Poor Papa (found "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit" Walt Disney animated short film; 1927)

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Poor-papa-title-card.jpg

Title card.

Status: Found

Date found: 31 Jan 2017

Found by: The Walt Disney Company

Poor Papa is the first Oswald The Lucky Rabbit short film, created in 1927 by Walt Disney. In this short, Oswald gets a visit from a stork who continues to drop babies into his chimney at a rapid pace. Apparently, this was the first-ever Oswald short made, though "Trolley Troubles" was released first. This is because Universal held back on airing it until 1928 in theatres, with it never airing on TV for its mediocre quality. The likely reason why is that Oswald was perceived by executives as "elderly", which contrasted with their concepts of a character more like Charlie Chaplin.

Surviving Copies

There were at one point just three copies known to have still existed, all found in the UK. The first copy was sold in 2001 for a decidedly small fee of $100; the second copy was sold for £170, and the third copy was sold in 2014 for $7,500. Unfortunately, none of these prints had been ripped from the Internet nor shown publicly either. Allegedly these copies were incomplete, however, just having 3 minutes of the short (a bit less than half of it), so the rest of the short was thought to have been permanently gone for good.

In 2007, Disney released its Adventures of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit DVD, with 13 short subjects contained in it. Allegedly, Disney tried to obtain one of the prints of Poor Papa to put on the disc but failed to do so before the release of the DVD.[1]

Official Release

On January 31st, 2017, for Oswald's 90th anniversary, Poor Papa was released in full as a bonus feature on the Pinocchio Signature Collection Blu-ray release. The total length of the short is 5 minutes and 17 seconds. It was reported that it was restored from a scan of a 16mm silent home film print from the UK. This release also had a brand new orchestral score to accompany the short.[2]

Gallery

Production Stills

Footage

The full short ripped from the Blu-ray release.

See Also

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

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Animation (Disney)

Animation (Pixar)

Audio

Live Action

Short Films

References