The Road to Public Domain

This month's Home Fry-ed Movie is Road to Bali with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, the sixth of the seven Road pictures the two stars would make. It is, however, the only one of these films in the public domain. Why? The answer is quite simple. Somebody make a mistake.

(BTW, if you haven't figured it out yet, Home Fry-ed Movies presents only films that are in the public domain, meaning we can show the movies without paying licensing fees. Our budget is pretty thin, and the cost to show films, even really old ones, on cable can be prohibitive. So we mine through the extensive list of movies in public domain and show some of the best--and worst--movies we can.)

Road to Bali received a copyright registration on Jan. 1, 1953. However, the entry says the registration was in notice in 1952, so that year becomes the actual copyright date. Under current law, a movie from that time period must have its renewal made in the 28th calendar year of its original term. Whoever filed the paperwork to renew Road to Bali's copyright counted from 1953 instead of 1952, and submitted the renewal a year late.

Clerical errors like that put a lot of movies in the public domain. Those of us here at Home Fry-ed Movies would like to thank all those people that are a day late and a dollar short for giving us a wide variety of movies from which to choose!