Typewriters Behind the Movie Scenes: The Show Must Go On

1921: Douglas Fairbanks Snr rehearses for his swashbuckling role as D'Artagnan in Fred Niblo's The Three Musketeers. With him is scriptwriter Edward Knoblock, who co-wrote the screenplay of the film with Fairbanks and Lotta Woods.

1923: Waldemar Young, the MGM scenarist and screenwriter, was once a newspaperman and never got out of the habit of typing and preparing his own scripts without the help of a secretary.

1941: Joan Harcourt, the "continuity girl" at the film studios during the filming of Kipps, continued to work during an air raid, wearing a tin hat as protection.

1945: Film director Robert Siodmak actor Burt Lancaster and producer Mark Hellinger discuss the script for Siodmak's film The Killers as office secretary Lois Regan records script notes on her typewriter, outside the offices of Universal Studios, Hollywood. Regan sits at an improvised desk, consisting of two barrels and a wooden plank.

1972: Woody Allen at his typewriter watches a woman in a short skirt climb a ladder in a scene from the film Play It Again, Sam.

1988: Sigourney Weaver as naturalist Dian Fossey in the film Gorillas in the Mist has to put up with a chicken perching on her typewriter as she works in her tent.