Celebrating Public Domain Day January 1, 2025

On January 1 of each year, some copyrighted works fall into the public domain. That means, they are free for use, copying and as a basis for derivative works. Works created before 1929 are now in the public domain. Thousands of works spanning all copyright categories make up the Public Domain Class of 2025. Members of the Public Domain Class of 2025 have cultural significance spanning from notable novels to music you may have thought was already in the public domain. Here are some notable graduates. 

Books and Plays:

• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
• A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
• The Roman Hat Mystery by Ellery Queen - the very first Ellery Queen mystery
• Tarzan and the Lost Empire by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• Rope by Patrick Hamilton (This play that was later adapted into the 1948 Alfred Hitchcock movie which was his first collaboration with Jimmy Stewart)
• Agatha Christie, Seven Dials Mystery
• Robert Graves, Good-bye to All That (Robert Graves also wrote I Claudius and Claudius the God which were made into a Masterpiece Theater series starring, inter alia, Derek Jacobi in the title role, Patrick Stewart,  Sian Phillips as a very wicked Livia, Brian Blessed, John Hurt, as a totally psycho Caligula, and John Rhys-Davies, which is worth checking out if you haven’t already)
• E. B. White and James Thurber, Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do

Films:

• Disney Company has a big cache of works now in the public domain including 12 more Mickey Mouse cartoons, the first 6 Silly Symphony cartoons and 17 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons (See figurine created by the artist, Britto. Oswald was Disney’s first popular animated character and he lost the copyright in a contract dispute. The loss of Oswald prompted the creation of Mickey Mouse.  Disney reacquired the Oswald copyrights in 2006). Warning: Disney still owns a lot of copyrights and trademarks that make using a Disney work full of land mines
• The Cocoanuts, directed by Robert Florey and Joseph Santley (the first Marx Brothers feature film)
• The Broadway Melody, directed by Harry Beaumont (winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture)
• The Hollywood Revue of 1929, directed by Charles Reisner (featuring the song “Singin’ in the Rain”)
• Blackmail, directed by Alfred Hitchcock (Hitchcock’s first sound film)
• Hallelujah, directed by King Vidor (one of the first films from a major studio with an all African-American cast)
• The Wild Party, directed by Dorothy Arzner (Clara Bow’s first “talkie” and if you don’t know who Clara Bow was, she was “The IT Girl” who was recently featured in Taylor Swift’s album “The Tortured Poets Department")
• On With the Show, directed by Alan Crosland (the first all-talking, all-color, feature-length film)
• Show Boat, directed by Harry A. Pollard (adaptation of the novel by Edna Ferber and the ground breaking Broadway musical by Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern)
• The Black Watch, directed by John Ford (Ford’s first sound film)
• Dynamite, directed by Cecil B. DeMille (DeMille's first sound film)
• Toad of Toad Hall by A. A. Milne

Characters:

• Tin Tin (from The Adventures of Tin Tin) debuted in a newspaper comic in January 1929.
• Popeye, who first appeared in the Thimble Theater newspaper comic strip in January 1929.

Musical Compositions:

• Singin’ in the Rain, lyrics by Arthur Freed, music by Nacio Herb Brown
• Ain’t Misbehavin’, lyrics by Andy Paul Razaf, music by Thomas W. (“Fats”) Waller & Harry Brooks (from the musical Hot Chocolates)
• An American in Paris, George Gershwin
• Boléro, Maurice Ravel
• (What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue, lyrics by Andy Paul Razaf, music by Thomas W. “Fats” Waller & Harry Brooks (a song about racial injustice from the musical Hot Chocolates)
• Tiptoe Through the Tulips, lyrics by Alfred Dubin, music by Joseph Burke (Later brought back to life in 1968 by Tiny Tim and if you don’t know who he was check him out on YouTube)
• Happy Days Are Here Again, lyrics by Jack Yellen, music by Milton Ager (the theme song for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential campaign)

Sound Recordings:

• My Way's Cloudy, recorded by Marian Anderson
• Rhapsody in Blue, recorded by George Gershwin (You can find versions with George Gershwin at the piano on YouTube)
• Shreveport Stomp, recorded by Jelly Roll Morton
• Krooked Blues, recorded by King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band featuring Louis Armstrong
• It Had To Be You, recorded by the Isham Jones Orchestra and by Marion Harris
• California Here I Come, recorded by Al Jolson

Why do we honor Public Domain Day?

Copyright protection lasts a long time. That’s great for the artists and authors. While a work is covered by copyright, the owner has the right to restrict the copying, distribution, performance and use of the work as a basis for derivative works. Once a work goes into the public domain, it becomes a new source for creativity with no strings attached.