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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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6 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.

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