The 39th Silly Symphony, The Pied Piper, first lured audiences to the theater on this day in 1933. Based on the classic tale, the pied piper is hired to lure the rats from Hamelin by charming them away with his musical pipe. When the townspeople agree with the mayor that all he did was “pipe a tune,” they agree to not pay him as promised. To keep the town’s children from also becoming dishonest and ungrateful like the grownups, he lures all of them off to “Joy Land.”
If you’ve ever wondered why the piper was referred to as “pied,” it is a term that literally means to have patches of two or more colors, such as birds. Anyone wearing clothing with color patches, such as a jester, can be referred to as “pied.” Even a pied piper!
