Name: Daddy's Gone A-Hunting
Director: Frank Borzage
Released: 1925

Daddy's Gone A-Hunting

1925 · Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) · Dir. Frank Borzage

Julian (Percy Marmont) is a poor artist who lives with wife Edith (Alice Joyce) and their newborn baby in Harlem. Struggling to make ends meet, he foregoes his artistic calling and draws for magazines. Reaching his limits, Julian convinces his wife he could reach higher grounds if he were to go to Paris. He moves to Paris while his Edith works at a shop on Fifth Avenue. Each of their lives evolves differently—Edith is courted by a wealthy suitor whom she ignores while pining for her husband, while Julian fails to meet his goals in Paris, returning defeated three years later. The meeting highlight how different their routes have been.

Confidence

Why this status applies

Daddy's Gone A-Hunting is a 1925 American silent drama directed by Frank Borzage and produced by Metro-Goldwyn Pictures. Under the 1909 Copyright Act, works published in the United States between 1923 and 1963 required a renewal of copyright during the 28th year of their first term to maintain protection. A search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database and the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) indicates that no renewal registration was filed for this motion picture. For a 1925 release, the renewal window would have been in 1952 or 1953. Because MGM (or its successors) failed to renew the copyright within the statutory period, the film entered the public domain in the United States upon the expiration of its first 28-year term in 1953. Additionally, the film is widely cited in public domain filmographies, such as the Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain 1894–1939 by Richard Baer, which confirms the absence of a valid renewal. The film is currently considered a 'partially lost' film, though fragments and certain prints are known to exist in archives.

Why this status applies

Supporting facts