Not a copy, this is the original. The first one printed for the film, and kept by Earl Hays Press as a reference in case reprints were needed.
CASABLANCA (1942) Letter of Transit
- Thread starter PropsToHistory
- Start date
Not a copy, this is the original. The first one printed for the film, and kept by Earl Hays Press as a reference in case reprints were needed.
It's possible those were added by whomever filled in the form?Great find from an iconic movie
PropsToHistory - any chance the block print for that is still laying around, similar to the 20,000 Leagues paper?
Unlikely. It's made up if generic print. Nothing really custom about it
joberg
Legendary Member
Nope; it's simply how French words are spelled. We have many accents in the language (unlike English) and those should've been written properly
example: Le Général d`Armée des Forces Terrestres.
Secrétaire d`État à la guerre.
Funny because, at first glance, the French is correct. So they had some kind of help from French speaking people in the studio (or foreign actors/actresses)... Maybe they didn't have access to accents in their choice of printing fonts.
Lightning
Master Member
Nope; it's simply how French words are spelled. We have many accents in the language (unlike English) and those should've been written properly
example: Le Général d`Armée des Forces Terrestres.
Secrétaire d`État à la guerre.
Funny because, at first glance, the French is correct. So they had some kind of help from French speaking people in the studio (or foreign actors/actresses)... Maybe they didn't have access to accents in their choice of printing fonts.
I think he meant that the accents were filled in manually on the final prop when they did the handwritten portion, since as you speculated, it's likely they didn't have the proper printing blocks. I can see the cédille in FRANCAIS in the screencap.
joberg
Legendary Member
Yes, I can see it also...interesting that they didn't make the effort of producing the printing blocks for the many French accents
JMSupp
Well-Known Member
Probably because it is a ridiculous number of extra letters, or special type that allows for placement of the accent marks.Yes, I can see it also...interesting that they didn't make the effort of producing the printing blocks for the many French accents
It's been a long, long time since high school French, but here it goes! I think there are 15 letters that have accent marks, (Of which there are 5), so for upper case and lower, there are now 30 more letters that you need multiples of.
Add to that the typesetters were likely trained with a specific layout for the type case, (Likely California Job Case), and French type case layouts are way different. The type was usually organized in a way that made for efficient typesetting, so any variation would cause a huge slowdown as the printer searched for the next letter. Far easier to just hand paint the accents!!
Especially if you have "The Perfect Font", but for some reasons, the accents are missing.... I've done that with digital fonts!
This is an 19th century French type case, followed by a typical California Job case layout.
What's crazy is how similar the layouts are.
James
Great Find, thanks for sharing.
DudeManGuy1019
Active Member
Apologies if this is common knowledge but what size is that paper? 8.5x14? Or something else?
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