The Royal KMG Standard Typewriters of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

The Stanley Kramer comedy classic film It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (United Artists, 1963) has a handful of Royal KMG typewriters featured in the office settings at police stations throughout the film. The KMG was Royal’s top-of-the-line office standard machine and was manufactured from 1949 to 1952 before being replaced by the Royal HH (1952 to 1957) and the Royal FP (1957to 1962). By the time the film premiered in November of 1963, the newest desktop manual would have been the Royal Empress (1962-1966).

The featured Royal KMG of the film sits in the center of Capt. T. G. Culpeper’s (portrayed by Spencer Tracy) squad room and another appears in the background there.

Another Royal KMG appears in the sheriff’s office of Crockett Country with the Sheriff portrayed by well known character actor Andy Devine.

Andy Devine as the old sheriff with bushy gray eyebrows and a reddish face is on a black rotary desk phone in his office as a closely cropped deputy sits behind him at a desk where we see the left side of a gray Royal KMG typewriter in the background.

Of tangential note, comedian and writer Carl Reiner, who portrays the tower controller at Rancho Conejo at which Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett attempt to land their airplane, is known to have have used a Royal KMG, though one doesn’t appear in any of his scenes in the air traffic control tower.