Is His Girl Friday (1940) 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 LP9305 in December 1939, and Columbia renewed the two registrations either side of it while leaving this one behind.
The film was registered at the very end of December 1939 and released in January 1940, which is why its paperwork carries the earlier year. Its renewal therefore fell due in the 1966–1968 volumes, and no renewal of it appears there or in any later year.
What makes that a finding rather than an empty search is the company that was doing the renewing. On 13 November 1967 Columbia renewed the two films registered immediately next to this one: Music in My Heart, LP9306, renewed as R421611, and My Son Is Guilty, LP9307, renewed as R421610. Somebody went through that stretch of the register, renewed 9306 and 9307, and did not renew 9305.
A gap in a sequence somebody was working is worth more than any number of searches that found nothing.
The register, as it stands
- Original registration
- LP9305, (C) Columbia Pictures Corp., 30 December 1939
- Renewal fell due
- 1966–1968
- Renewal found
- none
- The neighbors that were renewed
- LP9306 (R421611) and LP9307 (R421610), both on 13 November 1967
- 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, Motion Pictures, renewal sections for 1966–1968, read for the run around L9305.
- Catalog of Copyright Entries, cumulative Motion Pictures 1912–1939, for the original registration.
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.
Watch it
His Girl Friday (1940) is free to watch here, with no account and no advertising.
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.