Hollywood Revue JNL gets its design inspiration and name from a vintage movie poster for "The Hollywood Revue of 1929". The letter style shows early Art Deco influences, yet the hand lettering was done in the late 1920s toward the end of the Art Nouveau period. MGM produced this early "talkie" all-star musical with a cast that included Jack Benny, John Gilbert, Conrad Nagel, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Polly Moran and many others. This is the motion picture where Cliff ("Ukelele Ike") Edwards introduced "Singin' in the Rain" (composed by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown). Years later, Freed was a producer at MGM and gathered up many of the songs he and Brown wrote during the 1920s to form the musical core of the 1952 Gene Kelly-Debbie Reynolds-Donald O'Conner musical "Singin' in the Rain".

A cardboard stencil toy for children from the late 1950's or early 1960's was the inspiration for Study Hall JNL, part of a series of stencil revival fonts from Jeff Levine.