Fat Nose Willie – Unpublished Short Story Manuscript by RKO News VP Clifford Evans (Original Typescript, ca. late 60’s).

Description

Clifford Evans was a notable broadcast journalist and executive during the mid-20th century. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he began his journalism career with New York City newspapers such as the New York World Telegram, New York Post, and Brooklyn Eagle. In 1963, Evans joined RKO General Broadcasting Corporation, initially moderating and producing the weekly radio interview show “Ladies of the Press.” By 1966, he advanced to vice president and director of RKO’s Washington, D.C., news bureau, serving as a White House correspondent and covering administrations from Lyndon Johnson through Ronald Reagan. He also held leadership roles in the Washington Press Club and the White House Correspondents Association. Evans passed away in 1983 at the age of 68.

Fat Nose Willie is a delightfully pulpy, original short story manuscript by Evans, typed on official RKO General Broadcasting letterhead from his time as Vice President of the Washington News Bureau. A silly little tale from mid-century New York, the story centers around Willie—a lovable underdog with a bulbous nose—who pastes clippings in the publicity office at Madison Square Garden and knows “all the fighters, managers, trainers, ticket brokers and touts.” Noir in tone, corny in charm, and swimming in atmosphere, the story reads like something torn from a 1940s pulp magazine—only this is unpublished, and this copy is original — with some minor corrections in pen and a few sentences marked out in “white out”. (Remember white out!?) I think this is an incredible hybrid of Madison Square Garden / boxing history and dime-store fiction.

I can’t find any record of publication—this story never made it to print. Which isn’t surprising. But it does make this a one-of-a-kind piece of midcentury American ephemera, blurring the lines between pulp fiction, journalism, and broadcast history.