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In the Betty Boop musical that was recently on Broadway, the titular cartoon character’s arrival in the real world was greeted with a headline on the front page of The New York Times: “BETTY BOOP IN NYC.”
The fake front page, which an associate scenic designer, TJ Greenway, helped create for the production, is one of dozens of fake New York Times pages that have shown up in films, TV shows and stages over the past century.
Sure, it would be easy enough to break news in a New York paper with a fictional name. But for decades, designers have set out to replicate The Times’s instantly recognizable logo and typeface.
Perhaps surprisingly, one does not necessarily need permission from the real New York Times to produce such original, editorial creations. Certain uses may sometimes be protected under the First Amendment — provided they are not so-called trademark uses, suggestive of endorsement, or deceptive or damaging to the newspaper, according to Simone Procas, a lawyer for The Times. (And The Times enforces its intellectual property rights when appropriate, she added.)
Here are seven memorable Times cameos onstage and onscreen from the past few decades.
‘Boop! The Musical’ (2025)
The Tony-nominated musical, which closed in July, found the animated character escaping her black-and-white universe for the real world. The show’s creative team started with the layout of a real New York Times front page from 2023, the year that the original Chicago production of “Boop!” began performances. The designers then slotted in a new headline and a photo of the character beside another story — which, it turned out, was about President Donald J. Trump being indicted as he ran for re-election.
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