Written by AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalston
Beginning in 2025, Tintin can travel freely and Popeye can punch without authorization. On January 1, a number of intellectual properties in the United States became public domain, including the two iconic comic characters that debuted in 1929. This implies that they can be utilized and repurposed without the owners’ consent or payment.
The historic atmosphere of Mickey Mouse’s debut into the public sphere last year is absent from this year’s crop of recently released artistic works. However, they contain a wealth of canonical works whose copyright maximums are set to expire in 95 years. Additionally, the Disney icon’s visibility in the public domain grows.
What a treasure! According to Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, he wears the well-known white gloves and talks for the first time in a dozen new Mickey cartoons. Faulkner and Hemingway’s classics, Alfred Hitchcock, Cecil B. DeMille, and John Ford’s first sound movies, and George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Fats Waller’s magnificent music are all included. Quite thrilling!
A deeper look at this year’s crop is provided here.
With his fondness for fistfights, mealy-mouthed speech, and protruding forearms, Popeye the Sailor was created by E.C. Segar and originally appeared in the newspaper strip Thimble Theater in 1929. When questioned if he was a sailor, he said, “Ja think I’m a cowboy?” The comic would be renamed Popeye, and what was initially intended to be a one-time cameo turned into a permanent one.
However, as with Mickey Mouse last year and Winnie the Pooh 2022, reuse is only permitted for the earliest version. It is the kind of character trait that could lead to legal challenges because the spinach that gave the sailor his super-strength was absent from the beginning. Additionally, the animated cartoons with his unique mumbly voice didn’t start until 1933 and are still protected by copyright. As does the 1980 film directed by Robert Altman, which starred Shelley Duvallas as his frequently fought-over sweetheart Olive Oyl and Robin Williams as Popeye.
At first, that film was met with a lackluster reception. So was 2011’s Adventures of Tintin, directed by Steven Spielberg. However, during the majority of the 20th century, the Belgian artist Herg’s comics about the young reporter that served as its inspiration were among the most well-liked in Europe.
First featured in a supplement to the Belgian daily Le Vingti me Si cle, the plainly sketched teenager with ocean wave-like bangs and dots for eyes eventually became a weekly fixture.
In 1929, the comic also made its debut in the United States. Its characteristic vivid hues, like as Tintin’s red hair, didn’t emerge until years later and might, like Popeye’s spinach, be the focus of legal problems.
Additionally, Tintin won’t be considered public property in many parts of the world until 70 years after his creator’s death in 1983.
The works that are being made available to the public this year resemble the course material for a seminar on American literature.
With its modernist stream-of-consciousness style, The Sound and the Fury is perhaps William Faulkner’s defining work. Despite being notoriously challenging for readers, it caused a sensation when it was first published. It would contribute to Faulkner’s Nobel Prize and recount the story of a renowned family’s collapse in his home state of Mississippi through a number of non-linear novellas.
Alongside his earlier work, The Sun Also Rises, in the public domain is Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway’s place in the canon of American literature was solidified by his mostly autobiographical account of an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I. It has been widely adapted for radio, television, and film, all of which are now permitted without authorization.
The 1929 book A Cup of Gold, written by John Steinbeck, will also become public knowledge.
The list also includes Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, a lengthy essay by the modernist literary great that would go down in feminism history. Her book Mrs. Dalloway is already in the public domain in the United States.
For the time being, early works by significant figures from the not-always-stellar early sound era will have to do, even if a number of truly significant films will be released in the upcoming ten years.
Ten years before to his transfer to Hollywood and his work on films like Vertigo and Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock produced Blackmail in Britain. Originally intended to be silent, the movie changed to sound during production, creating two distinct versions, one of which was Hitchcock’s first sound picture and the first in the UK.
The Black Watch, an adventure epic from 1929 that stars Ford’s future key collaborator John Wayne as a young extra, was also John Ford’s first step into sound. His later Westerns would place him among the most renowned directors in cinema.
Having already established himself as a major player in Hollywood with silent films, Cecil B. DeMille made his first talkie with the melodrama Dynamite.
In 1929, Groucho, Harpo, and the other Marx Brothers starred in their debut motion picture, The Cocoanuts, which served as a precursor to later masterpieces like Animal Crackers and Duck Soup.
Although it is frequently regarded as one of the worst best picture winners, The Broadway Melody, the first sound picture and the second movie to ever win the Oscar for best picture—known at the time as excellent production—will also be made public.
Additionally, a dozen more of Steamboat Willie’s animations, including The Karnival Kid, where he made his first public appearance, will receive the same recognition when he made the first Mickey Mouse.
Also on the verge of becoming public property are songs from the final year of the Roaring Twenties.
The compositions of Cole Porter What Is This Thing Called Love? Highlights include the jazz classic Ain’t Misbehavin, composed by Fats Waller and Harry Brooks, as well as Tiptoe Through the Tulips.
The song “Singin’ in the Rain,” which would later be inextricably linked to the Gene Kelly film in 1952, first appeared in the 1929 film The Hollywood Revue and is now in the public domain.
Sound recordings are governed by several regulations; the most recent ones to enter the public domain were made in 1924. Among these are recordings of Rhapsody in Blue by its composer George Gershwin and Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen by future singer and civil rights icon Marian Anderson.
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