9 Classic Works That Belong to Everyone Now

You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. Guess what? Well?

What's that mango?

So I have a riddle for you. What do h g Wells? Were the Worlds? The Carry Grant movie, His Girl Friday, and the Mona Lisa all have in common?

Man?

Starting this one out with a with a tough one, I'm gonna go.

I've got a guess.

I'm gonna go with things that inspired the musical artist Prince.

Maybe. But the answer I was looking for was that they're all works that are in the public domain.

All right, Okay, yeah, that makes sense, which means I can set up a Mona Lisa stand in my front yard and sell Prince with out getting sued now right.

Yeah, finally a second career option for you. That what I've been waiting for. But creative works in the public domain aren't protected by intellectual property law, So that means you can take it, you can use it, you can remix it, you can sell it in your front yard to all your neighbors, and you don't have to worry about copyright. So if you want to make a movie

Well, when you look at it, the World of the World's version that had ice Cube, but that got something like I think it was like four percent on rotten tomatoes, so it's probably due for a remake.

Yeah, And I know these are kind of silly examples, but public domain is really important for art and culture because without it we wouldn't have masterpieces like Westside Story, which was based on Romeo and Juliet, or The Little Mermaid, which was based on Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale. And public domain also helps is archive important cultural works and

Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always, I'm here with my good friend Mangesh hot ticketter and over there in the booth as our PALIN producer Dylan Fagan. Now I'm gonna be honest, Mengo. At first, I was very confused by his outfit today because he's wearing a plain white T shirt and what looks like two capital l's on it, and I have to be honest, it's a little bit boring for Dylan's standards.

You guess it?

Ll cool?

Joe, so close, so close, Mango, But I think it means copyright, get it.

There's it, there's a right angle copyright. So well done. Dylan really started to be off.

H I love that he started the new year with a T shirt. Pun I feel like that's an old Romanian folk tradition.

Definitely, definitely that Dylan always observes. All right, So Mango, before we get into this, remind me when exactly do works enter the public domain?

So that is a tricky question because the timeline isn't consistent throughout the world. Copyright duration varies from country to country, and it can depend on the type of work as well as whether the work was published or unpublished, or if at some point the copyright laps. Now people actually have flow charts to figure this stuff out. They also have copyright lawyers. It's probably a better use of time

Okay, that's interesting.

It's always interesting when they come up with, you know, numbers like ninety five. But anyway, I'm gonna kick things off for this episode with a legendary cartoon character, and that is Betty Boop. Of course, the big eyed, high voice temptress was introduced to the world in a nineteen thirty animated short. This was by Fleischer Studios and was called Dizzy Dishes, which is now in the public domain, but of course later versions of Betty are still under copyright.

That's so weird, like a dog with a tail.

Well, she's on two legs and she's quite human, and she has that short, curly haircut of black dress and garters, but for some reason her ears are floppy and kind of spaniel like, so.

That is interesting. What happens in this short film.

Well, it centers on another character named Bembo, who's also a dog, and he's a waiter at a busy jazz club full of these anthropomorphized and animals, and Betty only appears briefly, so she's a singer on stage who distracts Bimbo from his work.

So, actually you should watch this quick clip.

Here we come mister right on the way.

I have roasted up with a greatly year.

Doosional, I have my.

I have my mom.

Oh that's funny. So so even as a dog, she was doing the boo boop a dupe line.

Yeah, you nailed at with that. You did it.

You did it so well then, And that was there from the very beginning because Betty was based on a real life anger name Helen Kane, and Helen was famous for that kind of baby voice scat singing like that. But you know, soon after Dizzy Dishes came out, the animators realized that Betty had more potential as a human. So in nineteen thirty two, she lost those spaniel ears. They replaced them with her signature hoop earrings, and interestingly,

That is hilarious. But you know, if you look at like kind of another way. It could be the plot of I don't know, like a horror movie, right, like this woman turns into a dog, turns back into a human and realizes she was dating a dog between.

It's true, it's true.

It's actually funny that you mentioned horror because if you heard of this trend of movie studios turning public domain characters into these slasher movies like Winnie the Boo, Blood and Honey, you've seen these before?

What? Yeah?

Yeah, it's a real movie. And it came out in twenty twenty three. And last year a company called vm I Worldwide, which brought us Popeye the Slayer Man, they announced plans to make a Betty Boop slasher now that she's in a public domain. It's about a group of horror podcast investigators who break into an abandoned theater and find themselves face to face with a homicidal Betty Boop.

You know, it reminds me of pride and prejudices and zombies, right, Like that idea of taking the old material and reinventing it in a new way.

That's exactly right.

I know we are not horror podcasters, but I kind of want to tell you, like, how do we make that happen?

I have no idea, but I'm with you if we figure it out.

Well, from one boop to another. Our next public domain entrant is a comic strip character named Blondie, whose maiden name was Boop a Doope. Now you don't meet many Boopa dupes these days, but Blondie, if you're a fan of the old comic strip, became a bumstead when she married Dagwood. Now did you ever see the comic strip growing up in Alabama?

Not really, to be honest, No.

Yeah, it was definitely in ours growing up both in New Jersey and then North Carolina and then Delaware too, so like it was a standard in our house. But the strip, created by Chick Young, debuted in September nineteen thirty, and these earliest versions of the characters are the ones now in the public domain. And you might be surprised to learn that Blondie was a fun loving flapper, not a housewife, and Dagwood was the son of an uptight

Now.

Unfortunately, the strip wasn't a hit at first. This was during the Great Depression and readers were not interested in the adventures of like a trust fund kid and his gorgeous girlfriend. So Chick Young actually pivoted his comic strip. He had Dagwood and Blondie get married, and crucially, Dagwood's parents didn't approve their son marrying a lower class woman, so they disinherited him, and that kind of left the Bumpsteads on their own to make a living.

You know, when I think of Dagwood Bumpstead, I actually don't think about class mobility. I think about sandwiches.

Yeah, that's right, and those came later too. So once Dagwood's character became a clumsy, hungry office worker, Chick Young explained piling up fridge leftovers between two slices of bread was the only meal that Dagwood knew how to make, and the association between the character and the sandwich is actually so strong that Merriam Webster defines a Dagwood as

That's exactly right. All right, Well, here's something I was surprised to see. So Piet Mandrion's painting composition with red, blue and yellow. It's now in the public domain. Now, I'm sure you've seen this before. It's the one with the large red square in the top right corner, blue and yellow in the two other corners, and some white in between there. Now, it's easy to focus on those rectangles of color, but what really makes it pop is

I love the idea that like two fellow artists could be so upset over the idea of incorporating something like diagonal.

Lines, so offensive, so offensive to some people.

Why did Mondrion hate diagonal so much?

You know, he just felt really strongly that horizontal and vertical lines were aesthetically better And it's funny, I mean, like the thing is though he wasn't wrong. Research has actually shown that people tend to perceive horizontal and vertical lines more easily than diagonal ones. It's a phenomenon known as the oblique effect. And in two thousand, psychologists from the University of Liverpool actually published a study in which they put Mandrion's lines to the test. So they showed

That's incredible that it's like backed by science, but also like the idea that like you could put a crapozoid in front of him and you just be furious.

It's true. It's true. Yeah, it's offensive.

I do love that, like now that his most famous work is in the public domain, that it'll be interesting to see how people play with it, right, you re imagine, Yeah, so will This next work that's entering the public domain is both a great book and a great movie. It's called The Maltese Falcon. It's by Dashal Hammett. Have you read it or seen it?

I'm gonna have to confess it's on the list, but I have neither read nor seen it before.

How about you?

Yeah, I've both read it and seen it. But this is Hammett's third novel. It's a master work, and it actually started as a serialized story in Black Mask Magazine. It's the story of a tough detective, Sam Spade, who gets hired by the mysterious Miss Wonderley to help find her sister. And as with any great noir, has got lots of twists and turns, and that's how it ended up being turned into a hit movie starring Humphrey Bogart in nineteen forty.

That's not in the public domain yet.

No this year is just the novel. But in addition to being a great story, it totally revolutionized the detective genre.

And how's that?

I mean, this is incredible to think about. So before the Maltese Falcon, it was the British detective story that

I love that. All Right, Well, we have to take a quick break.

But when we come back, a song that changed blues forever and the inside scoop on the three Stooges, So don't go anywhere.

Welcome back to Part Time Genius. We're talking about nine works of art that are in the public domain as of January first, and now that we're in twenty twenty six, I can tell you that we are planning a big year here on the show. So be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast app. We also love hearing from you, so let us know if you have a question or idea we should explore, or if you'd like one of our official membership cards. We do have a few left, so give us a call at three oh two, four

All right, Well, before the break, you've talked about how the novel The Maltese Falcon is now in the public domain, but we have to wait another decade for the film to join it there. But last year Eric Maria remarks, novel All Quiet on the Western Front On entered the public domain, and this year it's now joined by the film.

This is one of those films that I've actually never seen as much as I've heard about it, just because I'm not as into war films. But tell me a little bit about it.

Well, if you're not into war films, this one actually became an instant classic because of its realistic depiction of war. So it is pretty intense it stunned American audiences, who often had to collect themselves for a moment before quietly leaving the theater. Critics gave the World War I film glowing reviews, and All Quiet won the Academy Award for Outstanding Production, which was the early name for Best Picture.

That's crazy. I had no idea, but you know, I do remember hearing about a German remake that came out. I don't know, just like a few.

Years ago, right, Yeah, it was not long ago at all.

It was in twenty twenty two, and it won a ton of awards, including Oscars for Best Cinematography, Best International Feature Film, and the critical response was overwhelmingly positive, although some people said basically that nothing could top the nineteen thirty film or the original novel. They're sort of in a league of their own.

Okay, so I already told you about one great detective who's now in the public domain, Sam Spain. But here is another, the iconic Nancy Drew. Now. The first novels featuring the teen detective were published in nineteen thirty, The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, The Bungalow Mystery, and the Mystery at Lilac Inn. And there's actually a bit of mystery behind.

Them, a case fit for Nancy Drew.

Maybe, so for many years the public didn't know who wrote Nancy Drew. The series was created by a company called Stratmeier Syndicate, which released the books under pseudonym Carolyn Keene. Authors who wrote Nancy Drew books had to sign a contract waiving any rights to talk about their work. But in nineteen eighty, Stratameier got caught up in a lawsuit after signing a deal that allowed Simon and Schuster to

Wow. Knowing how many of those have sold, that is that's crazy.

Yeah, there were fifty six novels in the original Nancy Drew series, and it's believed they were the work of several ghostwriters. But Simon and Schuster emerged from that nineteen eighty lawsuit with the ability to publish Nancy Drew books, and they're still doing that today all still under the name Carolyn Keene, of course, but now the first four novels they actually belong to everyone.

Wow.

Well, there are probably as many Nancy Drew books as there are covers of the popular song Saint Louis Blues, which was originally composed by W. C.

Handy. This was back in nineteen fourteen.

Yeah, and one of those covers was by my fourth grade middle school band HB. Du Pont in Delaware. I'm sure that's the recording that everyone is cleimbed.

I think it's the first one that comes up when you look it up online.

So well, maybe not.

But there is one that stands out from the rest, and this is, of course Bessie Smith's nineteen twenty five rendition, which is now in the public domain. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It was on Time Magazine's All Time one hundred Songs, plus NPR's list of the most important American musical works of the twentieth century. If you're not familiar with it, or just need a reminder of what this is, give it a quick listen.

Here make me.

A for.

By the way, that's twenty four year old Louis Armstrong playing the coronet. There By the time Smith recorded it, the song was already famous, maybe even the most famous blues song in the world at the time. It had been performed by dance bands vaudevillians. The sheet music had sold tens of thousands of copies, and one thing that really set it apart was the use of the minor key.

I'm definitely gonna do that. Speaking of film debuts, the first three Stooges movie, Soup to Nuts, is now in the public domain. The seventy minute film is the story of Ted, who works at a struggling business called the Schmidt Costume Shop. The Stooges played Ted's firefighter friends, whom he often visits at work. Now to the Stooges, brothers Moe and Shemp Howard had been working together in a

Seventy eight films. That's so many bunks on the head Mango.

Yeah, you know I am going to get in trouble for saying this, but uh were you a three Stooges fan.

I was a three Stooges fan for like, let's call it fifteen to twenty second set a time, like to watch a quick clip of it and be like, Okay, that's funny that that existed, But it wasn't something I could really watch for any sort of extended period of time.

How about you?

Yeah, I mean I could appreciate what they're doing, I guess, but like, I really wasn't a fan. When the students came on TV. That was when I knew it was time to turn off the television and go outside, like which is what happened on like Saturday mornings or whatever. But you know, obviously they're comedy legends and everyone now can remake their own version of Soup to nuts. But there's one more fact about the movie that I want to mention. So remember how I said that the costume

Actually, as you were describing that, it does sort of sound like a Rube Goldberg machine, right.

Yeah, So Rube Goldberg co wrote the film No Way, Auto was apparently playing a version of himself, and Goldberg even has a cameo in the movie, appearing as a customer in a restaurant.

Isn't that cool?

That is such a great fact, and that's going to be really hard to top. But we do have one more to talk about, our ninth fact, So I'll finish our list today with this song, and specifically, it's a song that's been recorded by Nancy Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and the Beatles, not all at the same time, though.

Can you guess what this is?

Yeah? I think I would have known it if they sang it at the sime time. No, what is it? Yeah?

It's different versions here, and I'm talking, of course about Sweet Georgia Brown and the version that's now in the public domain, was recorded in nineteen twenty five by the songwriter Ben Bernie and his Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra, and he wrote the song earlier that same year, and it went on to become a jazz standard, although these days most people recognize it as the Harlem Globetrotter's theme song.

Which I love and also I have a sucker for anything with whistling.

One hundred percent.

Well, that's actually a later version from nineteen forty nine recorded by an Alabama musician named Brother Bones. The original version that Bernie wrote doesn't have any whistling in it. Here's what his nineteen twenty five rendition sounds like. So the song also has lyrics to it, believe it or not, written by a child actor turned songwriter named Kenneth Casey, who incidentally appeared in an early Three Stooges film.

Oh it always comes back to the three students.

Exactly right, your heroes.

Anyway, The lyrics tell the story of sweet Georgia Brown, who quote has two left feet, but she's neat and she makes all the fellasigh and want to die. But you shouldn't feel bad about not knowing all that because the Globe Charter's popularity has definitely overshadowed Bernie's original work.

That Globe Tartter song is so good, but I've always kind of wondered, like, why did they pick that song?

Yeah, you know, unfortunately that story has been lost to time. I think we've been looking into this for years, even back in our mental lost days. I mean, we know they adopted it in nineteen fifty two, and apparently the first time it was played it was a surprise to the players. Former Globetrotter Bobby Milton once explained, quote, we all started moving about and dancing with the music, and now it's as much a part of us as the name.

I really liked that, and I think it's kind of a delightful note to end this episode on. So I think you deserved today's trophy, but will Before we wrap up, let's hear a recent call that came into the Part Time Genius hotline. Because you know how much I love these.

Hi, I'm Samson, and I really enjoy your podcast. I've been listening for about eight hours and it's really great and I've learned a lot. Thank you so much, especially for the episode about flutes. I found that hilarious. Can you please keep going and it's amazing. Thank you.

Wow, eight hours, Mango, I know it's crazy. It's a very long time to listen to anything. For that matter, it really is.

Sam said, we are so glad you love the show, but be careful. That is a lot of information to consume all at once.

All right, Well, that does it for today's show, and if you want to check out some of the works we've just talked about, we'll put all the links in the show notes. The episode was written by our good pal Meredith Danko. Thank you so much, Meredith. We couldn't have Booby Duped without you. We'll be back next week with another brand new episode and in the meantime form Mango, Dylan, Gabe, Mary and Me.

Thanks so much for listening.

Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. It is hosted by my good pal Will Pearson, who I've known for almost three decades now. That is insane to me. I'm the Utaco host Mangeshatikular aka Mango. Our producer is Mary Phillips Sandy. She's actually a super producer. I'm going to fix that in post. Our writer is Gabe Lucier, who I've also known for like a decade at this point, maybe more. Dylan Fagan is in the booth.

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Or tune in wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That's it from us here at Part Time Genius. Thank you so much for listening.