How a simple Roman numeral typo accidentally pushed a 1954 Hollywood film into public domain
In short: The 1954 romantic drama The Last Time I Saw Paris remains a curious case of legal irony. Due to a misprinted copyright notice, the studio inadvertently shortened the film's protection period by a decade, causing it to enter the public domain in the United States as early as 1972.
Directed by Richard Brooks and starring Elizabeth Taylor, the film is a loose adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1930 short story, Babylon Revisited. While the original story explores the aftermath of the Jazz Age, the screenwriters updated the setting to post-World War II Paris, transforming the protagonist into an aspiring novelist struggling with sudden wealth and personal tragedy. The production featured a title song by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, which had already achieved fame after appearing in the 1941 film Lady Be Good.
The path to the screen was long and complex. In 1940, producer Lester Cowan purchased the rights to Fitzgerald’s story for $1,000 and hired the author to write a screenplay for $5,000. Fitzgerald, who was struggling financially, worked diligently on the project, even meeting with Shirley Temple to discuss the role of the protagonist's daughter. However, the project stalled after Fitzgerald’s death in December 1940, and the rights were eventually sold to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. MGM finally brought the story to life fourteen years later.
The film's legal status became a cautionary tale for studios. The copyright notice displayed the Roman numerals MCMXLIV, representing 1944, instead of the correct release year of 1954. Because the law calculated the 28-year copyright term from the date listed on the film, the protection expired in 1972. MGM failed to renew the copyright, likely assuming they still had ten years of legal control remaining. Today, the film is widely available for free viewing through the Internet Archive.
Critical reception has been mixed over the decades. Upon its release, Variety praised it as an engrossing drama, while Bosley Crowther of The New York Times dismissed the writing as pedestrian and the acting as forced. Modern assessments, such as those in the Time Out Film Guide, acknowledge its heavy-handed melodrama while noting that Walter Pidgeon’s performance as a penniless chancer provides a standout element in an otherwise corny script.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: The Last Time I Saw Paris
- Also: Wikidata — The Last Time I Saw Paris · CC0
- Also: Wikidata — The Last Time I Saw Paris · CC0
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