Pied Piper Porky (A Rolling Hole Gathers No Boss)

Director(s): Bob Clampett (credited as “Robert Clampett”)

Summary: In this spoof of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Porky is the titular Pied Piper, who uses his pied pipe (which looks like a rough version of a clarinet and a flute) to rid the town of Hamelin of all the mice. However, there is one rogue mouse (one with a rough, African-American-coded sounding voice, in the same vein as Eddie “Rochester” Anderson) that he is unable to catch. After piping and actual mousetraps fail, Pied Piper Porky  tries an old-fashioned mouse trap (what others would call "a cat"), and the rest of the short is cat-and-mouse antics.

Fun Facts:

• This cartoon should not be confused with the 1949 Robert McKimson short, “Paying the Piper,” which was also about Porky Pig being The Pied Piper of Hamelin, but it also included a group of outraged cats who feel Pied Piper Porky stole their jobs in ridding the town of mice and their leader (a tuxedo cat known as “The Supreem Cat”) dresses up as an overgrown mouse and tricks the mayor into thinking Porky didn’t catch all the mice in town.

• John Carey also did animation work for “Paying the Piper,” making me think either he likes spoofs of that story, he wanted to work on a better version of “Pied Piper Porky,” or it’s just a coincidence that he worked on two cartoons that had Porky Pig as The Pied Piper of Hamelin (try saying all of that five times fast).

• The newspaper in the beginning mentions seeing both a San Francisco fair and a New York fair for $90.00...in the weather report box (I know it’s a pun on “fair” either meaning “a local carnival” when it’s a noun or “pleasant and mild” if it’s used as an adjective to describe weather conditions, and now you do too). $90.00 in 1939 money would be $2,162.28 in 2026 money. Those two fairs better be the best fairs in the world (by both 1939 and 2026 standards) for me to even consider going, because that price is outrageous.

Yeah, that’s about it for the “Fun Facts” this go-around. And Letterboxd hasn’t given me anything good for “Letterboxd Says the Darndest Things” (they have for the next Porky cartoon that was censored on TV and directed by Bob Clampett, “The Film Fan,” but not this). So, let’s move to the meat and potatoes:

The Channel(s): Cartoon Network (barring The Bob Clampett Show) and (I’m assuming) Boomerang (since Boomerang is a spinoff channel and anything Cartoon Network aired, Boomerang did too)

Part(s) Edited: Hurray! This may be the first time I report on an audio edit to dialogue since “Bosko’s Picture Show”’s “The dirty fuck”/“The dirty cur” line. However, this one wasn’t a Nickelodeon cut (it could have been). Cartoon Network’s (and Boomerang’s) version (not counting when it was on The Bob Clampett Show) muted the Eddie Anderson-sounding mouse saying “Boss” in his line, “This thing’s no good, boss. Fulla holes!” (referring to the horn/clarinet/flute Porky used on him to make him nearly go into the mousetrap), so now the line goes, “This thing’s no good [muted audio]. Fulla holes!”

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit(s): The ground gears are more questions about the edit that reveal how nonsensical the decision to edit the part is:

• If the word “boss” was a problem because of the Eddie Anderson-voiced mouse, why didn’t they just redub the voice of the mouse? Cartoon Network has done it before with Mammy Two Shoes (the black housemaid on the Tom and Jerry shorts), though editing Mammy Two Shoes’ voice also happened on TBS, TNT, and some unnamed syndicated versions from the 1960s (the latter of which had a white woman [June Foray] voicing a black character in “Dog Trouble” and another short [“Saturday Evening Puss”] where Mammy Two Shoes is redrawn/reanimated as a white teenage girl [a tasteful 1960s version. Pretty sure the depravity of the 1970s and the coming of MTV in the 1980s warped adolescence irrevocably], both editing measures of which wouldn’t be considered “politically correct” today).

• Cartoon Network has aired “The Mouse That Jack Built,” which also had a mouse who looked and sounded like Eddie Anderson’s Rochester character from The Jack Benny Show, with no cuts to “boss” or the Rochester mouse’s voice.

• Why didn’t Nickelodeon think to edit it too, considering that they also do audio edits and edit for outdated racially insensitive stereotypes and caricatures? Maybe they figured people wouldn’t understand the reference? But what about the Amos ‘n Andy reference from “I Got to Sing a Torch Song”? Yeah, I don’t have an answer to that.

Video Comparison: 

Availability Uncut: Just like “Naughty Neighbors,” we have another disappointing physical media turn-out. “Pied Piper Porky” was first available on the 1994 laser disc, Wince Upon a Time: Foolhardy Fairy Tales and Looney Legends (this release also had “Paying the Piper” on it, so you can compare and contrast the two shorts...or pick one over the other). 23 years later (2017), “Pied Piper Porky” was released as part of the Porky Pig 101 DVD set and has been there ever since (as of this writing). Compare with “Paying the Piper,” which was released on DVD in 2007 (13 years after appearing on Wince Upon a Time...) as part of both the fifth volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set and the fifth volume of its less expensive, family-friendly counterpart, The Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection. “Paying the Piper”’s most recent DVD release was in 2014 (seven years after its first DVD release and twenty years after its release on laser disc), where it was part of the Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection, volumes four and five repack.

Is/Was It on Streaming or Digital Download: The streaming front looks a bit better...at least to “Pied Piper Porky.” This short was on Boomerang’s streaming app from 2017 to 2024, and it was included on HBO Max (and Max) from 2020 to 2025. Meanwhile, “Paying the Piper” was also on HBO Max, but it was on the Latin American/Brazilian feed (why? I don’t know. There was nothing offensive about it). In the end, both “Pied Piper Porky” and “Paying the Piper” can be found uncut, uncensored (though “Paying the Piper” was never edited for anything), and restored/remastered on Tubi as of this writing.

‘Til next time: Stay Looney and Be Merrie!

Rover's Rival (Washed-Up Antiques Roadshow)

 

Director: Bob Clampett (credited as “Robert Clampett.” Sounds oddly proper for someone like him. Like calling Will Forte “Orville Willis Forte IV”), with Chuck Jones (credited as “Charles Jones”) as an uncredited co-director (though he is credited for animation).

Summary: Porky literally tries to teach his old dog new tricks, but a smart aleck puppy keeps trolling him.

Fun Facts: 

• This is the first cartoon to use “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down” as the Looney Tunes theme song (Merrie Melodies’ theme is “Merrily We Roll Along,” for those who use both interchangeably) and the first to use the ending card where Porky bursts out of the drum and stutters, “Th-Th-Th-That’s All, Folks!” (there’s a short-lived Bugs Bunny variant where Bugs bursts out of the drum, snacks on a carrot, and says, “And dat’s de end!” Kinda wished they did variations with other characters, like how the end of Tiny Toon Adventures had the characters close out the cartoon, like Gogo Dodo saying, “It’s been surreal!” and turning the TV off with a remote, Plucky saying, “Parting is such sweet sorrow,” or Dizzy Devil saying “Show over” and eating the rainbow-colored concentric circles until his eyes are the only things left. There’s a YouTube compilation of this, naturally).
• Initial titles for this include “Porky’s Bag O’Tricks!” and “Ol' Man Rover” (a spoof on the 1927 musical “Old Man River”). I like the second one. The first title sounds like it’s about Porky dealing with an incompetent magician or being an incompetent magician.
• The young pup actually has a name, according to the animation draft sheets. Apparently, his name is supposed to be Zippy.
• Speaking of Zippy, his voice actor and the voice of Rover the elderly dog are currently unknown. However, whoever voiced the two may have also voiced the blabbermouth duck from “She Was An Acrobat’s Daughter” who keeps asking his father questions about the movie they're watching starring Leslie Howard and Bette Davis and the old man on “Ain’t We Got Fun?” (no points on who would have voiced who. It’s fairly obvious). Those two shorts haven’t been censored for anything, but, if I ever get around to doing a blog either covering all 1000 WB theatrical shorts or (more realistically) just covering the ones I find interesting, weird, bad, good, inspirational, or forever living rent-free in my head thanks to childhood nostalgia, I will definitely cover one or both of them.

The Channel(s): Nickelodeon (possibly)

Part(s) Edited: Nickelodeon’s redrawn-colorized version (according to the old Censored Cartoons Page and the Looney Tunes Fandom Wiki) muffled out the young pup calling Porky’s dog an “old  antique” after the old dog slams his head into a washtub that’s hanging on the wall outside Porky’s house.

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit: Not so much “grind my gears” as “make me ask a lot of questions about the veracity of the claim.” Editing a cartoon to remove a kid character insult an elderly character seems out of character for Nickelodeon (especially in the 1990s, when the whole aesthetic of that channel made kids and teenagers believe that they had the power and reasonable adult figures were old-fashioned and out-of-touch), so what was the point of this edit? I wouldn’t put it past the censors of that channel to show some hypocrisy (the syndicated/acquired shows can’t have any ageism and adult-bashing from kids, but the homegrown shows Nickelodeon made can). Then again, what if it wasn’t a censorship cut? What if the sound quality was so bad that the audio just strategically cut out on that part and fixing it was either a) impossible, or b) not cost-effective. Or what if the viewers couldn’t understand the pup’s dialogue and thought it was muffled or muted?

Video Comparison: I’m not going to do my usual “compare/contrast” or “edit approximation” video this go-around. What I am going to do is upload both the original black and white version and the redrawn-colorized version and let you, the reader/viewer, decide if any audio censorship was done. From where I stand, there was no editing, but if anyone has any evidence that says otherwise (f.eg, a video of when this short aired on Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon with the edit actually there for all to here), then please come up and testify.

Black and White version:

Redrawn-Colorized version:

Availability Uncut: It was already uncut (allegedly) when aired on television, but, if you want the black and white version where the audio is high-quality, then look no further than the Porky Pig 101 DVD (disc two)…and I mean that literally, because that’s the only physical media release it has. It was available on Boomerang’s streaming channel and HBO Max (back when it was first called HBO Max and then when it was just Max. Now it’s back to HBO Max), but was dropped between 2024 and 2025 (this year).

UPDATE: “Rover’s Rival” is, as of August 2025, one of the 700 to 800 classic Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts uploaded to Tubi after HBO Max took them off their platform.

‘Til next time…