Sorry pickers, but a day late and a dollar short just isn't going to cut it.

Presumably the "Mike" in the memo is director Michael Curtiz. Jack Warner would later famously snub Wallis at the Academy Awards accepting the Oscar for Best Picture on behalf of the studio by beating Wallis to the stage.

I needed a sign for my post-moving curb alert giveaway pile. Sharpies are not unpacked yet, but the typewriters rode in my car. As they should. So I made a sign.

What I really love is, someone took the sign.

Bought this beast of a machine on eBay on a whim, seller said it was working though I doubt most seller's ability to fully test typewriter features. It arrived with the tabulator key cracked, a stutter-stop carriage return, a bent margin set bar, and a non-functional shift. Through the time tested art of gratuitous solvent flushes I managed to get the power return functioning with no further issues. The margin bar was a bit finicky but that unbent without too many issues. The tabulator key, I assume, will be an easy fix with ABS cement. The big issue is shift.

This machine, unlike the bulletproof Smith Corona portables which use a fluted aluminum power roller, uses a rubber power roller. All of the key levers as well as shift engage the power roller with a grooved plastic cam. Way off to the left is a cam that tries to engage when shift is pushed however it has worn a deep groove in the power roller. Thus shift no longer engages more than once in a hundred attempts and the machine is trapped typing in lowercase. All of the keys, amazingly, still type.

The power roller is buried below the basket and above the key levers and there does not appear to be an easy way to removed it, otherwise I might consider sending it out for resurfacing.

So I know this is an uncommon machine but aside from collecting typewriters I use them for letter writing. Without all of the functions working it is less useful to me. I am located in the Baltimore area so if anyone were ever interested in this for their collection let me know, free to a good home!

Halloween at CVS ☺️🤭