Is Quicksand (1950) 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 LP2950 in 1950, with a renewal window that straddles print and online — both halves were searched.

This one sits on the boundary and needed both sources, which is why it is worth stating rather than asserting. The 28th year ran from 24 March 1977 to 24 March 1978 — straddling the point where the record moves from the printed volumes to the online catalog. Checking only one half would have proved nothing.

The printed 1977 volume does not contain the word “quicksand”, nor does the 1976 one. Coverage is confirmed by the presence of 1949 and 1950 renewals in those same volumes — White Heat, Sunset Boulevard, All About Eve, The Asphalt Jungle — so the section exists and an absence in it means something.

The online catalog for January to March 1978 returns 31 renewal registrations matching “quicksand” across all classes. They are songs by Bowie, Bobby Womack and the Holland-Dozier-Holland team among others, a Warner Bros. short (LP23864), a Lone Ranger episode (LP8497), a Four Star television episode (LP25739) and an animated Quicksand of Doom. None of them renews LP2950.

Stated plainly: the neighbor run in the printed volumes is thinner here than elsewhere — L2942 through L2947 and then nothing — so this record rests more on the two-source search than on the bracket.

The register, as it stands

Original registration: LP2950, (C) Samuel H. Stiefel Productions, 24 March 1950 (notice date 1949)
Production: Released through United Artists, with Mickey Rooney and Peter Lorre
Renewal fell due: 24 March 1977 to 24 March 1978
Renewal found: none, in either source
Searched: 2026-09-01

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 1976 and 1977.
Copyright Office public catalog, January to March 1978, all classes searched for “quicksand”.

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 mike@tapeterritory.com with what we missed and we will correct it here.

Watch it

Quicksand (1950) 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.