Such images were taken on set during filming, or as part of an organized photo-shoot, by a studio photographer. They were then disseminated to the media and the public to promote the film. (see
Film still
)
This is definitely a production still rather than a screenshot as the quailty is too high (compare, for instance, with
this
image, taken from the film's trailer).
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 1965 and 1966 (
[7]
,
[8]
,
[9]
,
[10]
) reveals no evidence that the then corporate heir to the corporate author of the work--RKO General--renewed copyrights to this photograph, as would have been required to maintain copyright protection, if any.
Film industry author Gerald Mast has written:
"According to the old copyright act, such production stills were not automatically copyrighted as part of the film and required separate copyrights as photographic stills ... Most studios have never bothered to copyright these stills because they were happy to see them pass into the public domain, to be used by as many people in as many publications as possible." (
Film Study and the Copyright Law
(1989) p. 87.)
This work is in the
public domain
because it was published in the United States between 1929 and 1963, and although there may or may not have been a copyright notice, the
copyright was not renewed
. For further explanation, see
Commons:Hirtle chart
and
the copyright renewal logs
. Note that it may still be copyrighted in jurisdictions that do not apply the
rule of the shorter term
for US works (depending on the date of the author's death), such as Canada (70 years
p.m.a.
), Mainland China (50 years p.m.a., not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany (70 years p.m.a.), Mexico (100 years p.m.a.), Switzerland (70 years p.m.a.), and other countries with individual treaties.