Film featuring early Disney creation Oswald the rabbit is recovered

A long-lost Walt Disney film has been found.

Authorities with the British Film Institute in London have announced that a researcher recovered in its archives a six-minute animated film from 1928 featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

The 1928 short, entitlted “Sleigh Bells,” features Oswald in an ice hockey game and other winter adventures. The film was thought to have been lost.

Disney developed Oswald with longtime collaborator and former Kansas City resident Ub Iwerks. After Disney lost control of Oswald in a contractual dispute, he and Iwerks went on to create Mickey Mouse.

The film’s discovery is important given the role that Oswald played in the development of Mickey Mouse, said Butch Rigby, the Kansas City lawyer who is chairman of Thank You Walt Disney, a group dedicated to preserving the building near 31st Street and Troost Avenue that housed Disney’s first animation company in the early 1920s.

“If you look at Oswald, he looks very much like Mickey,” said Rigby, who keeps a 3-inch figurine of Oswald on his office desk.

Disney animators will work with the British Film Institute to restore the film. A world premiere of “Sleigh Bells” is scheduled Dec. 12 at the institute.

This story was originally published November 7, 2015 at 2:00 AM with the headline "Film featuring early Disney creation Oswald the rabbit is recovered."