Similar to New Yorker Type:

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/wiescherdesign/new-yorker-type/regular/

Thanks Patty. You saved me going through that again.

- Mike Yanega

Here are the example can anyone help me ID these fonts.

thank you

But might it be based on a old Face? then hand lettered?

You could also try looking in the Serif Font ID Guide, using the key letters. That might show you some typefaces that resemble this lettering. (Hint for using the Guide: use the least ambiguous letters, even if you have samples of other key letters.)

- Mike Yanega

Any body else have suggestions on what font this example is based off?

Just to show that I can be at least as obsessed about these 'quests' as the next person, I went through Mac McGrew's book 'American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century' page by page looking for something that might resemble the last sample in your series, which I will call 'Myrna' thanks to it's distinctive 'y'.

There was only one 'y' that was very close, and that was in the 'ty' ligature for 'Announcement Roman', done in 1916 by Morris Fuller Benton. That was almost its only resemblance to 'Myrna'. It seems the sweepingly curved 'y' was not very common in Twentieth Century metal type.

Secondarily I looked for the odd 'a', which has no serif on the arch, and looks like it is going to tip over to the left. I couldn't find anything very close, although Pencraft and Packard had a little of that feeling, with a sort of blob serif that curls back into the letter. One other somewhat similar 'a' I will mention in a moment.

While I was looking for these other specific letters I also was looking for typefaces that gave a similar 'feel' to 'Myrna', and here is where Goudy comes into it. For one thing Goudy's types often look like hand-lettering that has been cast in metal. For another, he often favors the stepped W, although I'm not sure we have this in the 'Myrna' lettering (it shows up in your other samples over and over though). In particular 'Kennerly Oldstyle' (I've linked to the Lanston version of Kennerley) has the Venetian 'e' and an 'a' that looks like it's tipping over, although it has a straight serif on the arch. Certainly it was around well before this movie was made in 1931. However, it's 'y' is barely curved. 'Goudy 38', done in 1908, also has many of these features and has a more curved 'y'. The R and K are less similar, though.

The typeface that might have been the closest overall also has a Goudy connection. Robert Wiebking was an engraver of Goudy's designs since 1911, and in 1922 he released a design of his own called 'Munder Venezian'. It has the Venetian 'e', a stepped W, a K with the arms meeting below the midpoint on the stem (barely), an 'a' with no serif that leans ever-so-slightly leftward, and a somewhat sweepingly curved 'y', though not nearly as much as in 'Myrna'. (I can post a scan on a web page in a few minutes, but my old Mac cannot post into the thread. Grrrr!)

As far as I know, 'Munder Venezian' has never been digitized.

- Mike Yanega

In answer to your question about how the lettering was done, the simple answer is yes, each title card was done as a one off piece of art. That's the way all display lettering was done when it was done by hand. The point is that there were people who did this for a living -- they were lettering artists, and they were very good at it. Many of today's font designers also got started doing lettering by hand, but the computer gave them a new tool for doing this job, and exactly duplicating each letter. Before computers, film types were made by photographing hand-drawn letters. Before that engravers made the masters for metal type from the hand-drawn lettering of the designer. Before that artists drew all the letters by hand.

There are others here who can probably speak from experience, but I would expect that each artist made himself a set of lettering master alphabets for each lettering style they used. Probably many were copied from existing metal typefaces, or at least influenced by them, but I think it's fair to presume that some of these alphabets were essentially original designs by these artists.

You can see the sample of Munder Venzian I have scanned here.

- Mike Yanega

Welcome to the future, Mike ;P

- Lex