A few years ago I did volunteer work at a really horrible, rinky-dink low power station. As a way of improving the variety of programming, I would sometimes bring in public domain films on which I had researched the copyright status. (I am an attorney).
One month the retired priest who managed the station gave up on scheduling programming altogether. The station carried Mother Angelica’s cable station throughout the day anyway, and only did its own scheduling from 6:00 until 10:00 each night. He announced “pot luck programming” and let volunteers pick their own shows, with the only stipulation being that we run The Rosary at the beginning and end of the four hour period.
Other people limited themselves to the small collection of movies and inspirational tapes in the station library. I decided to do my own research and see what I could pick up at video stores.
One night I ran a color Max Fleischer Popeye cartoon, and a Max Fleischer Superman cartoon, followed by an episode of Colonel March of Scotland Yard with Boris Karloff and guest star Arthur Hill. That brought us about to 7:00 (nothing was running according to a strict clock), and I ran one of the Sherlock Holmes films with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce which is in the public domain. (Not all of the films in the series are.)
Then I filled in the time left until 9:00 with short subjects. I don’t remember which they were that particular night; I might have run a World War II training film on how to tell a Corsair from a Zero–Ronald Reagan played a pilot who nearly shoots down one of our own planes. Or I may have run The All Star Bond Rally, a short in which Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and others make a pitch for war bonds. Around 9:00 I switched to an old Bishop Sheen lecture as a lead-in to The Rosary.
There are certain films which are used so often on small stations and PBS affiliates and they acquire a kind of public domain “smell”. It’s a Wonderful Life used to be regarded as being in the public domain, which is why it was shown on so many channels so often. In recent years Spelling Entertainment has claimed to have a valid copyright on it, and has cowed stations into not running it out of fear of lawsuits. So far as I know, the matter has still not been definitively resolved.
As this suggests, copyright status is not always a black and white issue. Examples of outstanding films which are regularly treated as being in the public domain without contoorversy resulting are Charade, the Alfred Hitchcock versions of The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, The Third Man, Things to Come, Royal Wedding and the Bette Davis version of Of Human Bondage. There are also a great many old, obscure B-movies, especially schlocky horror films and, as suggested above, a great many short subjects. These include some of the Our Gang, and a very few of The Three Stooges, such as the one where the parrot gets loose in a court room.
One easy way to get a “heads up” on films which may be in the public domain and which might be worth researching is to look at the really cheap video tapes on display at a drugstore. For instance, last week I stumbled on King of the Zombies with Mantan Moreland at my local Walgreen’s. On the box it listed the 1940s copyright and no renewal. Often such videos have a later copyright date but it is specifically for the package design. On the other hand, occasionally unscrupulous distributors will sometimes put a fake copyright date on a public domain film.
There are also distributors who sell packages of public domain films on which they have superimposed a logo in the lower right-hand corner, thereby giving protection to that particular copy of the movie. There is a religious station in St. Louis run by a minister for whom I used to work. A sincere guy, he is nevertheless dumber than toast. He persists in paying for such movies when he could simply rent them from Blockbuster. Movies of this sort he’s run recently inlcude the old Peter Sellers comedy The Smallest Show on Earth and Catterpiller Tractors with Joe E. Brown.
A very good way to get a list of public domain movies is to check out the website of one or more of the distributors who specializes in such material. Two which come readily to mind at Fes Films and Desert Island Films.
As you can see by examining such sites, there are also old TV shows in the public domain. Often these are individual episodes of a series which is otherwise protected. Examples include include episodes of Ozzie and Harriet and Gunsmoke. Sometimes in stores I see episodes of The Andy Griffith Show for sale which have a note on the package saying that the theme music is omitted. That’s because the theme song is still under copyright, even though that particular episode isn’t. Similarly, you can sometimes pick up cheap collections of Warner Brothers cartoons which don’t have “When the Merry-go-round Broke Down” playing at the start.