Public Domain
A Tale of Two Kitties
1942 · Warner Bros. · Dir. Robert Clampett
Two alley cats, Babbitt and Catsello, decide to make a meal out of Orson as he sleeps in his nest atop a telephone pole. The gullible (and loud) Catsello is repeatedly gulled into trying to "get the bird," earning a variety of thrashings from the casually murderous little canary. Catsello finally resorts to an air strike (with a pair of wooden boards for wings), but it's wartime, and Orson has the cat blasted out of the sky by anti-aircraft guns.
Confidence
95
— Legal Reasoning —
Why this status applies
A Tale of Two Kitties (1942), directed by Bob Clampett for Warner Bros., is a Merrie Melodies animated short featuring the debut of Tweety. Under the Copyright Act of 1909, works published between 1928 and 1963 required a renewal filing with the US Copyright Office during the 28th year of their first term to maintain protection for a second term. Failure to renew resulted in the work entering the public domain.
A search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) reveals that while the film was originally registered (MP13012, Nov 21, 1942), Warner Bros. failed to file a renewal application in 1970. This specific short is famously among the 'sunsetted' Warner Bros. cartoons that fell into the public domain due to a clerical oversight in the renewal process, along with other titles like 'The Dover Boys' and 'Porky's Railroad'. It has been widely distributed on public domain home video collections (such as Alpha Video) for decades without legal challenge from the trademark holder.
— Cited Sources —
Supporting facts
- Stanford Copyright Renewal Database (Motion Pictures)
- Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries, 1942 and 1970
- Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain (Hurst/Baer)
- The 50 Greatest Cartoons (Jerry Beck, 1994)
Research summary based on cited sources, not legal advice. Always consult a qualified copyright attorney before commercial use.