Free 1940s movies, cartoons and shorts

176 titles on the air now, made between 1940 and 1949 - about 67 hours of viewing in all. 36 are feature-length (40 minutes or more) and 140 are shorts.

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Every title from the 1940s that is on the air at Starlite TV right now, across all of our channels, sorted by year. Films from this decade are on Starlite TV because they are U.S. government works, were published without a valid notice, or their copyrights were never renewed; each title page shows the evidence.

Starlite TV works like broadcast TV, so these play on schedules: open a title to see when it airs next in your time zone, or jump into a channel live.

Where to start

Prime-time headliners and titles with full background guides.

• Angel and the Badman (1947) 100 min · Dusty Trails
  By the mid-1940s John Wayne was a major star, and Angel and the Badman was the first film he produced himself. He gave the writing and directing job to his friend and frequent screenwriter James Edward Grant, and the result is an unusual Western: one that is more interested in peace than in gunfights.
• The Battle of Midway (1942) 18 min · Doc Vault
  When the United States Navy sent Commander John Ford — the director of Stagecoach and The Grapes of Wrath, then serving in the Navy's photographic unit — to Midway Island in mid-1942, it was supposedly to film routine footage of the base. Two days before the battle, Ford learned that the Japanese planned to attack.
• His Girl Friday (1940) 92 min · Laugh Track
  His Girl Friday is Howard Hawks' screwball comedy remake of the hit 1928 Broadway play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, which had already been filmed once, in 1931. The play was about two male newspapermen.
• The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (1944) 42 min · Doc Vault
  In 1942 the Hollywood director William Wyler — director of Mrs. Miniver, Wuthering Heights and The Little Foxes — joined the US Army Air Forces as a major and was sent to England to film the daylight bombing campaign over Europe.
• Scarlet Street (1945) 101 min · Case Files
  After the success of their thriller The Woman in the Window (1944), director Fritz Lang, producer Walter Wanger and actress Joan Bennett (Wanger's wife) formed their own company, Diana Productions, and reunited Bennett with co-stars Edward G. Robinson and Dan Duryea.
• The Stranger (1946) 91 min · Case Files
  The Stranger was Orson Welles' third completed feature as a director, made a few years after Citizen Kane, at a time when Hollywood studios were wary of his reputation for going over budget.
• Superman (1941) (1941) 10 min · Saturday Morning
  In 1941 Paramount Pictures asked Fleischer Studios — the animation house behind Betty Boop and Popeye — to bring the newly popular comic-book hero from Action Comics to the screen.
• Dressed to Kill (1946) 69 min · Case Files
• Hemp for Victory (1942) 14 min · Doc Vault
• Impact (1949) 111 min · Case Files
• The Outlaw (1943) 116 min · Dusty Trails
• Prelude to War (1942) 41 min · Doc Vault
• Santa Fe Trail (1940) 110 min · Dusty Trails
• Superman: Billion Dollar Limited (1942) 8 min · Saturday Morning
• Superman: Electric Earthquake (1942) 9 min · Saturday Morning
• Superman: The Arctic Giant (1942) 8 min · Saturday Morning