[mack]

There's been a lot of strange acts and performers over the years. People that were kind of 'way out there'.

Here's one in my book, the late comedian Andy Kaufman (January 17, 1949 – May 16, 1984).



He had a part on the T.V. show 'Taxi' but mainly Kaufman did a strange form of stand-up comedy in clubs.

'Mighty Mouse' was a popular cartoon when I was a kid and Kaufman used the theme of that show for one of his bits. Here's what Wikipedia has on it:

Kaufman first caught major attention with a character known as "Foreign Man". Foreign Man, who claimed to be from "Caspiar" (a fictional island in the Caspian Sea), would appear on the stage of comedy clubs and lip-synch one line — "Here I come to save the day" — while playing a recording with the theme from "Mighty Mouse," tell a few jokes (poorly), and perform a number of lackluster impersonations (Archie Bunker, Richard Nixon, etc.)[citation needed].

Some variations of this performance were broadcast in the first season of Saturday Night Live; the "Mighty Mouse" number was featured on the premiere October 11, 1975 broadcast, while the joke-telling and Bunker impression were included in the October 25 broadcast that same fall.[4]

He might speak in a fake accent, and say "I would like to imitate Meester Carter, de President of de United States." He would continue in the same voice, "Hello, I am Meester Carter, de President of de United States. T'ank you veddy much." The audience would be torn between outrage at seeing such a bad act, and sympathy for the hapless entertainer, who would cry on stage once heckled enough.

At that point, Foreign Man would announce "And now I would like to imitate the Elvis Presley," turn around, take off his jacket, slick his hair back, and launch into an Elvis Presley impersonation so good that Elvis Presley himself described it as his favorite.[5] When Kaufman visited Graceland after Presley's death, it was discovered that the singer had several VHS tapes of Kaufman in his home.[6] After the wild applause that almost always came after his Elvis impression, he would take a simple bow and say in his "Foreign Man" voice, "T'ank you veddy much!" The audience would realize they had been tricked, which became a trademark of Kaufman's comedy.

From Youtube here's just an example of Kaufman doing the lip-synch to part of 'Mighty Mouse.'




Kaufman's bit-