The catchphrase “Heavens to Murgatroyd!” is most famously said by the pink cartoon mountain lion Snagglepuss from the early 1960s Yogi Bear / Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

Who Said It First?

  • The phrase is widely associated with Snagglepuss , who used it as his trademark exclamation of surprise or bewilderment, along with lines like “Exit, stage left!” in the Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
  • Many people also mistakenly credit actor Bert Lahr (the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz) and the 1944 film Meet the People , but detailed reviews and script checks show the line does not appear there.

Origin of the Phrase

  • The expression appears in print in the early 1960s and is considered a playful spin on the older phrase “Heavens to Betsy!” , used as an exclamation of surprise.
  • Evidence from idiom and phrase references indicates the phrase was likely coined by the writers of the Yogi Bear / Snagglepuss cartoons and then spread into general pop culture from there.

Extra Fun Context

  • “Murgatroyd” itself is an old English surname, known from Yorkshire records and even used for multiple characters in the 1887 Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Ruddigore , which helped establish it as a comically aristocratic-sounding name.
  • Because the name sounded odd and theatrical to American ears, it fit perfectly with Snagglepuss’s over-the-top, stagey personality and cemented the phrase as a classic cartoon-era exclamation.

TL;DR: The line “Heavens to Murgatroyd!” is best known as the catchphrase of Snigglepuss from the 1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoons, and that show’s writers are widely credited with coining it.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.