Is The Hitch-Hiker (1953) 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 — though a renewal under this exact title does exist, for something else.
The finding, and the working behind it
Public domain in the United States: registered LP2463 in 1953, and RKO renewed six registrations sitting immediately above it in one batch without renewing this one.
The renewal window falls after 1978, so the online catalog covers it completely and the printed volumes are not needed. There are exactly three renewal registrations in the motion picture class matching “hitch-hiker” and none of them is this film: RE0000452082 renewing a 1961 ESW Enterprises television episode, RE0000326892 renewing the 1960 Cayuga Productions Twilight Zone episode, and RE0000810614 renewing a 1971 QM Productions title. Widening to a keyword search returns 28 records across all classes, all songs, novels or other films.
The neighbor evidence is good: RKO renewed LP2466, LP2467, LP2468, LP2469, LP2470 and LP2471 in a single batch on 29 August 1980 — all December 1952 registrations sitting immediately above this one — and did not renew LP2463.
A name-confusion trap worth recording, because it is the thing most likely to make somebody reverse this finding. Lucille Fletcher’s radio play The Hitch-Hiker WAS renewed, as RE0000052708 on 29 February 1980, renewing DP0000001173, and Fletcher renewed it personally. That is the Orson Welles radio play, later the Twilight Zone episode. It is not the source of this film, which comes from a story by Daniel Mainwaring drawn from the Billy Cook murders. Two unrelated works with the same title, one renewed and one not.
The register, as it stands
- Original registration
- LP2463, (C) RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., 13 March 1953
- Production
- A Filmakers production, directed by Ida Lupino
- Renewal fell due
- 1980–1981, which the online catalog covers completely
- Renewal found
- none for this film
- 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 public catalog, motion picture renewal class searched for “hitch-hiker”, returning three unrelated renewals.
- Copyright Office public catalog, the RKO renewal batch of 29 August 1980.
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
The Hitch-Hiker (1953) 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.