Missing 1927 Walt Disney Christmas film discovered in Norway
An old Disney film has been discovered -- just in time for the holidays.
A copy of a 1927 Walt Disney cartoon -- thought to be Disney's first Christmas animation -- was recently uncovered in Norway.
The movie, called "Empty Socks," clocks in at less than six minutes and stars Mickey Mouse's predecessor, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Employees found the reels while doing inventory and digitizing content at Norway's National Library.
"At the beginning, we didn't know it was a lost cinematographic treasure," Kvale Soerenssen, an archivist at the library, said in a statement to the U.K.'s Guardian via Agence France-Presse. "The film was in two reels which weren't clearly labeled."
There's about 30 seconds to a minute or so of footage missing from the animated short, but aside from that it's intact. The movie centers around Oswald who dresses up as Santa Claus for a group of orphans with empty stockings.
Prior to the latest discovery, the only known copy of "Empty Socks" was a 25-second portion preserved at New York's Museum of Modern Art. The mischievous Oswald character was co-created by Disney before Mickey Mouse came along, but he was lost in a 1928 contract dispute with Universal Studios.
"Empty Socks" had its premiere on Thursday the Norwegian National Library.
