Los Angeles — Betty Boop and “Blonde” join Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh in the public domain.
The first appearances of classic cartoon and comic book characters are among the works of intellectual property whose 95-year US copyright peak was reached on January 1, making them publicly available on January 1. This means that creators can use and reuse them without permission or payment.
2026’s batch of new public artworks doesn’t quite have the spark of a recent first entry into the public domain Mickey or Winnie. But since 2019 — the end of a 20-year intellectual property drought caused by congressional copyright expansion — each year’s harvest has been a reward for advocates for more work in the public domain.
“It’s a big year,” said Jennifer Jenkins, law professor and director Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domainfor whom the New Year is celebrated as Public Domain Day. “It’s just the sheer familiarity of this whole culture.”
Jenkins said that collectively this year’s work shows “the fragility that was between the two wars and the depths of the Great Depression.”
Here’s a closer look at what will enter the public domain Thursday, based on research by Jenkins and her center.
Cartoons and comics bring boop-a-doop
Betty Boop started out as a dog. Seriously.
When she first appeared in the 1930 short film “Dizzy Dishes,” one of four cartoons of hers that entered the public domain, she is already completely recognizable as a Jazz Age flapper who was later commemorated in countless tattoos, T-shirts and bumper stickers. She has her baby face, short hair with styled curls, garish eyelashes and a miniature mouth. But he also has droopy poodle ears and a small black nose. These would soon turn into dangling earrings and a small white nose.
She started out as essentially Minnie Mouse to a popular anthropomorphic dog named Bimbo, whom she ended up overshadowing—and pushing aside. She has a supporting role in “Dizzy Dishes” where she performs slinkies and dances in a little black dress. She is not named, but sings “boop boop, a doop”.
Jenkins suggests that this canine Betty Boop could be rich with uses in new works, and she has a free imagination: “She was bitten by a radioactive dog, so she had this weird story,” 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. It was based at least in part on singer Helen Kane, known as the “Boop-Oop-a-Doop Girl” thanks to a 1929 hit. Kane would lose a lawsuit over the character of Betty Boop and the use of the phrase. Similar phrases were first used during the proceedings by the accused black singer Esther Lee Jones.
Artists can now use this oldest Boop in movies and similar works. But the production of goods will not be free. In an important distinction that Disney has often raised over Mickey Mouse, trademarking a character is different from copyrighting the works that represent it. The Fleischer Productions Betty Boop trademark remains intact.
Boops and doops were apparently in the air in 1930. Blondie Boopadoop was, like Betty, a young clapper and the central character of the Chic Young newspaper comic that debuted in 1930. It inspired a movie series and a radio show, and still runs in newspapers that still carry the comics.
The strip followed her carefree breeze through 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-filled domestic comedy familiar to later readers. Although the strip was supposed to be based on a woman’s life, Dagwood became its breakout star in many ways—because- Adam the driverif you will, as a breakthrough actor from “Girls.”
Nine new Mickey Mouse cartoons are also entering the public domain, two years after “Steamboat Willie” made his first version into the public domain. This year he was joined by his dog Pluto, who was known as Rover in 1930. (He would get his longtime moniker the next year.)
Books bring big detective debuts
The books released this year open the door to three iconic detectives from the 20th century:
- Teenage detective Nancy Drew, whose first four books were published in 1930, starting with “The Secret of the Old Clock.” They were written by Mildred Benson under the pen name Carolyn Keene.
- Middle-aged detective Sam Spade, who debuted through the full book version of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon”. (It was serialized in the previous year’s magazine.)
- The elderly detective Miss Marple, who solves her first mystery in Agatha Christie’s film “Murder at the Vicar”.
A year after his “The Sound and the Fury” went public, William Faulkner “As I Lay Dying” becomes public domain. It would help lead to his Nobel Prize for Literature.
And the child-enlightened legends of Dick and Jane, who taught generations to read and became staple parody fodder for decades, were made public through the “Elson Basic Readers” textbooks.
Films include the Marxes, Marlene and Oscar winners
A year after their film debut “The Cocoanuts” entered the public domain, they were joined by the Marx Brothers’ beloved “Animal Crackers” embarking on their first high-profile film romp. In the film, Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo deal with an invasion of a social party on Long Island celebrating an explorer of Africa.
Other films entering the public domain include:
- “Blue Angel”, a German film by Josef von Sternberg, which embellished the image of Marlene Dietrich into film tradition.
- “King of Jazz” featuring Bing Crosby’s first screen appearance.
- A pair of Academy Award winners for Best Picture, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which won in 1930, and “Cimarron,” which won in 1931. The award was then known as “Outstanding Production” and the Oscar eligibility period did not synchronize with the calendar year.
The coming decade will bring a veritable wealth of Hollywood Golden Age films into the public domain. 2027 is going to be truly monstrous, literally, with Universal Pictures’ 1931 originals “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” among the two titles.
Dreamy and embracing melodies sound in the 1930s
As in the past few years, there will be a stream of whistle-worthy tunes from the Great American Songbook available to the public:
- Four beloved 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” was written by Gus Kahn, Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt.
Various laws govern the actual recordings of the songs, and the ones newly available to the public this week date back to 1925. Rodgers and Hart’s “Manhattan” by the Knickerbockers, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” by Marian Anderson and “The St. Louis Blues” by Bessie Smith with Louis Armstrong.
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