About William Lindsay Gresham: William Lindsay Gresham is Nightmare Alley (1946), which was adapted into a 1947 film starring Tyrone Power.
The speech fascinated him. His ear caught the rhythm of it and he noted their idioms and worked some of them into his patter. He had found the reason behind the peculiar, drawling language of the old carny hands—it was a composite of all the sprawl...
