By Doug Boilesen, 2023
Andy Kaufman and a
RCA Victor Stereo portable phonograph on the premier episode of
NBC Saturday Night Live, October 11, 1975 teamed up to
make the "Mighty Mouse Theme Song" unexpectedly funny
and memorable.
This excerpt from
from The New Yorker "Was this man a genius?"
by Julie Hecht, November 22, 1999 sums it up nicely:
"One night in 1975,
I was tying up the garbage when my husband called me to
come and see something he was watching on TV. “You have
to see this!” he called. I couldn’t believe there was
anything on television that I had to see, but he sounded
as if he had found something exciting and wonderful.
There was a tall, dark,
and almost handsome man, dressed in a black turtleneck
sweater, with a button-down shirt and a checked sports
jacket over it. He
was standing on a stage, with a small record-player
next to him, and when he put the needle on, it played
the Mighty Mouse theme song. The man appeared to have
no idea what he was doing until the singing began. Then
he knew just what he was doing, and suddenly he turned
into a baritone star from a nineteen-fifties musical as
he started to lip-synch the words. It wasn’t funny the
way other things are funny. It just made you laugh.
The mysterious man was Andy
Kaufman, on Saturday Night Live.”
Andy Kaufman's and
his phonograph playing the Mighty Mouse theme song. (Courtesy
NBC and Saturday Night Live.) (1975)
RCA
Victor Stereo Portables with Model SES-4 in a 1960 magazine ad.
In the 1999 movie
"The Man on the Moon."Jim Carey recreated the record
player and Mighty Mouse skit in playing Andy Kaufman singing the
Mighty Mouse theme song using the same 1960 RCA Victor portable
record player from the original SNL 1975 skit. (Universal Film
Company, Mutual Film Company, SNL, et al.)
Mighty Mouse Theme
Song "Here I Come to Save the Day," Golden Records,
Mr. Trouble never
hangs around,
When he hears this
Mighty sound,
Here I come to save
the day!
That means that Mighty
Mouse is on the way!
Yes sir, when there
is a wrong to right,
Mighty Mouse will
join the fight!
On the sea or on
the land,
He's got the situation
well in hand!
Lyrics to "The Mighty
Mouse Playhouse," 1955
Another Phonograph/Mighty
Mouse popular culture connection - "Mighty Mouse Comics,"
No. 14, Terrytoons, December 1949 (PM-0092).