Some characters are joining others in the public domain.
The first appearances of the classic cartoon and comic characters are among the intellectual property pieces whose 95-year U.S. copyright maximum has been reached, putting them in the public domain on January 1. This means creators can use and repurpose them without permission or payment.
The 2026 batch of newly public artistic creations doesn’t quite have the shine of the recent first entries into the public domain of certain works. But since 2019 – the end of a 20-year IP drought caused by congressional copyright extensions – every annual crop has been a bounty for advocates of more public works.
“It’s a big year,” said Jennifer Jenkins, a law professor and director of [a center], for whom New Year’s Day is celebrated as [a certain day]. “It’s just the sheer familiarity of all this culture.”
Jenkins said that, overall, this year’s work shows “the fragility between the two wars and the depths of the Great Depression.”
Here’s a closer look at what will enter the public domain on Thursday, based on the research of Jenkins and her center.
Cartoons and comics bring the boop-a-doop
Betty Boop started as a dog. Seriously.
When she first appears in the 1930 short “Dizzy Dishes,” one of four of her cartoons entering the public domain, she’s already fully recognizable as the Jazz Age flapper later memorialized in countless tattoos, T-shirts, and bumper stickers. She has her baby face, short hair with groomed curls, flashy eyelashes, and a miniature mouth. But she also has dangling poodle ears and a tiny black nose. Those would soon turn into dangling earrings and a tiny white nose.
She began as essentially the Minnie Mouse to a popular anthropomorphic dog named Bimbo, whom she would eventually outshine – and push aside. She has a supporting role in “Dizzy Dishes,” performing a slinky song-and-dance in a tiny black dress. She’s not named, but sings “boop boop, a doop.”
Jenkins suggests this canine Betty Boop could be rich for exploitation in new works, and has a free idea: “She was bitten by a radioactive dog, that’s why she had this strange backstory,” she said with a laugh. “This movie needs to be made.”
The character was designed and owned by Fleischer Studios, and the shorts were released by Paramount Pictures. She was based at least in part on singer Helen Kane, known as the “Boop-Oop-a-Doop Girl,” thanks to a hit 1929 song. Kane would lose a lawsuit over Betty Boop’s character and use of the phrase. During the proceedings, the defense alleged Black singer Esther Lee Jones used similar phrases first.
Artists are now free to use this earliest Boop in films and similar work. But making merch won’t be free. In an important distinction often brought up regarding Mickey Mouse, a character’s trademark is distinct from the copyright of works that feature them. The Fleischer Productions trademark of Betty Boop remains intact.
Boops and doops were apparently in the air in 1930. Blondie Boopadoop was, like Betty, a young flapper, and the central character of Chic Young’s newspaper comic strip that debuted in 1930. It inspired a film series and radio show, and is still running today in papers that still have comics.
The strip followed her carefree life with her boyfriend, Dagwood Bumstead. The two would marry (and she would change her name) in 1933, and the strip would become the sandwich-heavy domestic comedy familiar to later readers. Though the strip was meant to be based on a woman’s life, Dagwood would in many ways become its breakout star – a proto-[a comparison], if you will, as the breakout actor from [a reference].
Nine new Mickey Mouse cartoons also are becoming public domain, two years after “Steamboat Willie” made the first version of him public property. He’s joined this year by his dog Pluto, who, in 1930, was known as Rover. (He would get his long-term name the following year.)
Books bring big detective debuts
The books entering the public domain this year open the way to three iconic detectives from the 20th century:
— The teen sleuth Nancy Drew, whose first four books came in 1930, starting with “The Secret of the Old Clock.” They were written by Mildred Benson under the pen name Carolyn Keene.
— The middle-aged(-ish) sleuth Sam Spade, who debuted via the full-book version of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon.” (It had been serialized in a magazine the previous year.)
— The elderly sleuth Miss Marple, who solves her first mystery in Agatha Christie’s “Murder at the Vicarage.”
A year after his “The Sound and the Fury” became public, [a person]’s “As I Lay Dying” becomes public domain. It would help lead to his Nobel Prize in literature.
And kiddie lit legends Dick and Jane, who taught generations to read and became essential parody material for decades, become public via the “Elson Basic Readers” textbooks.
Films include Marxes, Marlene and Oscar winners
A year after their film debut, “The Cocoanuts,” entered the public domain, the Marx Brothers’ beloved “Animal Crackers” joins it, as they entered their prime of high cinematic antics. The film shows Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo invading a Long Island society party celebrating an explorer of Africa.
Other movies entering the public domain include:
— “The Blue Angel,” the German film from Josef von Sternberg that made Marlene Dietrich’s top-hatted image famous in film history.
— “King of Jazz,” featuring the first screen appearance of Bing Crosby.
— A pair of Oscar best picture winners, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which won in 1930, and “Cimarron,” which won in 1931. The award was known as “Outstanding Production” then, and the Academy Awards eligibility period didn’t match the calendar year.
The coming decade will bring a true abundance of Hollywood Golden Age films into the public domain. 2027 will be a truly huge year, literally, with the original 1931 [studio] Pictures versions of “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” among the titles due.
Dreamy and embraceable tunes ring in the 1930s
As in the last several years, a stream of catchy tunes from the Great American Songbook will become public:
— Four cherished classics written by George Gershwin, with lyrics by his brother Ira: “Embraceable You,” “I’ve Got a Crush on You,” “But Not for Me,” and “I Got Rhythm.”
— “Georgia on My Mind,” written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell.
— “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” written by Gus Kahn, Fabian Andre, and Wilbur Schwandt.
Different laws regulate the actual recordings of songs, and those newly in the public domain this week date to 1925. They include [a song] by the Knickerbockers, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” by Marian Anderson, and “The St. Louis Blues” by Bessie Smith, featuring Louis Armstrong.