Typewriter Talk / Typewriters in the Movies

**Posted by Fleetwing** 22-3-2018 12:09:56

And you might have been the only one who noticed it!

**Posted by Uwe** 22-3-2018 13:50:56

Lucas Dul wrote:
... Yes, I understand how hard it is to film such a large production and keep it 100% historically accurate, ...

It's actually not that hard - when it comes to typewriters - but for the reason that Fleetwing mentioned, the majority of propmasters aren't all that concerned with such details.

**Posted by Fleetwing** 22-3-2018 14:22:01

Lucas Dul wrote:
Not entirely sure if this was posted about before, but I was recently recommended by a friend to go see Wonder Woman. While I’m not at all into superhero’s or anything of the sort, and tend to dislike their butchery of traditional Greek mythology (the Thor franchise) I found it to be a really entertaining movie. But this isn’t a review. I was bothered by one tiny tiny continuity error. The movie takes place in World War One, which we all know lasted from 1914-1918, but in the scene in the British war office where the secretary is on the phone with the protagonists, a Royal 10 is seen in the background...with a single pane of glass. Wait...what?!
That machine couldn’t have been made before 1921, and that rubbed me the wrong way throughout the entire film. Yes, I understand how hard it is to film such a large production and keep it 100% historically accurate, and yes, the machine has mere seconds of screetime and is no plot element, but still. It bugged me. Oh well, nothing I can do about it.

By the way, I can't resist noting that Thor is from Norse, not Greek, mythology!

**Posted by Lucas Dul** 22-3-2018 16:11:04

Fleetwing wrote:
By the way, I can't resist noting that Thor is from Norse, not Greek, mythology!

Yes! My bad! Being the mythology nerd I am, i can’t believe I made such a novice mistake. Two mistakes if you’ve got sharp eyes. Royal used single panels after 1923, not 1921. My bad, though that doesn’t make it any better!

**Posted by SquireDante** 27-2-2019 18:25:02

Not a movie, but there was a manual Smith-Corona (I'm guessing 60s) in the most recent episode of The Blacklist titled "Minister D." The villain-of-the-week was using it to transcribe incriminating phone calls to blackmail people with.
The techie of the show said typewriters were impossible to use and you had to slam the keys into the ribbon to type. So they "read" what the villain had last typed by looking at the ribbon. It didn't show them doing it of course.
My mom and I had a good laugh at the absurdity.

**Posted by thetypewriterman** 28-2-2019 04:11:29

Not with a normal manual typewriter of course, but with a carbon-ribbon equipped electric, golfball or daisywheel typewriter a different matter of course. With a daisywheel typewriter in particular, you can read everything that has been written, less the spaces, by analysing the spent ribbon. This used to be of great concern to firms who needed to keep their data secure. Back in the 1980's, I used to repair typewriters at a defence contractor. They had a special bag for the secure disposal of spent ribbon cartridges, and of course, the cartridge was removed from any machine taken back to the workshop for repair.

**Posted by Uwe** 28-2-2019 13:21:36

Fascinating information on old-school data protection.

Reading the ribbon seems to be a repeated theme in movies and television. I think that I watched an episode of Columbo where the disposed ribbon from a manual Royal was read too. Technically you could make something out from a fresh ribbon in a manual machine if it had only made one pass. And then there's the dual colour ribbons; many times I've been able to read snippets of what someone was typing in the red portion of a ribbon because it had been used so infrequently.

**Posted by SquireDante** 02-3-2019 11:29:13

That is really interesting information about the defense contractor. I'd love to see something like that included in tv shows/movies.
The ribbon might have been fresh, but the writers probably didn't think too carefully about it.

Last night I started watching Amazon Prime's adaptation of The ABC Murders and since it takes place in the '30s a typewriter was used to write the letters. But so far they haven't shown any of the typewriters up close, just what is written; like an exclamation point made all at once, not using a period and apostrophe. I know few people would care to get a detail like that right, but it'd be cool if they did.

**Posted by Uwe** 04-5-2020 11:34:48

I came across this Italian poster today (bottom right) for the 1948 film, Come Live With Me. On the left is the North American poster for the same film. I thought it was amusing because the Italian poster prominently features what appears to be an Olivetti MP1 ICO.

I've never seen this film (nor heard of it), but a few stills I've found show Stewart and Lamarr using a standard typewriter instead. Maybe someone who has seen this film can shed some light on this. If there isn't an Olivetti in the actual film, the Italian poster is a wonderful example of product placement from 70 years ago.

**Posted by M. Höhne** 04-5-2020 13:51:04

That's a surprisingly clumsy type treatment in the Italian title! Especially obvious in the "en" and the "iv" transitions but elsewhere too, It looks like a hastily-done computer job, but 1948? Nice artwork, though. I wonder how many of us will look this up on YouTube.