Disney’s first Christmas cartoon, featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, has been found. For a time, the National Library of Norway thought it lost this 1927 cartoon by animator Walt Disney.
According to Yahoo!, the cartoon “Empty Socks,” was discovered during an inventory check. “At the beginning, we didn’t know it was a lost cinematographic treasure,” Kvale Soerenssen, archivist of the library. Apparently the film reels were not labeled accordingly.
“Empty Socks” is a cartoon that originally a duration of around five and a half minutes. The film left at the library has about 30-60 seconds of missing footage, due to damages. This was one of the 26 films that Oswald starred in. As to how this copy ended up in Norway, it belonged to a private collector and was then donated to the Norwegian Film Institute. The only other copy of this cartoon is a 26 second clip at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Currently, the National Library in Norway is working on digitizing its collection of items and this is how “Empty Socks” was discovered. The article goes on to say that the cartoon has been indeed digitalized and the short has been sent to the Walt Disney Company.
We just may see this cartoon in the near future. Pretty neat to have this once lost piece of history found!
