Corona Typewriter in The Lost World

Some time before Archer went down the Nile with his Bijou portable typewriter, a Corona 3 had travelled to The Lord World on the Amazon.

Well, it did according to Harry O. Hoyt’s 1925 film version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel.

And didn’t it cause some trouble by doing so?!
An editorial in Harrison’s Reports on September 12, 1925, launched into First National Pictures for collaborating with the Corona Typewriter Company in using the movie to promote the Corona 3 portable.

This was no one-off incident, either, as Harrison's Reports was to criticise Corona for entering into many other deals to highlight the Corona typewriter in movies.

Harrison’s Reports was a New York City-based motion picture trade journal published weekly from 1919 to 1962. Edited by P.S. (“Pete”) Harrison, it set out from the first issue (typeset with a typewriter!) to be a guardian against blatant advertising of products in films.
The Lost World featured pioneering stop motion special effects by Willis O'Brien.

In 1998, the film was deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Conan Doyle appears as himself in a frontispiece to the film. It stars Wallace Beery as Professor Challenger, Bessie Love as heroine Paula White, and Lloyd Hughes (above) as Corona-using news reporter Edward E. Malone.

If you fast forward to about the 8min 25sec mark on this video, you will see Hughes using the Corona to write a report.

*The Watterson R. Rothacker mentioned in the Corona poster (top) founded one of the earlier film processing labs, the Rothacker Film Manufacturing Co, in 1919. He co-directed The Lost World and was managing director of First National Pictures.

**2012 marks the centenary of the Corona 3 and many more posts will appear during this year on this wonderful little folding typewriter.