A Sherlock Holmes collection, the first film to win the Oscars’ top prize and a classic ditty by Irving Berlin are among the thousands of books, films and musical compositions entering the US public domain in 2023.
Among the most famous of this year’s crop are “The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes,” which decisively ends a decades-long saga of Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate attempting to curb use of the character by other authors, the wartime romance “Wings” and Berlin’s “Puttin’ On the Ritz.”
Hemingway, Gershwin and Woolf works are in the public domain this year
Several other works by acclaimed authors enter the public domain this year, including Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse,” Ernest Hemingway’s collection “Men Without Women” and Agatha Christie’s “The Big Four.”
The 1927 film “Wings,” starring (from left) Charles Rogers, Clara Bow and Richard Arlen, has entered the public domain this year. Credit: Everett Collection
Several musical classics are joining the public domain, including “The Best Things in Life Are Free,” from the musical “Good News” (also famously the song to which the “Mad Men” character Bert Cooper departed the series); the Gershwins’ love song “‘S Wonderful”; songs from the Oscar Hammerstein musical “Show Boat” and, to the delight of frozen dessert lovers everywhere, “(I Scream You Scream, We All Scream for) Ice Cream.”
How things enter the public domain
Some countries, which follow the term of “life plus 50 years,” will incorporate works by people who died in 1972 into the public domain (New Zealand and many Asian and African countries follow this model). Other countries follow “life plus 70 years” (this includes the UK and much of South America).
Some notable additions to the public domain in 2023
Films
“Metropolis,” Fritz Lang
“The Jazz Singer,” Alan Crosland
“Wings,” William A. Wellman
“The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog,” Alfred Hitchcock
“The King of Kings,” Cecil B. Demille
“Upstream,” John Ford
Books
“To the Lighthouse,” Virginia Woolf
“Men Without Women,” Ernest Hemingway
“The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes,” Arthur Conan Doyle
“The Big Four,” Agatha Christie
“Now We Are Six,” A.A. Milne
“Amerika,” Franz Kafka
“Le Temps retrouvé,” Marcel Proust
“The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” Thornton Wilder
Music
“The Best Things in Life Are Free,” George Gard De Sylva, Lew Brown, Ray Henderson; from the musical “Good News”
“Puttin’ on the Ritz,” Irving Berlin
“(I Scream You Scream, We All Scream for) Ice Cream,” Howard Johnson, Billy Moll, Robert A. King
“Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”; “Ol’ Man River,” Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern; from the musical “Show Boat”
“Potato Head Blues, Gully Low Blues,” Louis Armstrong
Top image: A statue of Sherlock Holmes in front of Baker Street Station in London. The character enters the US public domain in 2023.
Source: www.cnn.com