Hot Type Summer
Recently I was browsing old copies of the Times-Picayune, trying to track down an editorial deploring the fast habits of lady hand-colorists.1 Apparently these women liked to hit the saloon after coloring in their daily quota of illustrations, back in the days when humans did this work for book publishers instead of machines. I didn’t find the article (still looking) but I stumbled across this photograph instead:
That’s 18-year-old Daisy Lesage, freshly crowned in her newsprint cap as Miss Printer’s Devil New Orleans, 1958.2
Miss what now?
It turns out that Miss Printer’s Devil pageants were held across the United States during the 1940 and ’50s, and not just in party-loving cities like New Orleans. A casual search reveals Devils such as Edith Smith of North Hollywood, Miss Printer’s Devil 1959, shown below standing next to a typesetting machine while balancing atop vertiginous heels; or Cini Hall of Cambridge, MA, whose “prize” as Miss Printer’s Devil 1950 was sitting behind a receptionist’s desk for three days during the Massachusetts Printing Week Expo.3 In some cities, the competition was as hot as the lead slugs off the Linotype machines. Ms. Lesage won out over “five other attractive contestants”; four years earlier, eight women had vied for the New Orleans title.4
Though it’s still not clear to me who originated the competition (or what it involved—was there a talent portion? questions? typesetting in bathing suits?), newspaper coverage indicates that Miss Printer Devils usually reigned over celebrations of International Printing Week.5 The IPW was established by the International Association of Printing House Craftsmen in 1944 and takes place around famed American printer Benjamin Franklin’s January 17 birthday. Today’s celebrations of Printing Week tend to be small and conference-like, but during the mid-twentieth century printing was big business, and the IPW accordingly grand and flashy. National Miss Printer’s Devils appointed by the Printing Industries Association of America include well-known actresses such as Virginia Mayo (1949), Doris Day (1950), and Joan Weldon, whose 1954 press photo shows her bursting through a sheet of newsprint while wearing a low-cut halter dress, the print shop’s answer to a dancer emerging from a cake.6
The message behind the bombshell sexiness of these photos isn’t subtle: the printing industry is a place for men. Never mind that women operated Linotype machines and checked proofs and established the first printing press in what would become the United States. It’s lusty Ben Franklin who anchors Printing Week, not Elizabeth Glover.
This sidelining of women is implicit in the name, too: Miss Printer’s Devil. “Printer’s devils” were apprentices, ink-covered young boys who ran errands and sorted pied type. Franklin was a printer’s devil. So was Mark Twain. Being a printer’s devil is where great men start, not end. To be Miss Printer’s Devil is to be relegated to a state of perpetual ignorance. Here, sweetie, let me show you how it’s done. One gets the feeling that Ronnie Wilson, Harbor Junior College printing major, has just said something similar to Joanne Sullivan in this 1953 photo:
Wilson and Sullivan, Harbor Junior College’s “Miss Printer's Devil,” pose here as part of an announcement for the college’s inaugural Printer’s banquet and ball.7 Two of the photos that accompany the announcement are like this, with Wilson hovering uncomfortably close to Sullivan as she presses Linotype keys and models a newsprint shirt that I now covet. But there’s another, third image in the sequence—one I like much better:
Here, the ogling Wilson is gone; it’s just Sullivan, looking out over trays of cast blocks. Maybe she’s bored, or fed up with the photo shoot. Or maybe she’s planning her next move, silently rewriting a line of type and thinking about what she’d do if she had the presses to herself. What would she say to Elizabeth Glover? Would she get along with the raucous hand-colorists from nineteenth-century New Orleans?
It’s in this spirit that I present Ms. Printer’s Devil, an occasional series that takes on print history with a feminist lens. I’ve hesitated to share this material, wanting time to conduct more research and to present something more complete. Daisy Lesage, the 1958 Miss Printer’s Devil, was a draftswoman for a steamship firm.8 I imagine she was no stranger to technical detail, but what did she know about printing? what was her connection to the New Orleans print community? I don’t know, at least not yet. But I’ve decided I’d rather get her story circulating than hoard it for myself. Perhaps, if I’m lucky, you know the rest of it, and will feel inspired to share and to seek out other stories like hers.
This summer I’ll also be chronicling my progress restoring a 1950s Kelsey 5x8 press, formerly owned by my mother (hi mom), who learned to print at the Mills College Eucalyptus Press, itself an important site for the history of women in the book arts. That’s a story for another time, though—one with a lot more lead and machinery and other things that young misses aren’t supposed to touch.
Until then,
Ms. Printer’s Devil
I became aware of this anecdote thanks to Paul Dijstelberge’s message to the SHARP listserv on May 2, 2021.
“Miss Printer’s Devil Crowned,” Times-Picayune, November 23, 1957.
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN), January 9, 1959; Typographical Journal vol. 116-17 (1950): 104.
“Miss Printer’s Devil Crowned”; “Title is Awarded to Miss Courtney,” Times-Picayune, December 15, 1954.
The accounts I’ve uncovered so far suggest that Miss Printer’s Devils were invariably young and white, though I’m still looking for different faces in the archives. While I’d assume Printing Week celebrations were segregated in 1950s New Orleans, were they really? What other kinds of printing celebrations went on in the city, which has historically fostered a robust tradition of Black newspapers?
American Printer and Lithographer, vol, 128-29 (1949): 69; Boxoffice, January 21, 1950, 49; “Miss Printer’s Devil,” Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), January 17, 1954.
Gershon, “Miss Printer's Devil,” 1953, Los Angeles Examiner Photographs Collection, USC Libraries Special Collections.
“Miss Printer’s Devil Crowned.”