First frame of a 1915 Mutt & Jeff comic strip by Bud Fisher. Jeff is falling off a roof, and Mutt yells, “For the Love of Mike, grab hold of something, Jeff!”
“For The Love of Mike!”
This is just a little story about a production on the stage of the Table Rock Opera House in 1916. It was “For the Love of Mike!” That phrase was pretty new at the time. It had been popularized by the “Mutt & Jeff” comic strip. It was, and is, roughly the equivalent of “Oh, for Pete’s sake!” The phrase had been around as much as a decade but the strip popularized it. By the way, Mutt and Jeff …
