Tag Archives: PublicDomainDayCountdown

Puttin’ on the Ritz, in our own ways

Posted on November 22, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

Since its 1946 revision, “Puttin’ on the Ritz” has usually been a catchy invitation to go on the town and mix with old-school stylish dressers. But the lyrics Irving Berlin first published in 1929 instead invited listeners to gawk at … Continue reading →

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“It takes two to make a neurosis”

Posted on November 21, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

Before being known for characters like Walter Mitty and Charlotte the literate spider, James Thurber and E.B. White collaborated on a send-up of late-1920s New Yorker preoccupations with sex, changing gender roles, psychoanalysis, and overthinking. Is Sex Necessary? may also … Continue reading →

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Memoir of a deaf-blind woman with many eyes on her

Posted on November 20, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

Helen Keller struggled to write the story of her life as an adult. Knowing it had to go through her close associates, she tried to balance her radical politics with broad appeals for support for blind people, omit the role … Continue reading →

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Hardboiled treasure in the public domain

Posted on November 19, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

The hardboiled detective genre arose in Black Mask magazine. Once considered disposable, its pulp issues are now hard to find. Dashiell Hammett‘s first two novels there, Red Harvest and The Dain Curse, gained staying power when revised versions came out … Continue reading →

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Hitty, freed after her first 95 years

Posted on November 18, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

In Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, a wooden doll carved in rural Maine travels around the world with a wide variety of owners and outfits. Rachel Field’s novel, illustrated by Dorothy Lathrop, won the Newbery Medal in 1930, and retains … Continue reading →

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More water music, and a famous cartoon series debut

Posted on November 17, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

“Singin’ in the Bathtub” was Warner Brothers’ answer to rival studio MGM’s “Singin’ in the Rain”. Introduced in 1929’s Show of Shows, it was reused in many later films, including Tweety Bird and Bugs Bunny cartoons. Warner’s very first Looney … Continue reading →

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What a glorious feeling, in the public domain

Posted on November 16, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

Arthur Freed and Nacio Scott Brown’s “Singin’ in the Rain” appears to have first been performed in 1928 in the stage show Hollywood Music Box Revue. Copyrighted in 1929, the song reached movie audiences in The Hollywood Revue, and was … Continue reading →

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The hand is quicker than the eye, or the copyright

Posted on November 15, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

As Jacob Loshin writes, magicians rely on a distinctive type of intellectual property– their tricks and the secrets of how to do them– that’s usually protected not by copyright or patent, but by informal but strongly enforced community norms. Harry … Continue reading →

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“The art of self-tormenting is an ancient one”

Posted on November 14, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

Dorothy L. Sayers’ Omnibus of Crime was a selection of the then-still-new Book of the Month Club in 1929. It includes stories of detection, mystery and horror spanning over 2000 years, and opens with an extended essay by Sayers on … Continue reading →

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I yam what I yam, kinda

Posted on November 13, 2024 by John Mark Ockerbloom

Thimble Theatre was a 10-year-old comic with waning readership when its lead character Castor Oyl hired a wisecracking sailor to crew a ship he’d bought. Popeye left after their ocean voyage ended, but audience appeal brought him back after a … Continue reading →

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