Sleigh Bells (film)


Sleigh Bells is an American animated short film featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. It was directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, and released in 1927 by Universal Pictures. The film was thought to be lost until a print was discovered in the BFI National Archives in 2015, the film was for two years the last extant Oswald cartoon directed by Walt Disney; until 2017, when High Up, the last Oswald cartoon made by Disney, was rediscovered.

Plot

The film has Oswald the Lucky Rabbit playing in an ice hockey game with surreal plot points. With a "winter wonderland backdrop", Oswald takes off his ear to form a balloon plus a laughing donkey, who gets the puck in the mouth which sticks.

History

The short was animated by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks and was released in 1927. The found footage of film was dated 1931 at a Soho film laboratory. That lab went out of business with its film being sent to the BFI archives in 1981. A lost Disney titles researcher searched through the BFI archive catalog and found its listing. The short was returned to Disney and has since been restored by the Walt Disney Animation Studios. On December 12, 2015, Sleigh Bells was featured in It’s a Disney Christmas: Seasonal Shorts program at BFI Southbank.

Seasonal Shorts

It’s a Disney Christmas: Seasonal Shorts featured: