Is The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947) public domain?
The evidence we relied on to restore, describe and publish it — in full, so you can check it.
Rights basis on record
The finding, and the working behind it
Registered LP591, 31 Dec 1946 (California Pictures). The frames confirm this is the 1947 original ('California Pictures Corporation presents ... The Sin of Harold Diddlebock'), not the 1950 re-edit Mad Wednesday: it runs about 90 minutes; Mad Wednesday runs about 79. No renewal found in any 1957-1978 CCE volume for Diddlebock or Mad Wednesday, or for the claimants California Pictures, Hughes or Sturges, and no RE record for either title in the post-1978 catalog. Music: Werner R. Heymann's score and Harry Rosenthal's uncredited love theme; 1973-77 searched for diddlebock, mad wednesday, heymann, harry rosenthal, california pictures and Sturges, nothing from this film (the only Heymann renewals are J. Heymann's). Underlying work: an original screenplay by Preston Sturges. The opening football game is footage from The Freshman (1925), public domain since 2021. Trademark: Harold Lloyd Entertainment asserts the Lloyd name and glasses character; the name is used only to identify the film. Not searched: anything outside the United States.
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.
The copy, and what we changed
- The print we started from
- The source print for The Sin of Harold Diddlebock on archive.org
- Researched
- 2026-10-26
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.
Restoring a public domain film gives nobody any new rights over the film, including us: this print is free to take, use and pass on, exactly as the original is.
The audio description is not part of that. It is an original work written and recorded by Always on Top Entertainment LLC — free to listen to here, and licensed separately for reuse. If you hold a right in this film and we have it wrong, write to [email protected] and we will take it down while we check.
Watch it
The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947) is free to watch here, restored and audio described, 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.