A short animated film that was created by Walt Disney in 1928 but feared lost has been discovered in Japan.
A short animated film that was created by Walt Disney in 1928 but feared lost has been discovered in Japan.
The two-minute, black-and-white film footage features Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a character that Walt Disney created in 1927, a year before he came up with the character that was to make him a household name globally, Mickey Mouse.
Titled “Neck ‘n’ Neck” when the film was released in the US, a handful of copies reached Japan, where one was purchased by a high school student named Yasushi Watanabe from a toy wholesalers’ market in the city of Osaka
Mr Watanabe failed to realise the significance of his purchase, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported, until he read a book titled “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit: The Search for the Lost Disney Cartoons”, published in 2017 by David Bossert, who had worked for many years on animated movies at the Walt Disney Studios in the US.
According to Mr Bossert, Walt Disney created 26 short films that starred Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, but only 19 have survived.
