Is Scared to Death (1947) 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 L963, and the Copyright Office renewed L962 and L964 while passing it over.
The original application card is scanned and legible: Application for Registration, Published Motion-Picture Photoplay, received 29 April 1947, eight reels, copyright owner Golden Gate Pictures, Inc., registration stamp L 963.
Renewal fell due in 1974 and 1975. Both years’ motion picture volumes were searched: there is no entry beginning "Scared", no mention of Golden Gate Pictures, and no L963.
What makes this the cleanest result in the whole set is the neighbors. Extracting every 1947 registration number that was renewed in 1974 or 1975 gives a dense run through the L900s: 952, 953, 954, 959, 962, 964, 965, 966, 969, 970, 975, 977, 981, 991, 992, 994. L962 was renewed. L964 was renewed. L963 was not.
That is a different and much better argument than "we searched the title and found nothing". The Copyright Office was demonstrably working through this exact stretch of the register, one number at a time, and this film was passed over.
The register, as it stands
- Original registration
- L963, received 29 April 1947, eight reels
- Claimant
- Golden Gate Pictures, Inc., 346 So. La Brea Ave., Hollywood
- Renewal fell due
- 1974–1975
- Renewal found
- none, while the numbers on both sides were renewed
- 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
- Copyright Office digitized card catalog, the 1947 application card for L963.
- Catalog of Copyright Entries, Motion Pictures 1974 (archive.org catalogofcopyrig3281213li).
- Catalog of Copyright Entries, Motion Pictures 1975 (archive.org catalogofcopyrig3291213libr).
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.
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.