Public Domain
Amateur Crook
1937 · Victory Pictures Corporation · Dir. Sam Katzman
Jerry Cummings, a mining engineer, has pledged a large diamond on a short-term note to a pair of crooked loan sharks, Crone and Jan Jaffin, and heads for Mexico. His daughter Betsy, posing as a jewel thief called Mary Layton, is working to keep the crooks from absconding with the jewel, and her efforts are hindered greatly by an artist, Jimmy Baxter, who thinks she is a crook and Crone and Jaffin the good guys.
Confidence
95
— Legal Reasoning —
Why this status applies
Amateur Crook (1937), directed by Samuel Diege and starring Herman Brix (Bruce Bennett), was released as part of the Victory Pictures catalog. Under the 1909 Copyright Act, works published between 1928 and 1963 required a renewal of copyright with the US Copyright Office in the 28th year of their first term to maintain protection. Failure to renew resulted in the work entering the public domain.
A thorough search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) reveals no renewal registration for this title or for its producer, Sam Katzman (Victory Pictures). Most Victory Pictures productions of this era fell into the public domain due to the studio's lack of administrative follow-up on renewals. The film is widely recognized in the public domain and has been distributed for decades by specialty PD labels such as Alpha Video and Sinister Cinema, and it is available for unrestricted download on the Internet Archive without copyright challenges.
— Cited Sources —
Supporting facts
- Stanford Copyright Renewal Database
- Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE)
- Hurst / D. Richard Baer, Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain
- IMDb: Amateur Crook (1937)
- Internet Archive: Amateur Crook (1937)
Research summary based on cited sources, not legal advice. Always consult a qualified copyright attorney before commercial use.