By I love old porn, and apparently the Muppets do, too. The super catchy “Mahna Mahna” that I always thought was an original song is actually from the 1968 Italian film Sweden: Hell and Heaven. The movie was portrayed as a documentary about sexuality, but came out as more of an excuse to leer at naked women. By today’s standards, it’s pretty tame (and that video is entirely safe for work, unless your workplace has a problem with giggling women in towels), but it was pretty naughty for the time. Jim Henson apparently liked Italian exploitation films for his private time.
The song itself was composed by Piero Umiliani and sung by Alessandro Alessandrini, whose name has just brought back some unfortunate flashbacks of reading Chekhov despite being Italian. It was released as a single as “Mah Nà Mah Nà” and made it to number 55 on the US charts. For reference, the song as we know it appeared on The Muppet Show in 1976.
[Via Film Drunk]