Early Hitchcock and Disney films, song 'Singin' in the Rain,' “A Farewell to Arms”, and more enter public domain in 2025

1929: the year Popeye made his comic strip debut, Mickey Mouse uttered his first word, and Ernest Hemingway published the landmark novel A Farewell to Arms.

As of January 1, 2025, a wide range of 1929 artworks have officially entered the public domain, including motion pictures, books, newspapers and periodicals, lectures and sermons, maps, musical compositions, works of fine art, and more.

Among the thousands of titles celebrating copyright expiration, now free and fair to copy, circulate, and expand upon, are The Karnival Kid, the first Walt Disney short in which Mickey Mouse speaks; Blackmail, Alfred Hitchcock's first sound film; The Wild Party, Clara Bow's first talkie; and G.W. Pabst's groundbreaking silent epic Pandora's Box. And those are just the movies.

Related: The Great Gatsby and other works from 1925 are now public domain

Original creative works enter the public domain immediately if they are not protected by an intellectual property right, also known as a copyright. The copyrights for most creative works run 95 years, while some copyrights run shorter, and some extend to 100, like those on many audio recordings.

Still, this year's new class includes some iconic compositions, including Arthur Freed's song "Singin’ in the Rain," which he later helped develop into the beloved Hollywood musical. There's also George Gershwin's "symphonic poem" "An American in Paris," which was later developed into the Academy Award-winning film; Maurice Ravel's "Boléro"; and "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" by Alfred Dubin and Joseph Burke, which got new life via the use of Tiny Tim's version in the 2010 horror film Insidious.

As for books, there's a trifecta of classroom classics entering the public domain this year: William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, and Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. Faulkner's chronicle of the dissolution of a genteel Southern family has already been adapted into two films, as has Hemingway's WWI romance. Now, admirers of all three texts need not proceed through the various authors' estates to secure the rights to remix, remake, or reimagine the works.

Hollywood favorite Dashiell Hammett has two books entering the public domain this year: Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon. John Steinbeck's first novel, Cup of Gold, is also on the list, alongside Patrick Hamilton's play Rope, which Hitchcock later developed into his 1948 film of the same name. Agatha Christie's Seven Dials Mystery is also available to adapt.

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Hundreds more films are now available for experimentation and reinterpretation, including the Marx Brothers first feature, The Cocoanuts; Walt Disney's iconic "The Skeleton Dance" animation; and King Vidor's Hallelujah, which features one of the first all-Black casts in film history.

The nascent motion picture industry was in the midst of the monumental transition from silent to sound film, and traces of the effort can be glimpsed all over the public domain registry. From Harold Lloyd's first sound comedy Welcome Danger, to John Ford's first sound film The Black Watch, to Buster Keaton's last silent feature, Spite Marriage. The first sound film to win the Oscar for Best Picture, the musical The Broadway Melody, is also on the list.

Related: Mickey Mouse horror movie trailer drops after character enters public domain

The Center for the Study of Public Domain at Duke University Law School lists the artworks entering the public domain:

Books and Plays
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon (as serialized in Black Mask magazine)
John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold
Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica
Oliver La Farge, Laughing Boy: A Navajo Love Story
Patrick Hamilton, Rope
Arthur Wesley Wheen, the first English translation of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Agatha Christie, Seven Dials Mystery
Robert Graves, Good-bye to All That
E. B. White and James Thurber, Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (only the original German version, Briefe an einen jungen Dichter)
Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Morals
Ellery Queen (Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee), The Roman Hat Mystery

Films
A dozen more Mickey Mouse animations (including Mickey’s first talking appearance in The Karnival Kid)
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”)
The Skeleton Dance, directed by Walt Disney and animated by Ub Iwerks (the first Silly Symphony short from Disney)
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”)
Welcome Danger, directed by Clyde Bruckman and Malcolm St. Clair (the first full-sound comedy starring Harold Lloyd)
On With the Show, directed by Alan Crosland (the first all-talking, all-color, feature-length film)
Pandora's Box (Die Büchse der Pandora), directed by G.W. Pabst|
Show Boat, directed by Harry A. Pollard (adaptation of the novel and musical)
The Black Watch, directed by John Ford (Ford’s first sound film)
Spite Marriage, directed by Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton (Keaton’s final silent feature)
Say It with Songs, directed by Lloyd Bacon (follow-up to The Jazz Singer and The Singing Fool)
Dynamite, directed by Cecil B. DeMille (DeMille's first sound film)
Gold Diggers of Broadway, directed Roy Del Ruth

Characters
E. C. Segar, Popeye (in “Gobs of Work” from the Thimble Theatre comic strip)
Hergé (Georges Remi), Tintin (in “Les Aventures de Tintin” from the magazine Le Petit Vingtième)

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
"Happy Days Are Here Again," lyrics by Jack Yellen, music by Milton Ager (the theme song for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential campaign)
"What Is This Thing Called Love?," by Cole Porter (from Porter’s musical Wake Up and Dream)
"Am I Blue?," lyrics by Grant Clarke, music by Harry Akst
"You Were Meant for Me," lyrics by Arthur Freed, music by Nacio Herb Brown
"Honey," lyrics and music by Seymour Simons, Haven Gillespie, and Richard A. Whiting
"Waiting for a Train," lyrics and music by Jimmie Rodgers

Sound Recordings from 1924
"My Way's Cloudy," recorded by Marian Anderson
"Rhapsody in Blue," recorded by George Gershwin
"Shreveport Stomp," recorded by Jelly Roll Morton
"Lazy," recorded by The Georgians
"Krooked Blues," recorded by King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band featuring Louis Armstrong
"Deep Blue Sea Blues," recorded by Clara Smith
"The Gouge of Armour Avenue," recorded by Fletcher Henderson and his Orchestra featuring Big Charlie Green
"Mama’s Gone, Good Bye," recorded by Ray Miller and his Orchestra
"It Had To Be You," recorded by the Isham Jones Orchestra and by Marion Harris
"California Here I Come," recorded by Al Jolson

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Art
The Center for the Study of Public Domain also notes: "Copyright will also expire in 2025 over works of art that were published or registered in 1929, including drawings, paintings, and photography. 1929 was when Salvador Dalí moved to Paris and became a key part of the Surrealist art movement, and his Illumined Pleasures, The Accommodations of Desire, and The Great Masturbator will be public domain. While we were able to locate information indicating that those works were published in La Révolution surréaliste or as part of the Dalí exhibition at Goemans, we have not yet found definitive historical information for other artworks, notably René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images."

"Generally the law looks at whether the art was genuinely released to the public," the Center's reporting explains. "If it was created but remained only in the artist’s studio, this did not count. But the rules are murky and 'published' is a term of art in copyright law that was not well-defined. Early court cases suggest that artworks were considered published if they were exhibited without restrictions (sometimes there were measures preventing people from copying works on display), circulated in a magazine, catalogue, or other media with authorization, or offered for sale to the public."

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