Here I Come To Save The Day

So I’m watching one of Ashleigh’s reactions, to a movie called Hook. One of the characters makes a reference to Mighty Mouse. Ash looks puzzled. “Who’s Mighty Mouse?” she says.

Suddenly, I felt 969 years old.

And I wasn’t the only one. Reading the comments, it seems lots of people remembered the little superhero, modeled after Superman. Many of the 40-50 year old crowd did, although Ashleigh, a millennial, never got the memo.

Here’s what I recall. Mighty Mouse was everywhere during my formative years. You might catch his cartoon adventures on Saturday morning, before or after school, or really, any old time.

A basic plot line had a villain, usually a cat or a wolf, who’d begin to terrorize a peaceful community of mice. Things looked bad for a minute or two, but then someone would summon Mighty Mouse.

He seemed to live in the sky, or outer space. MM would materialize from a cloud, a star, a crescent moon, or even a shack high atop a tree. Hearing cries for help, he’d beeline for trouble, making short work of the evil cat/wolf (with plenty of sound effects).

If there is a damsel in distress, she will be in Mighty’s strong arms at cartoon’s end.

MM began life in the 1940’s as Supermouse, from Paul Terry’s Terrytoons factory. My guess is that someone threatened a lawsuit, so Supermouse became Mighty Mouse. You’d see his short cartoons in movie houses, then later, in everyone’s houses; Terrytoons just kept making them for the television age. There seems to be a never ending supply on YouTube these days.

Some odd things about these six-minute cartoons. There is a lot of opera sung, I mean a lot of it. Was Paul Terry an opera fan? The characters sing their dialogue instead of speaking it. And the theme song that most of us remember hardly figures in the individual films. Just lots of dramatic opera singing and old timey tunes, like “Dixie”.

One person who definitely remembered the theme song was comedian Andy Kaufman. His did a bit on Saturday Night Live where he pantomimed with the tune, reenacted for the film Man on the Moon. Better seen than described.

Anyway, for Ashleigh and those of her generation, that’s who Mighty Mouse is.

Yes, it was before your time. But Betty Boop was before mine, and I know all about her.

Take that, Cat/Wolf!