The Penrith Museum of Print and its Linotype operator John Berry have a starring role in the new Australian move Ladies in Black.
In the brand-new movie by Bruce Beresford. and just being released in mainstream cinemas, Berry plays a starring role - well his hands do - as a Linotype operator ostensibly in the Fairfax building in Ultimo, back in the 1960s (when they had 160 Linotypes).
The five minute sequence was actually filmed in the Museum in Penrith. According to industry identity James Cryer the star man John is now demanding his own dressing-room and chauffeur, and claims to be fighting off offers from Hollywood.
The Linotype was invented by German New York resident Ottmar Mergenthaler, and can fairly be described as one of the most disruptive technologies in the history of print, ending the 400-year-old hand compositing trade.
The machine - first installed by the New York Tribune - was arguably the most complicated mechanical contraption ever devised. The world's greatest inventor Thomas Edison described it as 'the eighth wonder of the world'.
Ladies in Black is set in Sydney in 1959 and revolves around about the trials and tribulations of a group of female department store employees.