Is The Crowd (1928) public domain?
Pre-1972 sound recordings can be protected under US state law and the Music Modernization Act until 2067 or later — the print being public domain does not free the recorded music.
📄 Download the print-layer research packet (Markdown) — citations you can attach to a dispute. Not legal advice; print layer only.
Rights, layer by layer
A film is not one copyright — it is several. Each layer below can be free or protected independently. This is why one-click “public domain” answers are wrong so often.
| Film print (photoplay) | Clear |
|
|---|---|---|
| Music score | Active rights |
|
| Underlying story / screenplay | Clear |
|
| Character trademarks | Unclear | No primary evidence on file — treated as unverified. |
| Restorations / re-releases | Unclear |
|
Automatic rule notes
- Published 1928: US copyright term (95 years) has expired for works published through 1930 — the film print is public domain in the US by term expiry, regardless of country of origin.
Watch it free (archival copies)
Background
King Vidor's The Crowd (1928) is an MGM silent drama starring James Murray as John Sims, a Midwesterner who arrives in New York City certain he is destined for greatness, and is slowly ground down by urban anonymity. Eleanor Boardman plays his wife Mary. Vidor shot extensively on location in Manhattan — genuine 1928 crowd scenes on Times Square sidewalks, a Coney Island sequence, a Niagara Falls honeymoon — giving the film a documentary texture foreign to MGM's usual studio-bound productions. The studio was uneasy with the bleak ending and offered exhibitors an alternate upbeat cut; Vidor's preferred version closes ambiguously, with John laughing in a vaudeville audience, briefly indistinguishable from the crowd around him. The film's copyright term of 95 years expired on December 31, 2023, making it unambiguously public domain in the United States as of January 1, 2024.
For documentary makers and remix artists, the Manhattan location photography is the primary draw: 1928 street-level footage no contemporary production can replicate. The one rights trap that actually applies is the score. Carl Davis composed a new musical accompaniment in 1981 for TCM, and that score is present on almost every freely available digital copy — including the popular Internet Archive item and TCM broadcast versions. Davis died in 2023, and his score is protected through at least 2076. A creator who wants to reuse the footage without licensing complications must obtain a version without the Davis track, screen it silently, or lay in music whose rights they control.
Common questions
The Crowd is listed as public domain — can I use it in my project without clearing rights?
The 1928 film images and intertitles are public domain in the US as of January 1, 2024, and no clearance is needed for those. The practical trap is the audio: the most widely circulated digital copies carry Carl Davis's 1981 score, composed for TCM, which remains under copyright through at least 2076. To stay fully clear, use a version without the Davis score or mute and rescore the film with music you control.
Who owns The Crowd now that its copyright has expired?
Nobody holds an exclusive copyright in the 1928 film any longer — the term expired. Warner Bros. Discovery (which inherited the pre-1986 MGM library through Turner Entertainment in 1996) can still distribute the film, but so can anyone else. What Warner Bros. Discovery may still control is any specific modern restoration or film-to-digital transfer they created, plus the Carl Davis score licensed for their broadcast — neither of which expires with the underlying film's copyright.