Public Domain
The Miser's Heart
1911 · Biograph Company · Dir. D.W. Griffith
Thieves decide to steal the money an old miser has hidden away. He refuses to open the safe for them, so they threaten to kill a little girl who lives in his building.
Confidence
100
— Legal Reasoning —
Why this status applies
The film 'The Miser's Heart' is a 1911 silent short directed by D.W. Griffith for the Biograph Company. Under the current US copyright law (the 1976 Copyright Act as amended by the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act), all works published or registered in the United States prior to January 1, 1928, have entered the public domain.
As a production from 1911, the maximum possible duration of copyright protection was 75 years (extended to 95 years), but because it was published before the 1928 cutoff, it has expired by operation of law. No renewal search is necessary for works of this vintage as they are definitively in the public domain regardless of whether they were renewed in the past.
— Cited Sources —
Supporting facts
- Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries: Motion Pictures 1894-1912
- Internet Movie Database (IMDb) - The Miser's Heart (1911)
- D.W. Griffith: An American Life by Richard Schickel
Research summary based on cited sources, not legal advice. Always consult a qualified copyright attorney before commercial use.