Is The Second Woman (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 LP613, and its producer renewed two other films of his in the same window and not this one.
Because the renewal fell in 1978, this one can be settled online, where the record begins. A nil result here is evidence rather than silence.
Harry Popkin is in that record twice, renewing Champagne for Caesar and The Well. He knew how to file a renewal and filed none for this film.
Searches on Cardinal Pictures, on the director James V. Kern and on the composers return nothing for this title either.
Robert Young and Betsy Drake star.
The register, as it stands
- Original registration
- LP613, (C) Cardinal Pictures, 15 January 1951, with 1950 in the notice
- Renewal fell due
- 1978, inside the online catalog
- Renewal found
- none
- What Harry Popkin DID renew
- Champagne for Caesar (RE0000009280) and The Well (RE0000040756)
- 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
- Copyright Office online records, searched by title, claimant, producer and director.
- Catalog of Copyright Entries, Motion Pictures, for LP613.
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.