Typewriter Spotting: Can You Ever Forgive Me? ... For Missing One (Or Two)?

A late contender for the much-coveted 2018 Typewriter Movie of the Year (Oscar nominations voting closes on January 14) is Can You Ever Forgive Me?, the biographical comedy drama based on Lee Israel's 2008 memoir of the same name. It stars Melissa McCarthy as Israel and follows the failed writer's fraudulent efforts to supplement her income by forging letters from deceased authors and playwrights. We saw the movie last evening and found it well-acted and entertaining, though the ultimate treatment handed out to Israel-McCarthy's typewriters was a major downer for me:

On July 27, 1992, Israel, realising "the jig was up" after being questioned by FBI agents outside a kosher deli, raced to the rented storage locker where she stored her "gang of typewriters" and "woke them up". She wrote in her book, "I deposited them, one by one, in trash cans along a mile stretch of Amsterdam Avenue, watching the traffic to see if I was being surveilled." Oh, to have been a typewriter collector wandering down Amsterdam Avenue that very day! (The image above is from the movie, and shows McCarthy ditching an Olympia SM9 in a bin.)

Above, the real Lee Israel. As for where she bought most of her typewriters, Israel wrote that she began the buy them in the first half 1992 "from a store in the West Twenties that sold vintage machines." This store appears to have been run by a man called Farber:

Israel rented a locker in an "ugly tattooed building" on Amsterdam Avenue. There she neatly stacked the typewriters on four wooden shelves - they were not, as the movie suggests, crowding out her apartment. The typewriter locker space "began to look like a pawnshop with a mighty distinguished clientele".

Back on October 6, Richard Polt of The Typewriter Revolution posted on Facebook that the movie, "looks like the most typewriter-heavy film since The Post. Did they consult my list of writers and their typewriters?" The short answer, Richard, is, "No!" The thought that - then or now - one of the Tytells might have been consulted doesn't appear to have entered anyone's head, either (Martin died the year the book came out, but Peter is still around). In the image at the top of this post, the eagle-eyed among you may note that Israel-McCarthy has labelled a Brother portable "Ezra Pound". This is what Pound actually used:

The first typewriter Israel-McCarthy buys in the movie, at the start of her criminal activity, is a Gossen Tippa Pilot. It's at the foot of the image at the top of the post, though out of focus. This specific purchase is presumably (as mentioned in the book) for letters purporting to be written by Dorothy Parker, though goodness knows why (other than Parker "having fun with the umlauts"). Yet in the movie it is labelled Noël Coward, the English playwright and composer,who did use just such a typewriter. McCarthy certainly needs a German-language keyboard, even if she doesn't type the letter ë in Coward's first name. The ë appears quite frequently on screen, but I'm not convinced that even a German keyboard Tippa had an ë key.

Later in the movie, Israel-McCarthy is seen using a different, earlier model Gossen Tippa:

Steve Kuterescz Collection

Israel wrote that, "I bought the first of a long and distinguished line of manual typewriters, a clattery, jet-black Royal [portable], old enough to have been used by Fanny [Brice]  or, more likely, her secretary, from my neighborhood hardware store where various secondhand items were - still are - put on the street for quick sale: chipped china, worthless books, and old typewriters, the last singing siren songs to passing Upper West Siders nostalgic for the clatter of typing ... as opposed to the silence of keyboarding."  Israel paid $30 for the machine and said its pica typeface was "similar to Fanny's." The first words Israel typed on it were, "Now is the time for Funny Girl to come to the aid of Lee Israel."

The movie begins in April 1990 with Israel-McCarthy using her own Smith-Corona Electra 210 portable. Or trying to use it, I should say. She is suffering from writer's block (an affliction she has heard Tom Clancy dismiss out of hand at a drinks party put on by her agent). She types, “This is me f***ing using the typewriter.” Or not.

Astonishingly, Israel-McCarthy's first "bogus billet" is actually a postscript McCarthy types on to the bottom of what is supposed to an actual Brice letter. It reads, “My new grandchild has inherited my old nose. Should I leave something extra for repairs?” So the gormless mark is not supposed to be able to tell the difference between words typed on a manual typewriter sometime before 1951 (when Brice died; I think the letter is actually dated 1942) and a PS written on an electric portable typewriter (which didn't appear before 1957)? Someone has to be kidding, surely? After all, the real Israel was clearly very resourceful, and to a large degree the movie reflects this. At least Dorothy Parker lived to see the advent of electric portables, though not the Electra 210 (the Tytells would have seized on that in seconds, at one quick glance):

Dorothy Parker, typing on a Royal, and Alan Campbell at their farmhouse

in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, 1937.

Noël Coward on a very British Imperial in Jamaica in 1953. 

Some of the forgeries (which Israel described as "her best work",

and much of which fooled the experts):

These Boots Were Made For Typing: Ongoing Usefulness of Typewriters (2)

London-based shoemaker, the wonderfully creative and talented Emily Botterman, made these stylish typewritten boots in 1998, when she was just 18. Emily, who blogged under the title of "The Botterman Empire", used a Canon Starwriter 30 typewriter. Among many other things in her extensive and impressive CV, Emily was involved in making boots and shoes for movies such as Russell Crowe's Robin Hood and War Horse. These 13-inch high Crowe-Hood boots sold at auction at the end of July:

Emily explained her approach to making typewritten boots: "They were the first of three pairs I made as part of my craft subject in my final year at high school. We were given a prompt for that first project, which was ‘still life’. I can’t remember how I arrived at it, but I chose to interpret it along the lines of: When things are tough, there’s still life, full of beauty and opportunity etc. So I collected quotes I found, inspiring, comforting etc, and decided to print them into the boots.
"The word processor had a very small basic screen and it allowed the user to format, edit, change font [and] font size before printing out the page. I think I spent a long time playing around, with formatting the quotes so they would fit into the shapes of the boot pattern pieces. There was some trial and error, especially as each pattern piece had more than one quote, therefore more than one opportunity for things to go wrong!

"The leather was very thin and fit through the machine’s paper feed OK, with a piece of paper behind it, but there were some leather-paper jams! The machine did end up making a different humming noise that it did before I started!
"Once the leather was all printed, I had to be very careful while I was making the boots to keep the leather clean and to not smudge the printing. I think I must have sprayed it with some sort of fixative. I also had to be careful because the leather was thin and would rip easily."

The boots with some of Emily's lasts and tools. Below, Emily illustrates some of her processes in bootmaking:

The Ulysses Typewriter: Rescued Back From the Sirens

This typewriter has had almost as many lives as Charlie the Typewriter Guard Cat. It’s now basking in its fifth coat of paint. It started out, it transpired (after I’d laboriously peeled back the many layers), black, then was remodelled in crinkle grey, then it was repainted a light shade of green (which was its colour when I found it abandoned in a dear friend’s garden shed some 10 years ago), then white and finally (now) zinc. If this seems a bit like the emperor with his new clothes, you’d be right, because the typewriter has been naked quite a bit, too.

It’s an old Underwood, of course, but I’ve taken it upon myself to rename it the Ulysses. I suspect it has changed its appearance so often that it might have lost some of its original character along the way. So perhaps a name change is in order, perhaps not. Well, I’ve gone ahead and done it anyway, and the purists can condemn me to hell in Hartford if they so wish.

Ulysses is a highly appropriate name, in my book (and not because of James Joyce’s unreadable book of the same name, since Jimmy didn’t use a typewriter himself). No, this typewriter is named in honour of the man his fellow Ancient Greeks called Odysseus, the legendary king of Ithaca (where Underwood Noiseless portables were once made). Ulysses was also the father of Telemachus, who gave his name to Mill typewriters. He is the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey, being most famous for his eventful 10-year nostos (“homecoming”) from the decade-long Trojan War. Given this Ulysses typewriter has had an eventful 10-year history with me, the renaming is indeed apt.

Most telling in the new name, however, is that, in the latest episode of its many and varied adventures under my supposed care, it was rescued from Sirens who, unbeknownst to me, had been using it as a garden ornament. Thus it had been exposed to the elements for many months, and by the time I snatched it back, had turned into a complete rust bucket. Needless to say, it wasn’t working. But it is now.

And thus one day it might still be able to type the story of its namesake’s own escape from the Sirens. Of how Ulysses passed between the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis to land on the island of Thrinacia, where he hunted down the sacred cattle of the sun god Helios, who threatened to take the sun and shine it in the Underwood, sorry Underworld. As punishment, Ulysses was shipwrecked and washed ashore on the island of Ogygia, where Calypso compelled him to remain as her lover for seven years. He eventually escaped by enlisting the help of another typewriter, one Hermes. Well, that’s the edited down version, anyway.

Other than that, the Ulysses is now destined for a career in demonstrating to folk the difference in the typerod engineering design and typebar action between an early Remington and the “visible writing” Underwood. When I hold them both “bottoms up”, it’s clear to audiences how Wagner achieved the second and final great breakthrough in the development of the typewriter. The early Remington displays the first breakthrough, the shift mechanism.

By the way, did you know you can now buy brush or spray-on chrome? But it’s expensive, at $US299 ($A415) for the kit from Alsa at https://alsacorp.com/shop/chrome-products/264-brush-on-chrome.html?fbclid=IwAR0hL-5V8-ieIfF8iBomxoavWkDg4sA1qIEQ1DthICOIh11cv-6qtNqXe_8

Wayside Treasure: 1937 L.C.Smith Model 8 Typewriter Easy Pickings in Manuka

It's getting to be just like the good old days, back when I had a regular supply of typewriters given to me by Canberran readers of my newspaper column. In the past week I have acquired three "new" old typewriters to play with. I was home by mere minutes yesterday afternoon - after a long lunch in the city with two journalist friends, one of whom I've known for more than half a century - when one of daughters-in-law called. Emily Hansen-Messenger said she'd just been told a typewriter had been dumped on a street in Manuka. I hopped straight back into the car, drove a few minutes away to Bougainville Street, and there to my considerable delight I spotted an L.C. Smith sitting among fallen gumtree leaves on the nature strip beside the road. Even from my car, a few feet away from the typewriter, I could tell it was in good condition.

As I found it.

Apart from anything else, it was a good excuse to put the Underwood 5 restoration job to one side - after 16½ hours' work, it was starting to drive me a little crazy anyway (the carriage on what used to be called a "begging dog" typewriter is refusing to "sit" properly, no matter how many times I say "sit"). So once I got the L.C. Smith home I immediately began the task of tidying it up. The serial number is 1286425, which I'm assuming means it's a 1937 model 8.

Interestingly, it was sold by the Australian Typewriter Company in Sydney, a firm I'd not previously heard of and about which I can find absolutely nothing from online newspaper scans.

This morning I did a bit more cleaning up and touching up. The only problem I had was with the drawband. This was properly attached at both ends but the mainspring had sprung, which is mysterious to say the least. Maybe someone had managed to reattach it, but hadn't known to reset the spring first? Not surprisingly, when I took the drawband off at the spring end, the band disintegrated. So I had to jury-rig another one, and after several attempts to prevent it from dropping off when the spring casing moved downwards, I was finally able to get the L.C. Smith typing beautifully:

Not bad for a gorgeous, 81-year-old typewriter that had been thrown away, but is now looking almost like new:

Underwood Typewriter Dating

I spent the best part of eight hours yesterday working on restoring an Underwood standard. I've had the machine for about 10 years now - it has had a very chequered life, even in that time. I've never been able to completely satisfy myself whether it is a Model 5 or 6 (it came to me with no decals at all). And the serial number of 4117741-10 suggests a 6 with a 10-inch carriage and 1932 as the year of production. But yesterday, while taking it completely apart and cleaning it up, I was surprised to notice this date on a metal clasp at one end of the padded typebar rest arc. It clearly states August 18, 1903. Has anyone come across one of these date stamps on a typewriter part before? It's hard to believe a part made in 1903 was still being using on Underwoods almost 30 years later.  Anyway, I'm ploughing on with the restoration today and still weighing up whether to apply another paint job - by my estimation that would be at least its fifth repaint - or leaving it naked. Paint is the preferred option, but we'll see. I'd say that without a doubt it has been "remodelled" at some point; it started out as black, then had a crinkle grey finish and then a light green shade. Watch this space ...
PS: Ted Munk sussed it very quickly. It's the patent date for the Underwood standard typebasket, patented by Louis Myers (later co-founder of Royal). Thank you Ted.

Ongoing Usefulness of Manual Portable Typewriters: Scriptwriting on the Hoof

This video shows the enormously gifted Australian artist Zoë Barry using her young daughter's Brother manual portable typewriter (the "Goldie") to write script notes and cue cards while being driven into Melbourne for the start of a new season of her unique participatory theatre work, The Boy Who Loved Tiny Things.

Zoë is the director of The Boy Who Loved Tiny Things, which celebrates wonder, caretaking and story-making through a mysterious collection of small items. The work was inspired four years ago by a then nine-year-old Minnesota boy, Østen Lowe Burkum, left, who loved to notice, collect and protect tiny things. Østen's father is a well-known musician who met and played with Zoë while touring Australia.

The Australian performance is a collaboration between acclaimed children’s theatre company Drop Bear Theatre, visual arts collective The Seam, and Zoë, and it features an enormous array of precious items. The typewriter, small and light as it is, is not among them.

The "Goldie" was another sort of collaboration - between myself and Zoë's mother, the Canberra jewellery and glass beads maker Harriet Barry, as a birthday gift last year for Harriet's grand-daughter.
Zoë is not just an inimitable cellist and renowned teaching artist and educator, but a musical director and adviser, sound composer and designer, creator and devisor, performance maker and an actor and performer. Such an incredible range of skills - and typewriting on the hoof, too! Wow!

Just two of the cards typed in the car, with the "Goldie" on Zoë's knees.

Zoë has performed with Jon Cale, Meow Meow and Missy Higgins, among many others. She is the solo cellist in Christian Wagstaff and Keith Courtney’s House of Mirrors (see image below). Her performance highlights include seasons at the Lincoln Centre (New York), the John F. Kennedy Centre for The Performing Arts (Washington DC) and the Edinburgh International Festival, as well as tours through Asia, Greece and Russia.

Zoë is a member of the Letter String Quartet, presenting programs of new works for strings and voices and commissioning composers to push the sonic possibilities of the string quartet. Her composition credits include feature films Animals (just announced as screening at the Sundance Film Festival in the US), The Infinite Man and Ukraine is Not a Brothel (Venice Film Festival; winner, Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Best Documentary), co-composed with Jed Palmer.

Zoë, right, at The Boy Who Loved Tiny Things.

Zoë's scores have been heard around the world, from the Sydney Opera House to the National Centre for The Performing Arts, Beijing. Her works continue to tour nationally and internationally. Zoë has also been a teaching artist with The Song Room for 10 years, specialising in creating music and performances with children from trauma backgrounds and those newly settled in Australia. She is director of Harmony in Strings, an innovative program focused on improvisation, composition and joyful music making in Melbourne, and was lead teaching artist, pedagogy and practise, with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s The Pizzicato Effect. To top it all off, she knows how to use a manual portable typewriter.

The cards were handwritten before the typewriter was put into service.