Typewriter Talk / Typewriters in the Movies and on TV

**Posted by keystriker** 28-11-2024 02:42:39

As I threatened to do in Pete E.'s Iprcress File thread, I'm starting a thread about typewriters in the movies and on TV. The idea is to post shots with typewriters, screen grabs from YouTube or snaps of your TV screen with your phone, and post them. And if you can, identify them. For starters, here's a typewriter that I can't identify from a scene in Citizen Kane, where the Joseph Cotton character has just been roused from having passed out at his typewriter. Only the back of the machine is showing, but that might be enough for someone knowledgeable enough to recognize it, maybe?

**Posted by keystriker** 28-11-2024 02:50:57

Here are a couple of shots of Jack Nicholson at a typewriter in The Shining. Enough of the machine is visible that I think someone here, or more likely more than one someone, should be able to identify, although I can't.

**Posted by keystriker** 28-11-2024 02:57:18

From Ready, Willing, and Able, Ruby Keeler tap dances on a giant typewriter. She also types on a smaller version of it at the beginning of the scene. I've never seen anything like it, and wonder if it was whipped up by the props/sets folks in Hollywood.

**Posted by keystriker** 04-12-2024 16:34:02

Hmm. A staggering lack of participation. Could it be that this forum is becoming less active than in previous days? Does seem that way.

**Posted by keystriker** 04-12-2024 23:11:23

Well, what the heck. I'll add a post from time to time, and maybe somebody else will eventually decide to come and play too.

Here's Hildy (the Rosalind Russel character) in His Girl Friday:

**Posted by fountainpensplus** 05-12-2024 01:17:39

We have noticed that many of the "period piece" programs we watch like to have typewriters to help with setting the era. My wife likes to ask me what model it is and most of the time I can only say it's the back side of a manual typewriter.

I remember when we only had two TV stations that we could get well with an antenna. In the late 50s and early 60s when I'd get home from school they would show a matinee movie, many from the 30s, 40s and 50s like His girl Friday. Ms. Russell looks over dressed to be sitting at the typewriter and writing.

We didn't get a color TV until the late 70s or early 80s so unless going to the movies everything we saw was in black and white. I definitely don't miss adjusting the horizontal and vertical holds along with degraded reception.

George

**Posted by Pete E.** 07-12-2024 10:31:10

George,

One of my uncles (on my father's side of the family) was a TV and radio repair man...having a shop in his garden shed.

One Christmas, he gifted our family a colour TV that had a remote control...but it was a corded remote with a 25' long cable. Buttons to change channel and to turn up-down volume. To turn on/off the TV, we still had to do it from the front of the machine.

We kids each were assigned a day-per week where we were in-charge of the remote. And the TV was not allowed to be turned on until our homework was done, supper was finished, and we kids washed the dishes.

It was also a time when all the TV channels went off the air at the end of their broadcasting-day in the later evening.
.

**Posted by Pete E.** 07-12-2024 16:21:17

We loved watching the Brit TV series "Endeavour".

Typewriter scene from one episode and my 1960 machine.
.

**Posted by Pete E.** 07-12-2024 16:52:38

A scene from the movie "All The President's Men" with Robert Redford and a Hermes 3000 off to the left side of the photo.

And my machine from 1964.
.

**Posted by keystriker** 08-12-2024 19:44:11

fountainpensplus wrote:
(snip) ...Ms. Russell looks over dressed to be sitting at the typewriter and writing... (snip)

George

As I recall, and it's been a while since I've seen it last, at the time of that scene, Hildy had already left her job and her erstwhile husband, the Cary Grant character, and was dressed up to go out with her new fiancé when she got embroiled in a breaking news story and sat down to type it out. I think.