Is The Man Who Cheated Himself (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 LP697 at the very end of 1950, with no renewal in the printed 1977 volume or in the online records that cover 1978.

The registration date matters here. Registered on 30 December 1950, its renewal window straddles the join between the printed volumes and the online catalog, so both halves were checked: the printed 1977 motion-picture renewals, where it is absent, and the online records from 1978 on.

Online searches on the title, on Jack M. Warner, on the director Felix Feist and on the writer Seton I. Miller return no renewal of this film. The 127 hits on the word “cheated” include thirteen motion pictures, none of them this one.

Lee J. Cobb and Jane Wyatt star, and it is known for a final chase shot in the ruins of Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge.

The register, as it stands

Original registration: LP697, (C) Twentieth Century-Fox, 30 December 1950
Renewal fell due: the end of 1977 or in 1978
Renewal found: none, in print or online
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 1977 renewal section.
Copyright Office online records, searched by title, claimant, director and writer.

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.

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.