Suddenly

The film 'Suddenly', starring Frank Sinatra and Sterling Hayden, was released in the United States in 1954. Under the Copyright Act of 1909, works published between 1928 and 1963 required a manual copyright renewal with the U.S. Copyright Office during the 28th year of the first term to extend protection for a second term. For 'Suddenly', the renewal window opened in 1981 and closed at the end of 1982. A search of the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database, the U.S. Copyright Office online records (covering post-1977 filings), and Motion Picture Copyrights and Renewals 1950–1959 by David Pierce confirms that no renewal was filed for this title. Consequently, the film's U.S. copyright expired at the end of its first 28-year term, and it entered the public domain on January 1, 1983. Because this is a 1954 U.S. work, it does not qualify for URAA restoration, which only applies to foreign-origin works. The film's public domain status is widely recognized in the industry; it has been released by dozens of budget distributors (such as Alpha Video and Mill Creek Entertainment) and is hosted as a public domain work on the Internet Archive and various streaming platforms without challenge from the original production entities or United Artists successors.