Opening the Public Domain Vault

Happy days are here again—it’s Public Domain Day! Now, the very idea of public domain is complicated and region-specific. What we’re covering here is solely that in the US, wherein published works become public domain after 95 years and published songs (unless they were written for movies, in which case they follow movie rules) after a century. There are also rules about unpublished writing and art, and there’s this enormous mid-century muddle that I don’t understand fully because I am not merely not a lawyer but definitely not a copyright lawyer. But by and large, today marks the day when the entirety of the 1920s in literature and film comes into public domain.

We’ll start with Popeye, because goodness knows the Public Domain-to-Horror-Schlock pipeline is. He made his first appearance in the Segar comic strip Thimble Theatre in 1929. The strip had been running for ten years at that point—Olive Oyl has been public domain for a while, obviously—and rapidly became about the character intended to be one of many one-shot characters of the series. Now, only the comic character is the one in the public domain. Not the Fleischer cartoons and certainly not the Altman feature. Some of the characters from the comics are and some are not. Proceed with caution.

Tintin, presumably, is even more complicated, not least because the laws are different here than they are in the character’s native Belgium. But I don’t know about the assorted characters who work alongside of him. Snowy, okay, but Captain Haddock and Thompson and Thompson and so forth? No idea. And it’s the character, not even the fully published serial of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, which was released in its entirety in 1930. And I don’t know the history of Belgian translation.

Over in Hollywood, there’s no better time to start introducing people to the Marx Brothers. The Cocoanuts, their first film, is now public domain. Hallelujah, the first major studio release with an all-black cast, and Showboat, though not the later one with Paul Robeson. We’re getting the last handful of silent films and the start of everyone’s first talkies. Blackmail from Alfred Hitchcock. The Wild Party from Clara Bow. The Black Watch from John Ford. Dynamite from Cecil B. DeMille. The first sound films featuring Charlie Chan and Sherlock Holmes and Fu Manchu. (Not, obviously, all in the same movie.) This was the year when Hollywood acknowledged that the change was here to stay.

Disney, long the company pushing the extension of copyright, loses a bit more this year, too. White-gloved Mickey and the first words he said. Horace Horsecollar, who deserves a bit more attention now that he is able to be explored by other people. The first five Silly Symphonies, including “The Skeleton Dance,” will now be available. Most of the cast has a while to go yet, but it’s still something that people were never expecting to happen. The Disney battles haven’t started yet, I suspect, but I think we may start to see those this year, too.

1929 was a busy year in literature, too. Fewer people are celebrating this one, but Ellery Queen enters the public domain today. Albert Campion, a once-popular character created by Margery Allingham and a possible parody of Lord Peter Wimsey. The original serialized version of The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett, and the first English translation of All Quiet on the Western Front were released in 1929. The zombie, the classic Caribbean version, entered literature with The Magic Island, by William Seabrook. The first American “wordless novel,” a sort of predecessor to the modern graphic novel, was 1929’s Gods’ Man, by Lynd Ward. The Sound and the Fury, if you like Faulkner, and A Farewell to Arms, if you like Hemingway. Cup of Gold, the first novel by Steinbeck.

Meanwhile some stone-cold classic songs were written in 1929. “Singin’ in the Rain.” “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” The original composition of An American in Paris and Ravel’s Boléro, which I’ve just learned included scoring for an instrument that has never existed. (A sopranino saxophone in F.) Now, as a reminder, it’s only the songs themselves—you can tiptoe through the tulips all you want now, but not the Tiny Tim version. In recordings, however, we’re starting to see some of them break the century that their copyrights are held for. With apologies to my high school California history teacher, you can now listen to the original Jolson recording of “California, Here I Come.” At least you can make it better with the original recording of Rhapsody in Blue?

With visual art, it gets ridiculously complicated, because “published” is a tricky term in art. It’s not a pipe, but it may or may not be under copyright, is what I’m saying. But definitely works by Dalí and Hopper, Escher and Kandinsky. (It’s a big year for Dalí, as “Un Chien Andalou” enters the public domain in the US as well.) I’m not an art historian; we do have one of those around here, though, and you’d have to ask her for more about this. Even though I know the ‘20s are not her era.

We are just scraping the surface here. 1929 was a rich year, a year of enormous change in the US. We will be diving into the art of the Great Depression soon, the Roaring Twenties now behind us except in music because why should things be simple. Pandora’s Box was released in Germany. The Three Masks, France’s first sound film. But then there was a movie called The White Hell of Pitz Palu, starring an actress who would later go on to direct propaganda films of great artistic ability and less-than-great subject matter. On With the Show was not merely a talking film but in color. Comedy was talking and movies were singing. It’s an extraordinary world and one to explore, now freely.