File:Katharine Hepburn in The Warriors Husband.jpg

Photograph of the actress Katharine Hepburn in the 1932 Broadway production of The Warrior's Husband.

Public domain explanation

• The photograph was taken for publicity purposes, and would have been sent in a press pack to theatrical magazines and the general press for promotion of the play—thus satisfying the demands for "publication".
• The photograph does not appear to contain the copyright symbol ©, the word "Copyright", or the abbreviation "Copr.", as then required for copyright.
• There are other photographs from the same photoshoot which appear to include a stock number and author signature, but that do not appear to contain the copyright symbol ©, the word "Copyright", or the abbreviation "Copr." — see [1] and [2]. This suggests that none of the publicity images for the play were published with a copyright notice.
• By publishing a photograph without such a notice, under the terms of the 1909 Copyright Act (which was law until 1978) the image went into the public domain.
• If there is any chance that the photograph was copyrighted, under the terms of the 1909 Copyright Act it would have had to be renewed 28 years after publication. A search for copyright renewal records of 1960 ([3], [4]) reveal no trace that this occurred.