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Fire Sale opening titles

Contributed by Florian Hardwig on Oct 9th, 2023. Artwork published in .
Fire Sale opening titles 1
Source: archive.org License: All Rights Reserved.

Fire Sale is a 1977 screwball comedy film based on a novel by Robert Klane (1941–2023) and directed by Alan Arkin (1934–2023). I haven’t watched it, and judging from the scathing reviews quoted on Wikipedia, it looks like I didn’t miss out. I’m posting it here because the opening titles use Filmotype Newton. I haven’t seen a full glyph set for this early 1960s phototype design yet, and the titles feature a whole lot more text than other uses. Apart from a few biform alternates for a e i, Newton didn’t include lowercase characters. The text in lowercase is added in the stylistically related Ad Lib.

Fire Sale opening titles 2
Source: archive.org License: All Rights Reserved.
Fire Sale opening titles 3
Source: archive.org License: All Rights Reserved.
Fire Sale opening titles 4
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Fire Sale opening titles 5
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Fire Sale opening titles 6
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Fire Sale opening titles 7
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Fire Sale opening titles 8
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Fire Sale opening titles 9
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Fire Sale opening titles 10
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Fire Sale opening titles 11
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Typefaces

  • Filmotype Newton
  • Ad Lib

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16 Comments on “Fire Sale opening titles”

  1. I want the Filmotype Newton font to be digitized.

  2. I second that sentiment! You should direct your request at Stuart Sandler of Font Diner, who holds the rights to the Filmotype assets.

  3. I haven’t seen the glyphs of the Filmotype Newton font.

  4. As chance would have it, I came across a full glyph set recently. I can make a scan in January and share it here, if you’re interested. In the meantime, here’s a one-line sample.

  5. It’s January 1st. So, you can make a scan and share it here?

  6. LOL, no. I didn’t spend New Year’s Day in the studio. But now I can share the scan here.

    I misremembered: it’s not a glyph set for Newton, but rather for Mason. The two typefaces are basically identical in design apart from the width: you can come fairly close to Newton by stretching Mason to around 135% of its width.

  7. You would revive the Filmotype Mason font.

  8. Does anyone know what are the fonts that are being used in this 1966 movie “The Big T.N.T. Show”?

    Also for the opening credits I think they used Filmotype Madison and Ad Lib

  9. Here’s the picture for the movie poster

  10. I don’t know off the top of my head, sorry. The bold sans with vertical contrast is similar to Matterhorn and the other sans on the sticks of dynamite is in the ballpark of Catalina. Not sure if the outlined and shaded “TNT” is lettering or type – Forum II is a typeface with similar features. “The All-Time Greats” is in bold condensed Venus.

    Fonts In Use isn’t meant to be a type ID board. Also, this poster isn’t really related to the Fire Sale opening titles. Why don’t you post your question to the fontid.co forum? And once you know (some of the) typeface names, you can submit a post to Fonts In Use.

  11. I know this is not related to Fire Sale, but in that movie from 1966, they used Ad Lin in the opening and ending credits

  12. This album looks like it’s using Filmotype Newton

  13. In the 1971 film Play Misty For Me, Filmotype Mason was used in the opening credits of the movie (Filmotype Newton’s wide companion).

  14. I will request Stuart Sandler to digitize the Filmotype Newton font.

  15. I really want to use the Filmotype Newton font.

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