Image: Captains courageous tracy and bartholomew

Description: Cropped publicity photograph for the 1937 film Captains Courageous, featuring Spencer Tracy and Freddie Bartholomew. Such images were taken on set during filming, or as part of an organized photo-shoot, by a studio photographer. They were then disseminated to the media and the public to promote the film (see Film still). This is definitely a film still rather than a screenshot, as the quality is too high (compare, for instance, with this screenshot from the film). Public domain explanation It is unlikely that this image was secured with copyright protection, as stated by film induustry expert Gerald Mast in Film Study and the Copyright Law (1989) p. 87: "According to the old copyright act, such production stills were not automatically copyrighted as part of the film and required separate copyrights as photographic stills ... Most studios have never bothered to copyright these stills because they were happy to see them pass into the public domain, to be used by as many people in as many publications as possible." If there is any chance that the photograph was copyrighted, under the terms of the 1909 Copyright Act (which was law until 1978) it would have had to be renewed 28 years after publication, otherwise it entered the public domain. A search for copyright renewal records of 1965 ([1], [2]) reveal no trace that this occurred.
Title: Captains courageous tracy and bartholomew
Credit: [3]
Author: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (work for hire)
Permission: This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1963 and although there may or may not have been a copyright notice, the copyright was not renewed. Unless its author has been dead for the required period, it is copyrighted in the countries or areas that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works, such as Canada (50 pma), Mainland China (50 pma, not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany (70 pma), Mexico (100 pma), Switzerland (70 pma), and other countries with individual treaties. See Commons:Hirtle chart for further explanation. Deutsch | English | español | français | italiano | 日本語 | 한국어 | македонски | português | português do Brasil | русский | українська | +/−
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No