Lost Disney “Laugh-O-Grams” at MoMA

I’m not sure even Disney knows about this… Thanks to animation historians David Gerstein and Cole Johnson, The Museum of Modern Art has just finished restoring two lost Laugh-O-Grams cartoons they had long held in their archives, previously misidentified under alternate titles. International animation archivist Serge Bromberg (Lobster Films) is going to host a showing of the new prints on Halloween, Sunday October 31st at 2pm.

Cole Johnson located Goldie Locks and The Three Bears at MoMA under a 1929 sound reissue title “The Peroxide Kid” and Gerstein recently identified the lost Jack The Giant Killer, which the Museum had under the name “The K-O Kid”.

In addition to the two new discoveries, newly preserved and restored prints of Little Red Riding Hood, Puss In Boots and The Four Musicians Of Bremen will be screened at MoMA along with Disney’s original 1921 Laugh-O-Gram sample reel and several Ub Iwerks cartoons – Flip the Frog in Techno-Cracked (1933) and the ComicColor Don Quixote (1934).

Bromberg is coming in from Europe for MoMA’s annual To Save and Project festival to introduce the Laugh-O-Grams screening and provide piano accompaniment. The program will repeat only one more time, later that week, on November 4 at 4:30pm.

The two Laugh-O-Grams not being screened, Cinderella and Jack and The Beanstalk, are not held by MoMA. Beanstalk was also long considered lost, but has also been discovered by Gerstein in a private collection. This means that all seven 1922 Disney Laugh-O-Grams fairy tales – Holy Grails to Disney historians – are now known to exist.

For more background information on this incredible find, read David Gerstein’s blog for the full story.