Lost 1927 Disney Film “Empty Socks” Found In Norway

An almost complete version of Disney's first Christmas film called "Empty Socks" was found in a library in Norway near the Arctic Circle.

The 1927 film, which features Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, was found in the National Library of Norway in Mo i Rana, The Guardian reported. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was a predecessor of Mickey Mouse and appeared in 26 Walt Disney movies.

The lost film was discovered when the National Library launched a large digitization project to make its collection more accessible

 "At the beginning, we didn't know it was a lost cinematographic treasure," Kvale Soerenssen, an archivist at the library, said in a statement according to The Huffington Post.

"The film was in two reels which weren't clearly labelled."

Disney cartoonist David Gerstein authenticated the copy found in the library, which was initially thought of as footage of Felix the Cat. The library said the complete film runs about 5 minutes and 30 seconds, but about a minute from the middle is missing.

The only known copy of "Empty Socks" is a 25-second sequence preserved at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Before ending up in the archive of the National Library of Norway, the Norwegian film originally belonged to a private individual whose collection was handed over to the Norwegian Film Institute.

The library kept the original copy of the film and sent a digitized copy to The Walt Disney Company.

Along with "Empty Socks," the library also found a copy of a 1982 Oswald film, "Tall Timber." The film is one of the last Oswald films made by Disney and Iwerks, who then created the character of Mickey Mouse after losing the character of Oswald to Universal, which had been distributing the films.