The Museum of Printing in the Movies

“At the end of 2016, we got a call from the 20th Century Fox property department in regards to a movie about newspaper printing in 1971,” MoP President Frank Romano said. “At that time (1971) they were still using a Linotype machine to set a line of type in metal.”

Frank Romano displays an historic front page from The Washington Post

The Museum of Printing had just what was needed to depict the composing rooms of 1971.

In that year, the publishing of classified government documents — the Pentagon Papers — by the New York Times and The Washington Post became top headline news. Steven Spielberg’s film, The Post, starring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, is in theaters now. Some of the equipment used to recreate the hot-metal composition of the time, came from the Museum of Printing — not to mention the Linotype operator and the Bodoni display fonts.

Frank examines the front page in progress in the picture below, taken in the Museum’s composing room.

Frank Romano in composing room

Read Mike Labella’s article in The Eagle Tribune >

Photos by Tim Jean

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