Is Bluebeard (1944) public domain?

The copyright record for this film, written out in full so you can check it.

Public domain in the United States

What is usually said

Public domain, never renewed.

The finding, and the working behind it

Public domain in the United States: registered LP13562 in 1944 by PRC Pictures, with no renewal in the 1971 or 1972 volumes under the title or the claimant.

The registration is in two places that agree: the cumulative Motion Pictures catalog for 1940–1949 and the 1945 annual volume.

In the 1971 and 1972 renewal volumes the only Bluebeard is the 1972 Vulcan film with Richard Burton, which is a new registration and not a renewal of anything. No PRC renewal of this title appears in either volume.

This is the John Carradine film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, and the name is shared by several other pictures, so the registration number is the thing to check us on rather than the title.

The register, as it stands

Original registration: LP13562, (C) P.R.C. Pictures, Inc., 12 November 1944
Renewal fell due: 1971–1972
Renewal found: none
Searched: 2026-09-19

How to check this yourself

Everything above is drawn from public records. None of it requires our word:

The Catalog of Copyright Entries, the Copyright Office’s printed registration and renewal volumes, scanned and searchable at the Internet Archive and at the Online Books Page. Registration numbers beginning LP or MP are film entries.
The Copyright Office online records at copyright.gov, which are complete from 1978 and therefore decisive for any renewal that fell due from then on.
The NFPF Field Guide to Sponsored Films, for the industrial and educational titles, which records copyright status entry by entry.

Where these numbers came from

Catalog of Copyright Entries, cumulative Motion Pictures 1940–1949, and the 1945 annual volume, for LP13562.
Catalog of Copyright Entries, Motion Pictures 1971 and 1972, read for the renewal sections.

What this does and does not mean

This is a finding about United States copyright, made in good faith from the public record. Copyright terms differ by country, and a film in the public domain here may still be protected elsewhere.

A negative search proves that no record was found, which is not identical to proving that no record exists. The Copyright Office says as much about its own catalogs. Where a search could not be decisive we say so above rather than rounding it up to certainty.

This is a record of research and not legal advice. If you hold a right in this film, or you think we have read the record wrong, write to [email protected] with what we missed and we will correct it here.

Why we did this research

Establishing what may be published is the first step before restoring a film and writing an audio description for it. That is what this site is for, and we do the same work on commission — audio description and captioning, with published rates.