Public Domain
Al Lyons and His Four Horsemen
1929 · Warner Bros. Pictures · Dir. Murray Roth
The film starts off with Edith Murray joining the band for "Some of These Days" and right from this moment you know this thing isn't going to work. We then get a few instrumentals as the band members act silly as if they were trying to be comedians.
Confidence
95
— Legal Reasoning —
Why this status applies
This short film, featuring Al Lyons and his orchestra, was released by Warner Bros. as a Vitaphone musical short (Production No. 2789) in 1929. Under the Copyright Act of 1909, works published between 1928 and 1963 required a renewal filing in the 28th year of their first copyright term to remain protected.
A search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) reveals no record of a copyright renewal for this specific Vitaphone short. While many of the 'Vitaphone Varieties' and major Warner Bros. features were renewed by United Artists Television or Associated Artists Productions in the 1950s, this specific title was not among them.
Because the original copyright term expired 28 years after 1929 (in 1957) without a renewal filing, the film entered the public domain in the United States. It is commonly found in collections of early talkie shorts that have fallen into the public domain due to these administrative lapses.
— Cited Sources —
Supporting facts
- Stanford Copyright Renewal Database
- Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE)
- The Vitaphone Project
- Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain (Hurst/Baer)
Research summary based on cited sources, not legal advice. Always consult a qualified copyright attorney before commercial use.