This is a publicity photo taken to promote a film actress. As stated by film production expert Eve Light Honthaner on page 211 of The Complete Film Production Handbook, (Focal Press, 2001):
"Publicity photos (star headshots) have traditionally not been copyrighted. Since they are disseminated to the public, they are generally considered public domain, and therefore clearance by the studio that produced them is not necessary."
Nancy E. Wolff, on page 55 of The Professional Photographer's Legal Handbook (Allworth Communications, 2007), includes a similar explanation:
"There is a vast body of photographs, including but not limited to publicity stills, that have no notice as to who may have created them."
Film industry author Gerald Mast, on page 87 of Film Study and the Copyright Law (1989), writes:
"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. The new copyright act similarly excludes the production still from automatic copyright but gives the film's copyright owner a five-year period in which to copyright the 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."
Kristin Thompson, committee chairperson of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies writes in the conclusion of a 1993 conference with cinema scholars and editors, that they "expressed the opinion that it is not necessary for authors to request permission to reproduce frame enlargements... [and] some trade presses that publish educational and scholarly film books also take the position that permission is not necessary for reproducing frame enlargements and publicity photographs."
Given the evidence supplied in these materials, it can be assumed that for the reasons stated above, this image is in the public domain in the United States.
This image has been assessed under the valued image criteria and is considered the most valued image on Commons within the scope: Doris Day. You can see its nomination here.
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 (50 p.m.a.), Mainland China (50 p.m.a., not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany (70 p.m.a.), Mexico (100 p.m.a.), Switzerland (70 p.m.a.), and other countries with individual treaties.
The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of their rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.enCC0Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain Dedicationfalsefalse
Captions
Doris Day
Doris Day
Doris Day
Items portrayed in this file
depicts
Doris Day
copyright status
copyrighted, dedicated to the public domain by copyright holder
copyright license
Creative Commons CC0 License
Commons quality assessment
Wikimedia Commons valued image
start time: 15 May 2015
media type
image/jpeg
File history
Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.