The Pied Piper of Cleveland

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(L-R) Bill Randle, Tommy Edwards, Elvis Presley and Bill Black October 20, 1955

The Pied Piper of Cleveland was the title of an American musical documentary film produced in the fall of 1955 documenting the career of disc jockey Bill Randle. The full title of the film is The Pied Piper of Cleveland: A Day in the Life of a Famous Disc Jockey. Arthur Cohen directed the film, which was produced by Bill Randle himself.

Included in the film was live footage shot at several live shows at local high schools and auditoriums on and around October 20, 1955. Performers featured included Elvis Presley, Bill Haley and His Comets, Pat Boone, LaVern Baker, Roy Hamilton, Johnnie Ray and others. This was the first film Presley ever appeared in, and is the movie short referred to by Randle when he introduced Presley on his first national TV appearance.

A plaque commemorating one of the filmed performances is located at Brooklyn High School in the Cleveland area, and was installed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The original forty-eight minute film was supposed to be cut down to a twenty minute "short" for national distribution, but never made it that far. As of 2005, 50 years after its was produced, the movie remains unreleased. There is some dispute over whether or not this film actually exists, although it was shown publicly, albeit only once in Cleveland, and excerpts were also aired on a Cleveland television station in 1956.

Randle, before his death, sold the rights to the film to PolyGram, although it has been reported that Universal Studios has the negatives of the film in its vaults.

[edit] The Alien Autopsy connection

Pied Piper of Cleveland achieved bizarre notoriety in the 1990s when it was linked to the infamous "Alien Autopsy" film circulated by producer Ray Santilli. According to Santilli, he was attempting to obtain a copy of Pied Piper from a man who claimed to have been the cinematographer on the film. Instead of the rare Elvis film, Santilli claims, the cameraman offered him footage he claimed to have shot in the late 1940s of an alleged autopsy of an alien recovered from one of the UFO crash sites.

The FOX network produced a popular documentary, Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction? centered around this footage, which was later dunked (by FOX) as being a hoax. This has led to some claims that Pied Piper is likewise a hoax, however documentation supporting the film's existence predates the Alien Autopsy affair by many years.

[edit] References

Jim Dawson, Rock Around the Clock: The Record That Started the Rock Revolution (San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2005)
Fred L. Worth and Steve D. Tamerius, Elvis: His Life from A to Z (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1990).