Thousands of works enter the public domain
For the first time since 1997, the coming of a new year has introduced an entire library of culture into the public domain. In the U.S. Public Domain Days used to be an annual event until 1998 when a new law named after Sonny Bono suddenly extended copyright protections by 20 years. Now, under U.S. law, a song, book or movie doesn’t lose its copyright protections for 95 years, or until the creator has been dead for 70 years. (Canada’s laws are a bit different.) Thus, Jan. 1 was effectively the first time in the age of the modern internet that a massive batch of books, music and movies became free for all. Thousands of new public domain works, all produced in 1923, have been extensively catalogued by Duke University’s Centre for the Study of the Public Domain. Here’s a sampling from our Tristin Hopper.
YES! WE HAVE NO BANANAS
To modern ears, this sounds like a goofy novelty song whose entire premise is to mock the broken English of a Greek immigrant. And that’s exactly what Yes! We Have No Bananas is: A New York City fruit seller had a bizarre quirk of answering every question with “yes,” and his location near Tin Pan Alley just so happened to get his verbal tic noticed by songwriters Frank Silver and Irving Cohn. Their tune making fun of him became one of the most ubiquitous hits of the early 20th century, repeatedly topping charts in the hands of hundreds of artists around the world. The song also captures a delightful bit of fruit history. New York was indeed under a banana shortage in the early ’20s caused by a Central American fruit blight. That blight would eventually claim the entire commercial crop of Gros Michel bananas, forcing producers to substitute the much blander Cavendish bananas that dominate grocery stores today.
THE WORLD CRISIS BY WINSTON CHURCHILL
“Winston has written an enormous book about himself, and called it The World Crisis,” one friend of Churchill’s reportedly quipped of this 1923 bestseller. In reality, it was the first in a six-volume series about the First World War, in which Churchill had a front-row seat.
CHARLIE CHAPLIN’S THE PILGRIM
For several years it’s been possible for U.S. theatres to screen early Charlie Chaplin films without worrying about a cease and desist letter. His famed “Little Tramp” character debuted in 1914 and by the early 1920s Chaplin was an international film star. But only now are some of his most memorable artistic works beginning to hit the public domain. The Pilgrim is one of the first of these.
HAROLD LLOYD’S SAFETY LAST! (THE ONE WHERE HE WRESTLES A CLOCK)
Although Harold Lloyd’s name has drifted somewhat into obscurity, Safety Last! definitely ranks as one the iconic comedies of the silent film era, up there with Buster Keaton’s The General and Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush. Like a lot of 1920s slapstick films, it also featured unbelievably dangerous stunts. The most iconic of these is Lloyd scaling the side of a building and dangling from a clock — a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that Lloyd had blown off half his hand in a film accident only a few years before.
THE PROPHET BY KAHLIL GIBRAN
The most famous book by the Lebanese-american author Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet remains one of the most widely read and most translated books of the 20th century, often rivalled only by the Bible in terms of gross sales. Thanks solely to this book, the New Yorker has even referred to Gibran as history’s third best-selling author, behind only William Shakespeare and Lao-tzu.
CECIL B. DEMILLE’S THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
This isn’t the most famous Ten Commandments; the 1956 epic with Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as Pharoah. Rather, this is a silent film that briefly dramatizes the biblical story of Exodus before launching into a preachy morality tale about a crooked contractor.
KING PORTER STOMP BY JELLY ROLL MORTON
Jelly Roll Morton often claimed to have invented jazz, and according to the jazz-lovers at National Public Radio “most jazz historians would agree.” King Porter Stomp is his most famous work, and would become one of the most recognizable standards of the Big Band era. Like other ubiquitous jazz hits like Ain’t Misbehavin’ or Stardust, this is one of those songs that everyone has unwittingly heard hundreds of times. Now that artists can record a cover without cutting a cheque to whomever owns Morton’s copyrights, you can likely expect to be hearing it a lot more.
WORKS BY P.G. WODEHOUSE, AGATHA CHRISTIE, D.H. LAWRENCE AND MORE
Robert Frost’s most famous creation, 1916’s The Road Not Taken, is already in the public domain. However, 2019 is the first year that Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening can be overlaid on a Super Bowl ad without legal consequences. The year 1923 saw plenty of lesser works published by 20th century titans that are now free for all. The Duke University Public Domain Day list includes Agatha Christie’s The Murder on the Links, two P.G. Wodehouse books and one of the first novels by Aldous Huxley.
FOR SEVERAL YEARS IT’S BEEN POSSIBLE FOR U.S. THEATRES TO SCREEN EARLY CHARLIE CHAPLIN FILMS WITHOUT WORRYING ABOUT A CEASE AND DESIST LETTER.