How inspiration for a beloved Muppets earworm came from a movie showing in Midtown

A biographer of Muppets creator Jim Henson has traced the origin of the earworm to a visit to catch an Italian Mondo sexploitation film, playing in Midtown in the sixties.

Brian Jay Jones wrote Jim Henson: the Biography. He said the original song that captured Henson's attention was part of the soundtrack. 

“I spoke with Frank Oz and I said where did you see it?" he recalled. "Where did Jim hear 'Mah Nà Mah Nà'? And he said ‘Oh, oh, oh yeah! Jim and I walked around the corner to go see that movie.’"

SWEDEN: HEAVEN AND HELL promised a lurid tale of sex and drugs from “the sex capital of the world, where topless bands beat out the throbbing rhythms of a turned-on generation," and a soundtrack that included a piece called "Mah Nà Mah Nà," written by the Italian composer Piero Umiliani.

It was released in Italy in September 1968. By August 1969, it began a short run at the Avco Embassy East theater on East 58th Street. 

Less than three months later in November, the song debuted on Sesame Street, followed that same month with the version we all now know, on the Ed Sullivan show.

Jones said that story is very Jim Henson. 

"What it tells you is that Jim Henson could find inspiration any place." he laughed. "Only Jim Henson would walk out and turn to Frank Oz and say, 'But did you hear the song?'"