A few years ago, when Disney finally got back the rights to Walt Disney’s first hit cartoon character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the studio put out a DVD set of all surviving cartoons. They may want to put out a new edition, though, since a lost one was discovered in Norway of all places.
Oswald appeared in 26 cartoons and, like many films from the 1920s, some were lost. But a nearly complete copy of Empty Socks from 1927 was discovered in Norway’s National Library facility in Mo i Rana.
“At the beginning, we didn’t know it was a lost cinematographic treasure,” archivist Kvale Soerenssen said in a statement to Agence France-Presse. “The film was in two reels which weren’t clearly labelled.”
Empty Socks was believed to run five minutes and 30 seconds when it was first screened, but as much as a minute of footage from the middle part is missing.
However, as NPR points out, that’s still much more than anyone previously thought still existed. Before the discovery, only 25 seconds of Empty Socks was known to exist.
Disney cartoonist David Gerstein authenticated the reels, which the National Library has since digitized. A copy was also sent to the Walt Disney Company.
Oswald was Disney’s first hit cartoon character, following his Alice series. The character was a rubbery rabbit who looked very similar to Mickey Mouse. When Disney discovered that he didn’t own Oswald, he then created Mickey on the way to California, where he founded a completely independent studio. Meanwhile, Universal continued to use Oswald in cartoons through the 1940s.
In 2006, Disney famously reacquired Oswald by trading ESPN's Al Michaels to NBCUniversal so he could call NBC's Sunday Night Football games. Disney has since used the character in the Epic Mickey video game and the short shown before Frozen, Get A Horse.