Motion pictures, 1973

In Short

This book is a bibliographic catalog published by the Library of Congress, documenting copyright registrations for motion pictures from January through June 1973, along with a separate section for renewals of older works. It serves as an official record for legal, historical, and archival purposes, listing titles, production companies, release dates, and registration numbers. While it lacks narrative prose, it offers a fascinating, exhaustive snapshot of the American media landscape, ranging from major studio feature films to specialized industrial training loops, educational documentaries, and television commercial spots, preserving a transient moment of mid-century creative commerce for posterity.

The Story

The narrative of this volume is one of systematic organization, moving from legal mandate to the minutiae of individual creative works. It opens with the foundational authority of the United States Code, establishing the document’s role as prima facie evidence in courts of law. The preface outlines the administrative architecture of the Copyright Office, detailing the classification system, the requirements for deposit, and the protocols for public access to these records.

Following this administrative framework, the catalog proceeds into the primary registration lists. These entries are presented alphabetically, documenting the diverse landscape of 1973 cinema. The reader encounters the heavy hitters of the era—such as Charlotte’s Web and The Omega Man—nestled alongside a vast array of niche products: educational mathematics series, industrial films on chemistry techniques, and technical loops for engine lathes. The story of this era is told through its titles, which capture the preoccupations of the early seventies, from the grittiness of Super Fly to the gentle, enduring presence of Lassie episodes, each entry stamped with a specific registration date and number.

The document then transitions into the section for renewals, where the narrative shifts backward in time. Here, the catalog tracks the lifecycle of older works, listing films from the mid-1940s—such as Captain Tugboat Annie and A Close Call for Boston Blackie—that reached their renewal period in 1973. This creates a bridge between the post-war era of cinema and the contemporary productions of the early seventies, highlighting the ongoing legal stewardship of intellectual property.

The volume concludes with an expansive index, a massive cross-reference of names, companies, and subjects. This index serves as the final, exhaustive synthesis of the data, linking auteurs like Stanley Kubrick to individual, obscure production houses. The progression of the book is thus a steady, objective accumulation of facts, transforming the chaotic output of a global film industry into a structured, searchable history. By the end, the reader is left with a sense of the sheer, overwhelming volume of recorded media, a testament to the administrative machinery required to track the products of human imagination. It is a story not of heroes and villains, but of the persistent, bureaucratic effort to catalog the cultural artifacts of a nation, ensuring that for every film, commercial, or lesson, there exists a permanent, verifiable record of its existence, its creator, and its place in the timeline of American production.

How It Unfolds

The mandate of law The volume opens by citing the specific sections of the United States Code that grant the catalog its legal standing. It emphasizes that these pages are not merely informational but serve as evidence in judicial proceedings regarding copyright ownership.

The administrative architecture Detailed instructions follow, explaining how the Copyright Office categorizes materials based on their nature and origin. The reader is guided through the symbols and codes that define the registration process for both domestic and foreign works.

The registration sequence The core of the book presents the alphabetical list of motion pictures registered between January and June 1973. Each entry provides the essential data: the title, the production entity, the duration, the film gauge, and the official copyright notice.

The cycle of renewal A distinct section shifts focus to the renewal of copyrights for older materials. This segment traces the legal life of works from the 1940s, providing a glimpse into the archival practices that protect legacy intellectual property.

The synthesis of the index The final, substantial portion of the volume is a comprehensive index of names and subjects. This section allows the reader to track the work of specific directors, studios, and production groups across the entirety of the recorded period.

The People

The "people" in this document appear not as characters, but as names attached to the administrative machinery of creativity. There are the copyright claimants, such as Walt Disney Productions, Hanna-Barbera, and various educational institutes, whose primary objective is the legal protection of their assets. These entities act as the stewards of the works, ensuring that every production—from a major feature to a three-minute loop on "Approximate Weighing"—is properly registered.

Behind these companies are the creators and individuals named in the entries, such as Robert Schaefer and Eric Freiwald, who served as the engine room for the Lassie series. These writers and producers represent the professional class of the time, tasked with maintaining a steady output for television and film. Their desires are practical: to meet production schedules, to secure their intellectual rights, and to contribute to the vast, ongoing stream of American media.

Furthermore, the document features the officials of the Library of Congress and the Copyright Office, the silent monitors of this process. They do not want fame or creative satisfaction; they want precision, order, and adherence to the U.S. Code. Their goal is the integrity of the record. These figures—from the Chief of the Cataloging Division to the anonymous clerks—stand in the way of chaos, ensuring that the sheer volume of 1973’s output does not dissolve into an unorganized mass. By the end, the reader sees these people as parts of a grand, collective effort to turn human labor into a permanent, searchable historical record.

In Its Own Voice

The following entries demonstrate the specificity and technical nature of the registrations:

CHARLEY AND THE ANGEL. Walt Disney Productions. Distributed by Buena Vista Distribution Co. 93 min., sd., color, 35 mm.

This entry lists the basic production data for a typical feature film of the early 1970s.

APPROXIMATE WEIGHING: SIMPLE LABORATORY BALANCES. Thorne Films. 3 min., sd., color, Super 8 mm.

This entry exemplifies the niche educational content that forms a significant portion of the catalog’s entries.

What It's Really About

This catalog is a meditation on the concept of permanence in a transient industry. It asks what it means to "own" an idea and how a society manages the massive, daily accumulation of its own creative output. By documenting every film, training video, and commercial, the book argues that all media—regardless of its artistic merit or its intended audience—is worthy of being formally recognized and preserved. It raises questions about the relationship between law and culture, suggesting that the true history of an era is found not only in its blockbusters but in the mundane, overlooked instructional films and television spots that fill the gaps between the major landmarks of history.

Why Read It Today

Readers who enjoy history, archival research, or the study of mid-century media culture will find this volume deeply satisfying. It is a dense, factual work that requires patience, as it is essentially a database printed on paper. The experience of reading it is similar to walking through an immense, quiet, and perfectly organized library archive. There is a distinct, rhythmic pleasure in scanning the alphabetized entries and discovering the breadth of the 1973 landscape, where a serious documentary on "American Communism" sits only pages away from a short, instructional film on "Tapping a Hole."

Modern readers should be prepared for the dry, bureaucratic language of 1970s government documents. There are no dramatic arcs, only the steady, relentless documentation of work. However, the beauty of the book lies in its honesty; it captures the era’s quirks and its obsession with technical instruction without any attempt to make the content seem more glamorous than it was. What stays with you after closing the book is the sheer, overwhelming scale of human industry. It serves as a stark reminder that for every piece of media we remember, there were thousands of others produced, cataloged, and archived—a vast, hidden map of an era’s collective effort. It is a necessary, if demanding, primary source for anyone interested in how the machinery of the twentieth century kept track of its own shadow.