is] the best show in town") and sonorously reproach its gaiety ("There were men . . . and women . . . standing chin-deep in . . . this bloody trial and giving some offense to high Heaven, it seems to me, by their very presence"). When nine-year-old Lorraine Snyder enters the courtroom, Runyon deftly massages the hearts of a million mothers ("She was, please God . . . a fleeting little shadow . . . and she stood looking bravely into [Justice Scudder's] eyes, the saddest, the most tragic little figure, my friends, ever viewed by gods or men").

For the social snobs, Runyon (who spent $50 on his own shoes) could pause to comment on the fancy shoes being worn by the Marquess of Queensberry; for hero-worshipers he had the right tone of awe ("Now here comes J. Pierpont Morgan himself . . . [and] you see the lightning behind the brows, and sense the thunder in the voice"). To the honest, indignant poor, Runyon gave descriptions of Capone's ill-gotten silken underwear.

While being all things to all men, Runyon succeeded in always keeping his spotlight fixed on the central characters, and his lurid descriptions of them still retain their vitality. But, compared with the cool, intelligent journalism of Trial Reporter Rebecca West, Runyon's reporting is sensationalism cooked to Hearstian taste. Time has dulled the edge of the slangy, informal jargon that won Runyon so many admirers, and his dramatic exclamations pale into mere verbosity when Mrs. Snyder is asked "Why did you kill your husband?" and gives the utterly simple reply: "To get rid of him."

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