"[4] After working in small comedy clubs in the early 1970s, Kaufman came to the attention of a wider audience in 1975, when he was invited to perform portions of his act on the first season of Saturday Night Live.

[5] During this time, he continued to tour comedy clubs and theaters in a series of unique performance art/comedy shows, sometimes appearing as himself and sometimes as obnoxiously rude lounge singer Tony Clifton.

[7] As pranks and elaborate ruses were major elements of his career, persistent rumors have circulated that Kaufman faked his own death as a grand hoax.

[6][8] He continues to be respected for the variety of his characters, his uniquely counterintuitive approach to comedy, and his willingness to provoke negative and confused reactions from audiences.

[17][18] Kaufman first received major attention for his character Foreign Man, who spoke in a meek, high-pitched, heavily accented voice and claimed to be from "Caspiar", a fictional island in the Caspian Sea.

[18] It was as this character that Kaufman convinced the owner of the famed New York City comedy club The Improv, Budd Friedman, to allow him to perform on stage.

[19][20] As Foreign Man, Kaufman would appear on the stage of comedy clubs, play a recording of the theme from the Mighty Mouse cartoon show while standing perfectly still, and lip-sync only the line "Here I come to save the day" with great enthusiasm.

At some point in the performance, usually when the audience was conditioned to Foreign Man's inability to perform a single convincing impression, 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 a rousing, hip-shaking rendition of Presley singing one of his hit songs.

Kaufman disliked sitcoms and was not happy with the idea of being in one, but Shapiro convinced him that it would quickly lead to stardom, which would earn him money he could then put into his own act.

[24] Sam Simon, who early in his career was a writer and later showrunner for Taxi, stated in a 2013 interview on Marc Maron's WTF podcast that the story of Kaufman having been generally disruptive on the show was "a complete fiction" largely created by Zmuda.

As a requirement for Kaufman's accepting the offer to star on Taxi, he insisted that Clifton be hired for a guest role on the show as if he were a real person, not a character.

[27] On the January 30, 1982, episode of Saturday Night Live, while impersonating Elvis Presley in a sketch, Kaufman broke character by removing his wig and apologizing to the audience.

[30][31] At the beginning of an April 1979 performance at New York's Carnegie Hall, Kaufman invited his "grandmother" to watch the show from a chair that he had placed at the side of the stage.

[44] Later, following a sketch about a drug-abusing pharmacist, instead of introducing Pretenders, he delivered a nervous speech about the harmfulness of drugs while the band stood behind him ready to play.

[46] Kaufman appeared on The Dating Game in 1978, in character as Foreign Man, and cried when the bachelorette chose Bachelor #1, protesting that he had answered all the questions correctly.

He made 16 SNL appearances in all, doing routines from his comedy act, such as the Mighty Mouse singalong, Foreign Man, and the Elvis impersonation.

After he angered the audience with his female-wrestling routine, executive producer Dick Ebersol announced on the show that viewers would be allowed to decide Kaufman's fate.

I don't want to have to punch nobody in America in the face", and Mary Gross read the Dump Andy phone number at a rate so fast that audiences were unable to catch it.

'"[49] Following the poll results, Kaufman made one final appearance on the show via a prerecorded 30-second message on Weekend Update (then rebranded as "Saturday Night News").

The message had Andy stating his gratitude for being on the show and that he had to resort to buying time on low-rated independent TV stations in order for him to be heard.

[59] Laurie Anderson worked alongside Kaufman for a time in the 1970s, acting as a sort of "straight man" in a number of his Manhattan and Coney Island performances.

[80] Kaufman kept his personal life secret and instead engaged in pranks and stunts to further obscure it, such as claiming in a September 22, 1983, appearance on David Letterman's show to have adopted three sons.

At a Thanksgiving dinner on Long Island in November 1983, several family members openly expressed worry about Kaufman's persistent coughing.

[81] After audiences were shocked by his gaunt appearance during January 1984 performances, Kaufman acknowledged that he had an unspecified illness that he hoped to cure with natural medicine, including a diet of all fruits and vegetables among other measures.

[82] The next day, Kaufman and Margulies flew to Baguio, Philippines, where, as a last resort, he received treatments of a pseudoscientific procedure called psychic surgery (now recognized as explicitly deceptive medical fraud).

[88] Comedian Elayne Boosler, who dated and lived with Kaufman and credits him with encouraging her comedy career, wrote an article for Esquire in November 1984 in his memory.

[106][107] The Chris Gethard Show paid homage to the Kaufman Fridays incident with comedian Brett Davis throwing water on someone's face.

[112] Al Jean, cocreator of the animated series The Critic, has said that the first-season drawing of Jon Lovitz's character Jay Sherman was loosely based on Kaufman.

[116][117][118] Since 2004, the Andy Kaufman Award competition has been held annually as "a showcase for promising cutting-edge artists with fresh and unconventional material, for those willing to take risks with an audience, and for those who do not define themselves by the typical conventions of comedy.

"[119] Winners include Reggie Watts, Kristen Schaal, Brett Davis, Marcus Monroe, Brent Weinbach, Suzanne Whang, Nick Vatterott, Harry Terjanian, and Dru Johnston.