Hi,

I’ve done a poster for a movie recently and the company that takes care of the PR and Communication send me Univers as being the font that is in use at Hollywood for all the informations that are used in the bottom of the poster. So, try Univers (the condensed and compressed versions).

Also the Bee series discussed here
Tim

i belive that the font customarily used for billing blocks is called Bee.

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/urw/bee/

looks like i am 2 minutes too slow!

Let’s be nice and say URW Bee is “inspired” by Univers Ultra Condensed, which incidentally is the typeface you’re looking for.

Previously discussed here.

Looks like its been previously discussed once a month here.

Bee is URW’s name for the old VGC “B” series. These were unnamed fonts that may go back further than Univers, and may have been knock-offs of Photo-Lettering faces. (Unfortunately, it’s difficult to precisely date P-L faces, so I can’t say for sure there was no Univers connection.) VGC had a whole series of fonts that only had a letter-number designation—no name—mostly casual scripts and such, but also sort of generic looking sans serifs, like the B series.

New information about the “B” fonts: They all originated at Filmotype in the 1950s. Each font had a different name that started with a G—Giant, Gaucho, Grant, Gazette, etc. VGC knocked these off in the 1960s (a common practice at the time) as the “B” fonts. In fact, most (if not all) of the unnamed fonts in VGC’s catalog originated at Filmotype. P-L had similar fonts, but not quite the same design.

FYI: The Filmotype library is being digitized.

Edit: I see that some similar information was provided in this thread: http://www.typophile.com/node/10616

A new alternative to Univers Compressed, which you might like, is TypeTrust’s Heroic Condensed.