Muppet Fact #779
The Never-Ending Mahna Mahna Phenomahna was an app/website that allowed viewers to submit clips of themselves into footage of "Mahna Mahna." The service opened in 2011 and closed in 2015. It served as a promotion for The Muppets.
Source:
Never-Ending Mahna Mahna Phenomahna. (Archived).
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Mahna Mahna: The Untold Story
I had to learn about this, so you do too.
You all remember Mahna Mahna, right? The song and the Muppet of the same name?
This one. It was on the first episode of The Muppet Show.
Well.
In 1968, an Italian man named Luigi Scattini made a very bad movie called 'Svezia: Inferno e Paradiso.'
The movie was ostensibly a documentary. Maybe the original version in Italian was actually a documentary, but the English dub was a little more complicated.
By 'complicated', I mean it was mostly footage of teenage girls hanging out, while a British man judged them in voice-over. I don't know if I'd call that a documentary.
The judgy British narrator lamented how these girls were designed for a life of misery and spinsterhood. He heavily implied a connection between sexual liberation and dying alone.
He also made snide, red-scare comments about "The Socialist utopia of Sweden," as images of corpses, sad people, and birth control pills flashed on screen.
Don't watch it. It's one of the slimiest movies I've ever seen. And not in a fun way. It's not pornographic, it's just horny and leering.
Anyway.
In one scene, a group of young women are in a sauna. Don't worry, they're wearing clothes for this part.
Sound familiar?
Now, Jim Henson obviously wasn't going to let such a ridiculous song go to waste in such a bad movie.
Actually, that part is me projecting. I don't know what Henson thought of the movie.
Anyway, I thought he first did a lip-synch version of the song on some late-night variety show with the characters from Sam and Friends. I could be making that up. I'm having trouble finding the clip.
Eventually, he performed this version on Sesame Street.
I can't stress enough how I'm not making any of this up.
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