LOS ANGELES – Joining the ranks of iconic characters like Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh, beloved figures such as Betty Boop and “Blondie” are now stepping into the public domain. These classic cartoon and comic characters, whose initial appearances date back 95 years, will be freely accessible for creative use starting January 1st.
This transition signifies that their original copyrights have expired, allowing artists and creators the freedom to reuse and reinvent these characters without the need for permissions or fees. While this year’s additions may not carry the same legendary status as Mickey Mouse or Winnie the Pooh, they are nonetheless significant milestones in the evolving landscape of intellectual property.
Since 2019, when a long pause in new public domain additions ended due to prior congressional copyright extensions, each New Year has brought a fresh wave of artistic works into the public sphere. This has been a triumph for those advocating for more cultural treasures to be freely available to the public.
“It’s a big year,” remarked Jennifer Jenkins, a law professor at Duke University and director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. She celebrates New Year’s Day as Public Domain Day, highlighting the significant cultural familiarity these works bring to the public.
Jenkins points out that the collection of works entering the public domain this year mirrors the fragile era between the World Wars and the depths of the Great Depression, offering a unique glimpse into history through art and storytelling.
Below, we delve into the specific creations joining the public domain, informed by the dedicated research of Jenkins and her team at Duke University.
Cartoons and comics bring the boop-a-doop
Betty Boop began as a dog. Seriously.
When she first appears in the 1930 short “Dizzy Dishes,” one of four of her cartoons entering the public domain, she’s already totally recognizable as the Jazz Age flapper later memorialized in countless tattoos, T-shirts and bumper stickers. She has her baby face, short hair with groomed curls, flashy eyelashes and miniature mouth. But she’s also got dangling poodle ears and a tiny black nose. Those would soon morph into dangling earrings and a tiny white nose.
She started as essentially the Minnie Mouse to a popular anthropomorphic dog named Bimbo, whom she would eventually outshine — and push aside. She’s got a supporting role in “Dizzy Dishes,” performing a slinky song-and-dance in a tiny black dress. She’s not named, but sings “boop boop, a doop.”
Jenkins suggests this canine Betty Boop could be rich for exploitation in new works, and has a free idea: “She was bitten by a radioactive dog, that’s why she had this weird backstory,” she said with a laugh. “This movie needs to be made.”
The character was designed and owned by Fleischer Studios, and the shorts were released by Paramount Pictures. She was based at least in part on singer Helen Kane, known as the “Boop-Oop-a-Doop Girl,” thanks to a hit 1929 song. Kane would lose a lawsuit over Betty Boop’s character and use of the phrase. During the proceedings the defense alleged Black singer Esther Lee Jones used similar phrases first.
Artists are now free to use this earliest Boop in films and similar work. But making merch won’t be free. In an important distinction often raised by Disney over Mickey Mouse, a character’s trademark is distinct from the copyright of works that feature them. The Fleischer Productions trademark of Betty Boop remains intact.
Boops and doops were apparently in the air in 1930. Blondie Boopadoop was, like Betty, a young flapper, and the central character of Chic Young’s newspaper comic strip that debuted in 1930. It inspired a film series and radio show, and is still running today in papers that still have comics.
The strip followed her carefree breeze through life with her boyfriend, Dagwood Bumstead. The two would marry (and she would change her name) in 1933, and the strip would become the sandwich-heavy domestic comedy familiar to later readers. Though the strip was meant to be based on a woman’s life, Dagwood would in many ways become its breakout star — a proto- Adam Driver, if you will, as the breakout actor from “Girls.”
Nine new Mickey Mouse cartoons also are becoming public domain, two years after “Steamboat Willie” made the first version of him public property. He’s joined this year by his dog Pluto, who, in 1930, was known as Rover. (He would get his long-term moniker the following year.)
Books bring big detective debuts
The books entering the public domain this year open the door to three iconic detectives from the 20th century:
— The teen sleuth Nancy Drew, whose first four books came in 1930, starting with “The Secret of the Old Clock.” They were written by Mildred Benson under the pen name Carolyn Keene.
— The middle-aged(-ish) sleuth Sam Spade, who debuted via the full-book version of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon.” (It had been serialized in a magazine the previous year.)
— The elderly sleuth Miss Marple, who solves her first mystery in Agatha Christie’s “Murder at the Vicarage.”
A year after his “The Sound and the Fury” became public, William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” becomes public domain. It would help lead to his Nobel Prize in literature.
And kiddie lit legends Dick and Jane, who taught generations to read and became essential parody fodder for decades, become public via the “Elson Basic Readers” textbooks.
Films include Marxes, Marlene and Oscar winners
A year after their film debut, “The Cocoanuts,” entered the public domain, the Marx Brothers’ beloved “Animal Crackers” joins it, as they entered their prime of high cinematic antics. The film finds Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo invading a Long Island society party celebrating an explorer of Africa.
Other movies entering the public domain include:
— “The Blue Angel,” the German film from Josef von Sternberg that emblazoned Marlene Dietrich’s top-hatted image into film lore.
— “King of Jazz,” featuring the first screen appearance of Bing Crosby.
— A pair of Oscar best picture winners, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which won in 1930, and “Cimarron,” which won in 1931. The award was known as “Outstanding Production” then, and the Academy Awards eligibility period didn’t sync with the calendar year.
The coming decade will bring a true bounty of Hollywood Golden Age films into the public domain. 2027 will be a truly monster year, literally, with the original 1931 Universal Pictures versions of “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” among the titles due.
Dreamy and embraceable tunes ring in the 1930s
As in the last several years, a whistle-worthy stream of tunes from the Great American Songbook will become public:
— Four cherished classics written by George Gershwin, with lyrics by his brother Ira: “Embraceable You,” “I’ve Got a Crush on You,” “But Not for Me” and “I Got Rhythm.”
— “Georgia on My Mind,” written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell.
— “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” written by Gus Kahn, Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt.
Different laws regulate the actual recordings of songs, and those newly in the public domain this week date to 1925. They include Rodgers and Hart’s “Manhattan” by the Knickerbockers, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” by Marian Anderson and “The St. Louis Blues” by Bessie Smith, featuring Louis Armstrong.
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