In the 1949 Paramount comedy “My Friend Irma” (a film based on the popular radio series that introduced America to Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis), an opening gag set-up involving excavation work utilizes street barricades which inspired Work Crew Stencil JNL.

Placed along the site, different advisories are stenciled upon barricades warning of the work in progress. The scatterbrained Irma (Marie Wilson) walks straight through the construction, oblivious as to what’s going on around her and steps right into the open hole dug into the sidewalk (a scene she reprises in 1950’s “My Friend Irma Goes West”).