A Musicale Melange

The film 'A Musicale Melange' (alternatively titled 'Musical Melange') is a Vitaphone short (Vitaphone No. 2261) produced and released by Warner Bros. in 1928. Under the Copyright Act of 1909, works published between 1928 and 1963 required a copyright renewal in their 28th year to maintain protection in the United States. A thorough search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) reveals no record of a renewal for this specific title. While most of Warner Bros.' Vitaphone catalog was systematically renewed, many early shorts were overlooked or deemed to have insufficient commercial value for renewal at the time. According to the 'Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain' by Hurst and Baer, this 1928 Vitaphone production was not renewed and is consequently in the public domain in the United States. The expiration of the first term occurred in 1956, and without a filing, the work reverted to the public domain on January 1, 1957.