Is The Stranger (1946) 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 LP409 in 1946 to The Haig Corp., a claimant that appears nowhere in the renewal volumes for either year.
The claimant is the reason this one has to be done carefully. The film is registered not to International Pictures or to RKO but to The Haig Corp., and searching for the famous names would have answered the wrong question.
The Haig Corp. appears nowhere in the renewal volumes for either year. International Pictures’ own renewals in this window are visible and limited to two 1945 titles, It’s a Pleasure and Tomorrow Is Forever, both renewed by United Artists Corp. in January 1973. Neither the 1946 slate nor The Haig Corp. was carried forward.
The neighbors bracket it tightly: L403, L404, L406, L408, then a gap where 409 would be, then L411, L414, L416.
The register, as it stands
- Original registration
- LP409, (C) The Haig Corp., 27 June 1946
- Production
- Presented by International Pictures, released through RKO, directed by Orson Welles, produced by S. P. Eagle, music by Bronislaw Kaper
- Renewal fell due
- 1973–1974
- Renewal found
- none
- Searched
- 2026-09-01
Most good-looking copies are somebody else’s restoration
This film has had more than one restoration, and a restoration is its own property. That the 1946 picture is free says nothing about a particular transfer of it.
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 1973 and 1974, read for the renewal sequence around L409 and for The Haig Corp. as claimant.
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 Stranger (1946) 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.