Shotgun Law
PUBLIC DOMAIN FYI
Fetch!
Don Juan poster
Public Domain

Don Juan

1926 · Warner Bros. Pictures · Dir. Alan Crosland

If there was one thing that Don Juan de Marana learned from his father Don Jose, it was that women gave you three things - life, disillusionment and death. In his father's case it was his wife, Donna Isobel, and Donna Elvira who supplied the latter. Don Juan settled in Rome after attending the University of Pisa. Rome was run by the tyrannical Borgia family consisting of Caesar, Lucrezia and the Count Donati. Juan has his way with and was pursued by many women, but it is the one that he could not have that haunts him. It will be for her that he suffers the wrath of Borgia for ignoring Lucrezia and then killing Count Donati in a duel. For Adriana, they will both be condemned to death in the prison on the river Tigre.

Confidence
100
— Legal Reasoning —

Why this status applies

Under current US copyright law, all works published before January 1, 1929, have entered the public domain. This applies regardless of whether the copyright was originally renewed or maintained, as the maximum possible term of protection for works from 1926 (95 years) expired on December 31, 2021. Don Juan (1926), directed by Alan Crosland and starring John Barrymore, was famously the first feature-length film to utilize the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system for a synchronized musical score and sound effects. Because its original publication occurred in 1926, it is now definitively in the public domain in the United States as of January 1, 2022.
— Cited Sources —

Supporting facts

  • 17 U.S.C. § 304
  • U.S. Copyright Office Circular 15a
  • AFI Catalog of Feature Films: Don Juan (1926)
  • Stanford Copyright Renewal Database

Research summary based on cited sources, not legal advice. Always consult a qualified copyright attorney before commercial use.