Pied Piper Porky is a 1939 Looney Tunes short directed by Robert Clampett.
Plot[]
A sign says, "All rats in this picture are ficticious ----- and any resemblance to any one you know is purely co-incidental." In a full, crowded town known as Hamelin, set to the music of Felix Mendelssohn's "Violin Concerto in E minor", on one of the busy streets, there is a newspaper article discussing a pied piper who has rid the town of rats. At the bottom of the page is a picture of the piper, Porky.
Porky plays music with his pipe as singing and music play. After he finishes, a nearby rat appears. Porky goes to get it, but the rat makes an escape, diving into a suddenly-made hole. He takes one last second to mock Porky before going back inside. Porky approaches the hole and sets out a mousetrap in hopes of luring the rat out. He begins to play his pipe, and the rat acts as if it has hypnotized him into coming from his hole, and he heads toward the cheese on the mousetrap.
As soon as he is about to step onto the trap, the rat reveals it didn't act. He grabs Porky's pipe and breaks it in half, playing the blowing end as he dances back into his hole. Porky throws down the other half and grabs a strange box, revealing a cat inside. He tells the cat to get the rat, but the rat ends up scaring it.
After he comments on this, the cat resumes the chase. Porky ends up in the middle of it as the mouse hides on him, and they continue down the hall until they get to a wall. After cutting so many markings into the wall, the cat and mouse play tic-tac-toe with each other, effectively distracting the cat until the mouse is able to run into a hole, causing the cat to run into it and get knocked out. Porky gives the cat some catnip, and the cat gets right back up, allowing it to dive into the mouse hole and attack the rat. The rat returns, covered in "genuine ermine."
Caricatures[]
- Bill Thompson - the rat quotes his Old Timer character, "That's pretty good, sonny, but it ain't the way I hear it!"
- Eddie "Rochester" Anderson - the rat is a caricature of him.
- Max Rosenbloom - Slapsie Catsie
Availability[]
Streaming[]
Censorship[]
- In the Cartoon Network airings of this cartoon, the Rochester mouse's line referring to Pied Piper Porky's flute, "This thing's no good, boss! Full of holes!", is edited to mute out "boss".[4]
Goofs[]
- As the cat speaks, his hair just slightly vanishes for a split second.
Notes[]
- This was the first of two cartoons where Porky was a piper. The second one was "Paying the Piper".
- A newspaper features a headline about "ACME Suspenders".
- Vitaphone release number: 9104
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ Catalog of Copyright Entries
- ↑ (3 October 2022) Cartoon Voices of the Golden Age, Vol. 2 (in en). BearManor Media, page 76.
- ↑ https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/robert-mckimsons-paying-the-piper-1949/
- ↑ http://www.intanibase.com/gac/looneytunes/censored-p.aspx