Public Domain Movies

The Pride of Palomar, 1922

PublicDomainMovies — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 18:15:21 +0000

The Pride of Palomar is a 1922 American drama silent film directed by Frank Borzage and written by Grant Carpenter, Peter B. Kyne and John Lynch. The film stars Forrest Stanley, Marjorie Daw, Tote Du Crow, James O. Barrows, Joseph J. Dowling and Alfred Allen. The film was released on November 26, 1922, by Paramount Pictures.

A print of this film is preserved in the Library of Congress collection.

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Manslaughter, 1922 directed by Cecil B. DeMille

PublicDomainMovies — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:13:17 +0000

Manslaughter is a 1922 American silent drama film directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Thomas Meighan, Leatrice Joy, and Lois Wilson. It was scripted by Jeanie MacPherson adapted from the novel of the same name by Alice Duer Miller. Art direction and costumes for the film were done by Paul Iribe.

The film portrays its main character, Lydia Thorne, as a thrill-seeking, self-entitled, and wild woman who does not have a reputation of thinking before acting. She acts selfishly by dancing with other men in the presence of her husband and not providing help to her maid who is in dire straits due to her son’s health. She is eventually taken to court after she crashes into a motorcycle cop during a high-speed chase. She is then prosecuted by her husband, Daniel O’Bannon, a lawyer, and is imprisoned for manslaughter. After her sentence, Lydia comes out of jail to find her husband has become an alcoholic.

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Cartoon: Poor Papa, 1928 – Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

PublicDomainMovies — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 07:35:26 +0000

Poor Papa is a 1928 animated comedy short film directed by Walt Disney.

It is the first cartoon produced in 1927 to feature Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, but its release was held back due to Universal Pictures’ displeasure over its premise. They had expected a more Charlie Chaplin-like character and thought Oswald was too elderly and too fat.

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The road to health and happiness, 1937

PublicDomainMovies — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 18:05:21 +0000

American educational propaganda film.

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The Lady Refuses, 1931

PublicDomainMovies — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 17:56:30 +0000

The Lady Refuses is a 1931 American pre-Code melodrama film, directed by George Archainbaud, from a screenplay by Wallace Smith, based on an original story by Guy Bolton and Robert Milton. It stars Betty Compson as a destitute young woman on the verge of becoming a prostitute, who is hired by a wealthy man to woo his ne’er-do-well son away from the clutches of a gold-digger (Margaret Livingston). The plot is regarded as risqué enough to appear in at least one collection of pre-Code Hollywood films.

In 1959, the film entered the public domain in the United States because the claimants did not renew its copyright registration in the 28th year after publication.

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Song o’ My Heart, 1930

PublicDomainMovies — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 12:08:36 +0000

Song o’ My Heart is a 1930 American pre-Code romance film directed by Frank Borzage and starring John McCormack, Alice Joyce, Maureen O’Sullivan, Effie Ellsler and John Garrick. It was O’Sullivan’s second film role.

The film was double-shot in both conventional 35mm and the early 70 mm Grandeur film widescreen format. Very few theaters were equipped with the necessary projection equipment to show it in the latter and it was never released in that format.

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St. Louis Blues, 1929 musical

PublicDomainMovies — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 17:51:42 +0000

St. Louis Blues is a 1929 American two-reel short film starring Bessie Smith. The early sound film features Smith in an African-American speakeasy of the prohibition era singing the W. C. Handy standard, “St. Louis Blues”. Directed by Dudley Murphy, it is the only known film of Bessie Smith, and the soundtrack is her only recording not controlled by Columbia Records.

Bessie Smith had a hit on the song in 1925 and Handy himself asked Bessie Smith to appear in the movie. Handy co-authored the film and was the musical director. The film was a dramatization of the song, a woman left alone by her roving man. It features a band that included James P. Johnson on piano, Thomas Morris and Joe Smith on cornet, as well as the Hall Johnson Choir with some thrilling harmonies at the end.

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Extravagance, 1930

PublicDomainMovies — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 08:30:36 +0000

Extravagance is a 1930 pre-Code film directed by Phil Rosen and released by Tiffany Pictures.

Alice Kendall is the darling of her social set, the sons and daughters of millionaires. Unknown to Alice, her mother has impoverished herself to provide Alice the luxuries she expects. When Alice becomes engaged to businessman Fred Garlan, her mother spends the last of her money on Alice’s trousseau.

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Down Home, 1920

PublicDomainMovies — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 17:47:28 +0000

Down Home is a 1920 American silent drama film written, directed, and produced by Irvin Willat and starring Leatrice Joy and James Barrows. It was distributed by the independent film distributor W. W. Hodkinson. A copy survives at the Library of Congress.

The film is based on the novel Dabney Todd, by F. N. Westcott, which was also probably a basis of Something to Think About, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, which was produced at the same time.

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Dancing Sweeties, 1930

PublicDomainMovies — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 08:41:00 +0000

Dancing Sweeties is a 1930 American pre-Code musical romantic comedy film directed by Ray Enright and starring Grant Withers and Sue Carol. The film is based on the story Three Flights Up by Harry Fried. The film was produced and released by Warner Bros. Pictures on July 19, 1930.

Carol, then under contract to Fox Film, was loaned out to Warner Bros. for the making of this film.

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Cartoon: The Ocean Hop, 1927 – starring Walt’s Disney’s Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

PublicDomainMovies — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 17:46:53 +0000

The Ocean Hop is a 1927 animated short subject film, produced by Charles Mintz and George Winkler and directed by Walt Disney.

The film was reissued in 1932 by Walter Lantz Productions with added music and sound effects and is the only known surviving version. The short entered the public domain on January 1, 2023.

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Nomads of the North, 1920

PublicDomainMovies — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 17:44:10 +0000

Nomads of the North is a 1920 American drama film of the North Woods co-directed and co-written by David Hartford and James Oliver Curwood, and featuring Lon Chaney, Betty Blythe, and Lewis Stone. The film was based on Curwood’s own 1919 novel of the same name (he also produced the film).

The crew erected a phony forest on the Universal Studios lot, with fake trees, trimmed with natural foliage, planted in the ground, barked, and painted. The forest fire was filmed with 6 cameras. Betty Blythe and Lon Chaney were burned while filming the forest fire scene when a blaze that popped up unexpectedly blocked their escape. They were rescued through a tunnel that had been previously built for just such an occurrence, but filming was stopped for ten days while the actors recovered in a local hospital. Unfortunately their exciting real-life escape was not filmed.

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Neighbors, 1920 starring Buster Keaton

PublicDomainMovies — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 17:34:37 +0000

Neighbors is a 1920 two-reel silent comedy film co-written, co-directed by, and starring Buster Keaton.

Plot:
Buster Keaton and Virginia Fox play young lovers who live in tenements, the rear of which face each other, with backyards separated by a wooden fence and with their families constantly feuding over the lovers’ relationship. Each morning Buster and Virginia exchange love letters through the holes in the fence much to the disdain of their families who insist they stay away from one another. Buster sneaks into Virginia’s bedroom window as the parents are arguing but he is caught by Virginia’s father who ties him to the washing lines and slowly sends him back over to his family’s house. After much arguing and fighting the two families eventually go to court to settle their differences. Buster demands the right to marry Virginia, and the judge insists that the two families not interfere in their plans.

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Mickey, 1918

PublicDomainMovies — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 17:30:16 +0000

Mickey is a 1918 silent comedy-drama film starring Mabel Normand, directed by F. Richard Jones and James Young, and written by J.G. Hawks.

The movie was produced by the Mabel Normand Feature Film Company.

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Cartoon: All’s well that ends well, 1940

PublicDomainMovies — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 08:07:11 +0000

Terrytoons, Inc. was an American animation studio headquartered in New Rochelle, New York, which was active from 1929 until its closure on December 29, 1972 (and returned between 1987 and 1996 for television in name only). Founded by Paul Terry, Frank Moser, and Joseph Coffman, it operated out of the “K” Building in downtown New Rochelle and later nearby at 38 Centre Avenue.

The studio created many cartoon characters including Fanny Zilch, Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, Gandy Goose, Sourpuss, Dinky Duck, Little Roquefort, the Terry Bears, Dimwit, and Luno; Terry’s pre-existing character Farmer Al Falfa was also often featured in the series.

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The Little Broadcast, 1933

PublicDomainMovies — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 17:27:37 +0000

Short film with Roy Atwell announcing popular radio stars Arthur Tracy, The Mills Brothers, Donald Novis, and Vincent Lopez & His Orchestra.

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The Exile, 1931 first African-American sound film

PublicDomainMovies — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 08:13:03 +0000

The Exile is a 1931 American pre-Code film directed by Oscar Micheaux with choreography by Leonard Harper. A drama-romance of the race film genre, The Exile was Micheaux’s first feature-length sound film, and the first African-American sound film.

Adapted from Micheaux’s first novel The Conquest (1913), it the film shares some autobiographical elements; for example, Micheaux spent several years as a cattle rancher in an otherwise all-white area of South Dakota as does the film’s central character Jean Baptiste (played by Stanley Morrell).

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Cartoon: Booby Traps, 1944 – Private Snafu

PublicDomainMovies — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:26:27 +0000

Private Snafu is the title character of a series of black-and-white American instructional adult animated shorts, ironic and humorous in tone, that were produced between 1943 and 1945 during World War II. The films were designed to instruct service personnel about security, proper sanitation habits, booby traps and other military subjects, and to improve troop morale.

Primarily, they demonstrate the negative consequences of doing things wrong. The main character’s name is a play on the military slang acronym SNAFU, “Situation Normal: All Fucked Up”. (The cleaned-up version of that phrase, usually used on radio and in print, was “Situation Normal: All Fouled Up”.)

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Beau Bandit, 1930

PublicDomainMovies — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 08:33:45 +0000

Beau Bandit is a 1930 American Pre-Code Western film, directed by Lambert Hillyer, from a screenplay by Wallace Smith, based on his short story, “Strictly Business” which appeared in the April 1929 edition of Hearst’s International-Cosmopolitan.

The film starred Rod La Rocque, Mitchell Lewis, Doris Kenyon, and Walter Long. The story is based loosely on the legend of Robin Hood.

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The Playhouse, 1921 starring Buster Keaton

PublicDomainMovies — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 17:20:43 +0000

The Playhouse is a 1921 American two-reel silent comedy film written, directed by, and starring Buster Keaton. The movie runs for 22 minutes, and is most famous for an opening sequence in which Keaton plays every role.

Plot:
The film is set up as a series of humorous tricks on the audience, with constant doubling, and in which things are rarely what they at first seem to be. It opens with Keaton attending a variety show. In this first sequence, Keaton plays the conductor and every member of the orchestra, the actors, dancers, stagehands, minstrels, and every member of the audience, male and female. As an audience member, Keaton turns to the “woman” sitting beside him and remarks, “This fellow Keaton seems to be the whole show.” This was a gibe at one of Keaton’s contemporaries, Thomas Ince, who credited himself generously in his film productions. In interviews with Kevin Brownlow, Keaton claims he gave the director’s credit to Cline mainly because he did not want to appear too Ince-like himself: “Having kidded things like that, I hesitated to put my own name on as a director and writer.”

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