It has been shown that polymeric Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) multilayers may be released from the supports on which they were prepared by first thermally evaporating thin films of stearic acid onto the support. The acid can subsequently be washed away, so undercutting the film and releasing it to float to the water surface. The films were redeposited onto fresh silicon wafers or onto glass microscope slides. Under the optical microscope, the films on the glass microscope slides were clear and featureless. By XRD the transferred films had the same or fewer orders of Bragg peaks and the corresponding bilayer spacings were the same or slightly larger than those of the original films. Thus, it appears that most films lose a small amount of their order in the transfer process. By second harmonic generation (SHG) the transferred alternating LB films formed from a poly(4-vinylpyridine) partially quaternised by reaction with n-docosyl bromide and from the poly(4-vinylpyridinium bromide) formed by the zwitterionic polymerisation of 4-vinylpyridine with 4(12-bromododecyloxy)-4'-trifluoromethylazobenzene displayed essentially the same SHG properties as the original films. Moreover, the SHG films could be stacked successfully to give thicker films. Several of the transferred films, but not all, contained traces of stearic acid, which appears to be present as small domains of Y-type layers. In one typical case, where the LB film consisted of 100 layers of a poly(4-vinylpyridine), it was shown that the amount of stearic acid present corresponded to an average of one monolayer.