Empty Socks

Empty Socks (1927) is a short animated film made by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks that was considered a lost film until its rediscovery in Norway in 2014.

Production background
The film stars Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Disney lost the rights to the Oswald character to Universal Pictures, and then reacquired the rights from Universal in 2006.

The film was directed by Walt Disney while working for M. J. Winkler Productions. This short is considered Disney's first Christmas-themed cartoon. Mickey's Orphans (1931) is considered a remake of Empty Socks with a similar story line.

Rediscovery
In December 2014, an almost complete copy of the film, missing about 30 seconds, was discovered in Mo i Rana, Norway. Previously, the only known fragment was a 25-second segment housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The original short ran about 5:30. The print of Empty Socks was found with a copy of the Oswald cartoon Tall Timber (1928).

The print of Empty Socks belonged to a private individual, before being donated to the collection of the Norwegian Film Institute, which handed over its archive to the National Library of Norway. The library stores most of its documents in a high-security bunker in Mo i Rana.

On December 17, 2014, a digitized version of the recovered nitrate film was shown at the National Library of Norway, along with Tall Timber.