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).