

The Pied Piper of Basin Street
1945 Directed by Shamus CulhaneIn this swing version of the famous tale, a small town is overrun with rats. The mayor (caricature of Lou Costello) is in a quandary. His phones are busy with demands to do something. He hears a voice say: "what you need is a Pied Piper." Looking up, he sees a young man with a trombone (Jimmy Durante) who claims that he can run every rat out of town for a fee. The mayor makes a deal with him, and the trombone player goes to work leading the rats out of town with the playing of his trombone, and he locks them in a cage. Returning to the mayor's office, he's handed a bag of peanuts and thrown out. Unable to get the reward promised, the Pied Piper puts on his "Hank Swoonatra" (Frank Sinatra) suit croons to the girls. He leads them aboard a swinging showboat and opens the cage full of rats and they return to town, where only the mayor is left. The rats swarm the mayor's office and give him a bad time for his treatment of the pied piper. Production Number: D-10 A Swing Symphony cartoon.
Harry Lang
....................................................The Mayor (uncredited)
GeGe Pearson
....................................................Nylon Girl Rat / Scared Woman (uncredited)
Dick Nelson
....................................................Dead End Rats / Red Skelton Rat / Grocer / Ned Sparks Taxpayer / Pied Piper / Solid Jackson (uncredited)
Director
...........................................................Shamus Culhane
Producer
...........................................................Walter Lantz
Story
...........................................................Milt Schaffer
Ben Hardaway
Background Designer
...........................................................Philip DeGuard
Animation
...........................................................Laverne Harding
Musician
...........................................................Jack Teagarden
Production Companies
...................................................Walter Lantz Productions
Production Countries
........................................................United States of America
Spoken Languages
....................................................English
Genres
....................................................Animation
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