A 1950 spoken-word album by Decca Records containing vinyl record interpretations of two Christmas stories by Charles Dickens: “A Christmas Carol”, directed by George Wells and featuring Ronald Colman as Scrooge, and “Mr. Pickwick’s Christmas”, with narration by Charles Laughton.

For the titles of the stories, the elusive Streamline Block unexpectedly makes an appearance for “A Christmas Carol”, while Warren Chappell's Lydian is used for “Mr. Pickwick’s Christmas”, under which the similar Valiant can be seen for Charles Laughton's name. The secondary text is set in Futura and its condensed style (or, perhaps, a local copy of the same typeface.)

[More info on Discogs]

The opening titles to Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983) use a serif typeface of unclear origin. It appears to be a version of Marquis. Or maybe a different interpretation of the same unidentified historical source, which could be a metal typeface or a lettering model from the late 19th century.

Marquis is shown in the 1968 catalog of Photoscript, a London-based typesetting studio. As one of only a few faces, it’s marked with a copyright symbol, possibly indicating an original design, or an exclusive phototype adaptation. It reappears in the supplement to Phil’s Photo catalog (2nd edition, 1985), now spelled Manquis. In 2012, Claude Pelletier made a digitization named ManquisCP, which is probably based on the showing by Phil’s.

The titling face in the animation featurette is different from Manquis in several details. A is wider and has a cyma, i.e. a sort of wavy, detached swash that helps to texture the whitespace to the left of the letter. The bottom serif in S and the top serifs in M are double-sided, the middle serifs in W don’t meet, the height of the R leg is less suppressed, G doesn’t have a bar to the left, etc. The downward bulge in the bars of A and H can be found both in Manquis and the version used here. This detail references (neo-)Romanesque lettering.

CP259, fourth printing (60¢)

Hey, if Milton Glaser wasn’t above using the quirky italic with horizontal stress that is Crayonette, you can use it, too!

David Jonathan Ross just released his revival of the 19th-century novelty face as August’s installment of the Font of the Month Club. If you join today, you’ll get a copy, too. Crayonette DJR “retains the key features and proportions of the original, but improves its spacing and tames a few of the wilder letterforms.” While DJR has drawn a more conventional ‘k’, the original unruly glyph as seen in “Dickens” is available as alternate in Stylistic Set 03.

CQ514 (95¢)

451 CJ1335 ($1.95)