LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014\u00a0Betty Boop\u00a0and\u00a0\u201cBlondie\u201d\u00a0are joining\u00a0Mickey Mouse\u00a0and\u00a0Winnie the Pooh\u00a0in the public domain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first appearances of the classic cartoon and comic characters are among the pieces of intellectual property whose 95-year U.S. copyright maximum has been reached, putting them in the public domain on Jan. 1. That means creators can use and repurpose them without permission or payment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 2026 batch of newly public artistic creations doesn’t quite have the sparkle of the recent first entries into the public domain of\u00a0Mickey\u00a0or\u00a0Winnie. But ever since 2019 \u2014 the end of a 20-year IP drought brought on by congressional copyright extensions \u2014 every annual crop has been a bounty for advocates of more work belonging to the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a big year,\u201d said Jennifer Jenkins, law professor and director of\u00a0Duke\u2019s Center for the Study of the Public Domain<\/a>, for whom New Year’s Day is celebrated as\u00a0Public Domain Day<\/a>. \u201cIt’s just the sheer familiarity of all this culture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jenkins said that, collectively, this year’s work shows \u201cthe fragility that was between the two wars and the depths of the Great Depression.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s a closer look at what will enter the public domain on Thursday, based on the research of Jenkins and her center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Betty Boop began as a dog. Seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When she first appears in the 1930 short \u201cDizzy Dishes,\u201d one of four of her cartoons entering the public domain, she’s already totally 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 miniature mouth. But she’s also got dangling poodle ears and a tiny black nose. Those would soon morph into dangling earrings and a tiny white nose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She started as essentially the Minnie Mouse to a popular anthropomorphic dog named Bimbo, whom she would eventually outshine \u2014 and push aside. She’s got a supporting role in \u201cDizzy Dishes,\u201d performing a slinky song-and-dance in a tiny black dress. She’s not named, but sings \u201cboop boop, a doop.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jenkins suggests this canine Betty Boop could be rich for exploitation in new works, and has a free idea: \u201cShe was bitten by a radioactive dog, that\u2019s why she had this weird backstory,\u201d she said with a laugh. \u201cThis movie needs to be made.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u201cBoop-Oop-a-Doop Girl,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 raised by Disney over 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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-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 \u2014 a proto-\u00a0Adam Driver, if you will, as the breakout actor from\u00a0\u201cGirls.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nine new Mickey Mouse cartoons also are becoming public domain, two years after \u201cSteamboat Willie\u201d 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 moniker the following year.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The books entering the public domain this year open the door to three iconic detectives from the 20th century:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 The teen sleuth Nancy Drew, whose first four books came in 1930, starting with \u201cThe Secret of the Old Clock.\u201d They were written by Mildred Benson under the pen name Carolyn Keene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 The middle-aged(-ish) sleuth Sam Spade, who debuted via the full-book version of Dashiell Hammett\u2019s \u201cThe Maltese Falcon.\u201d (It had been serialized in a magazine the previous year.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 The elderly sleuth Miss Marple, who solves her first mystery in Agatha Christie’s \u201cMurder at the Vicarage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A year after his \u201cThe Sound and the Fury\u201d became public,\u00a0William Faulkner\u2019s\u00a0\u201cAs I Lay Dying\u201d becomes public domain. It would help lead to his Nobel Prize in literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And kiddie lit legends Dick and Jane, who taught generations to read and became essential parody fodder for decades, become public via the \u201cElson Basic Readers\u201d textbooks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A year after their film debut, \u201cThe Cocoanuts,\u201d entered the public domain, the Marx Brothers’ beloved \u201cAnimal Crackers\u201d joins it, as they entered their prime of high cinematic antics. The film finds Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo invading a Long Island society party celebrating an explorer of Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other movies entering the public domain include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 \u201cThe Blue Angel,\u201d the German film from Josef von Sternberg that emblazoned Marlene Dietrich’s top-hatted image into film lore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 \u201cKing of Jazz,\u201d featuring the first screen appearance of Bing Crosby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 A pair of Oscar best picture winners, \u201cAll Quiet on the Western Front,\u201d which won in 1930, and \u201cCimarron,\u201d which won in 1931. The award was known as \u201cOutstanding Production\u201d then, and the Academy Awards eligibility period didn’t sync with the calendar year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The coming decade will bring a true bounty of Hollywood Golden Age films into the public domain. 2027 will be a truly monster year, literally, with the original 1931 Universal Pictures versions of \u201cDracula\u201d and \u201cFrankenstein\u201d among the titles due.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As in the last several years, a whistle-worthy stream of tunes from the Great American Songbook will become public:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 Four cherished classics written by George Gershwin, with lyrics by his brother Ira: \u201cEmbraceable You,\u201d \u201cI’ve Got a Crush on You,\u201d \u201cBut Not for Me\u201d and \u201cI Got Rhythm.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 \u201cGeorgia on My Mind,\u201d written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 \u201cDream a Little Dream of Me,\u201d written by Gus Kahn, Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Different laws regulate the actual recordings of songs, and those newly in the public domain this week date to 1925. They include\u00a0Rodgers and Hart’s \u201cManhattan\u201d\u00a0by the Knickerbockers, \u201cNobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen\u201d by Marian Anderson and \u201cThe St. Louis Blues\u201d by Bessie Smith, featuring Louis Armstrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cartoons and comics bring the boop-a-doop<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Books bring big detective debuts<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Films include Marxes, Marlene and Oscar winners<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Dreamy and embraceable tunes ring in the 1930s<\/h4>\n\n\n\n