History
A banana shortage caused by a banana blight in Brazil is usually suggested as the inspiration for the song. The town of Lynbrook on Long Island, New York, claims the songwriters composed it there and that the catchphrase "Yes! We have no bananas" was coined by Jimmy Costas, a local Greek American greengrocer. However, a 1923 article in the Chicago Tribune stated that the phrase originated in Chicago in 1920. Cartoonist Thomas A. Dorgan (1877–1929) is also credited with inventing and/or popularizing the phrase.
The song was the theme of the Outdoor Relief protests in Belfast in 1932. These were a unique example of Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland protesting together, and the song was used because it was one of the few non-sectarian songs that both communities knew. The song lent its title to a book about the depression in Belfast.
The term has been resurrected on many occasions, including in Britain during World War II, when the British Government banned the importing of bananas for an entire five years. Shop owners put signs stating "Yes, we have no bananas" in their shop windows in keeping with the war spirit.
The song also appeared in the popular Archie Comics and was mentioned in the 1939 film Only Angels Have Wings and the 1954 movie Sabrina. It appears as a leit motif in The Comic, often to underscore serious moments in the life of the film's protagonist (played by Dick Van Dyke). In The English Patient, a few verses are sung as a joke. The song was also subject to parody in The Muppet Show, sung by various anthropomorphic fruits and vegetables. A German version, "Ausgerechnet Bananen", was featured in Billy Wilder's 1961 slapstick comedy One, Two, Three, played by an over-the-hill dance band at a drab East Berlin hotel bar. In the 1970s, Harry Chapin used this phrase in the chorus to his song "30,000 Pounds of Bananas". More recently, the phrase was used in 2006 when Cyclone Larry destroyed a large portion of Australia's banana crop, leading to a shortage for most of the year.
The song was the subject of a column by Sigmund Spaeth, who suggested that the melody could have been derived from a combination of parts of other songs including the Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah by Handel, "My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean", "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls", "Aunt Dinah's Quilting party" and Cole Porter's "An Old-Fashioned Garden".
Substituting the original lyrics from those to the appropriate melodic phrases you get:
Hallelujah, Bananas! Oh, bring back my Bonnie to me
I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls—the king that you seldom see
I was seeing Nellie home, to an old-fashioned garden: but,
Hallelujah, Bananas! Oh, bring back my Bonnie to me!
Spaeth subsequently repeated his argument as an expert witness.
Read more about this topic: Yes! We Have No Bananas
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