Is Kansas City Confidential (1952) public domain?

The evidence we relied on to restore, describe and publish it — in full, so you can check it.

Rights basis on record

The finding, and the working behind it

No renewal. `renewal-check.py` returned 0 records on `kansas city confidential` unquoted and 0 on the exact phrase, both against registration class RE. A 1952 film fell due for renewal in 1979-1980, wholly inside the window the online catalog covers, so a nil result here is evidence rather than an absence of searching. The method searches the distinctive words first, then the exact phrase, and prints every hit to be read rather than counting them, because a renewal naming the studio is the film however the clerk spelled the title. ON THE TRANSFER, STATED PLAINLY. The copy we describe is a scene-release rip of a Blu-ray, 1424x1072, and it is the highest resolution available on the item. It carries no distributor logo or card. It is not an archival transfer and we do not present it as one; if a library transfer surfaces later we would prefer it.

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.

The copy, and what we changed

The print we started from: The source print for Kansas City Confidential on archive.org
Researched: 2026-09-12
What we did to the print: 476 described cues across a 99 minute 15 second runtime, filling 38 minutes 33 seconds of gaps between dialogue -- 38.8 percent of the film -- at 168 words per minute.; That coverage sits inside the 36 to 46 percent band professional description aims for.; Figures measured from the shipped sidecar and the shipped master.; No picture restoration on this pass -- the video bitstream is the source, copied rather than re-encoded, so nothing here is a grade.; Described track flagged default and visual_impaired, with the original audio kept as a separate selectable stream.; No caption file yet: this title ships described but not captioned.

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.

Restoring a public domain film gives nobody any new rights over the film, including us: this print is free to take, use and pass on, exactly as the original is.

The audio description is not part of that. It is an original work written and recorded by Always on Top Entertainment LLC — free to listen to here, and licensed separately for reuse. If you hold a right in this film and we have it wrong, write to [email protected] and we will take it down while we check.

Watch it

Kansas City Confidential (1952) is free to watch here, restored and audio described, 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.