I don’t remember there being an immigration angle to The Pied Piper of Hamelin, at least in the story I heard as a child, but it’s clearly there in this otherwise very traditional version of the fairy tale from 1957.
The plot otherwise remains as I recall it. The town of Hamelin is plagued by rats so the townspeople offer a passing piper, who claims he can charm them all away with his music, a huge reward for doing so, then refuse to pay him after he’s done his job. Whereupon he performs the same trick on the town’s children, whisking them off to some some cliff face, which opens as he approaches. And into it he goes, with all the children following along behind, never to be seen again. Moral: pay your bills.
In this version the rats get some back story. There’s been a flood in the rival town of Hamelout – currently competing with Hamelin to see who can make the fanciest clock for the king – and its townsfolk have arrived in Hamelin begging for food, shelter and help. No dice says the mayor, not realising that if he doesn’t help Hamelout recover, its rats won’t have anywhere to live either. Cue: a rodent invasion.
There is another plot curlicue added on at the end, to give the story a bit of a happy ending, but otherwise this is the highly trad Pied Piper story, told in a highly trad way. Trad for Hollywood, that is. Though made for TV, this was shot on Technicolor – rare for TV – and has the ambience of a Danny Kaye movie like The Court Jester. That Kaye vibe is omnipresent, from the witty lyrics, the daffy songs, the colourful costumes, actors who are just a touch too old for their roles and hair that’s always nicely in place.
The Piper is played by Van Johnson, who also has a second role as Truson, a stout fellow and all-round decent sort who is our representative in Hamelin. It’s noticeable how much better Johnson is as the perky but slightly sinister Piper than he is as Truson, which opens a window on a career that might have been different if Johnson had played villains and dangerous charmers rather than, too often, vanilla leading men.
The other standout is Claude Rains as the mayor, reaching back to his role as the reptilian Prince John in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Rains doesn’t have much of a singing voice but he has stagecraft and he knows how to deliver. The dialogue is in rhyming couplets, which Rains is also noticeably better at than almost anyone else in the movie.
Talking of which, Lori Nelson as the mayor’s daughter and a love interest for Truson – a subplot that adds nothing – and Jim Backus as the king’s emissary, who arrives when Hamelin is at the height of its crisis and precipitates the mayor into doing something about it. Backus you may know as the voice of Mr Magoo.
The director is Bretaigne Windust, a theatre guy who does a good job here, moving things along at pace and with a swagger and with some artistic choices – the rats are only seen as shadows, for instance – that are inspired.
Most of the music is by Greig, some of the dialogue is from Robert Browning’s poem (borrowing from the Grimm brothers) with the lyrics to the songs by Tin Pan Alley stalwart Irving Taylor. Having Greig’s greatest hits as a starting point has clearly inspired Taylor. His lyrics are pithy, funny and have pace and swagger. So, in fact, does Johnson as the Piper (but Johnson as Truson doesn’t).
A fine version of the familiar story and all wrapped up in a neat 90 minutes, not including ad breaks.
The Pied Piper of Hamelin – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
