The Pied Piper of Hamelin is a filmed 1957 ninety-minute musical color television special originally shown by NBC on November 26, 1957, as their Thanksgiving Day offering for that year. Based on the famous poem by Robert Browning and using the music of Edvard Grieg with special lyrics by Hal Stanley and Irving Taylor, it starred Van Johnson, Claude Rains (in his only singing and dancing role), Lori Nelson, Jim Backus, and Kay Starr.
Here John Wayne plays Singin’ Sandy Saunders, the screen’s first singing cowboy. Singin’ Sandy’s ten-gallon hat was black instead of white. This movie is a little more intense than your normal musical cowbody movie of the time. Sandy says “the streets soon running with blood” and “you’ll be drinking your drinks with the dead”, which in not the tamest John Wayne of the 1930′s.