Yes! We Have No Bananas

Contexts

To many, this is simply a goofy, yet catchy song. However, the fact that the fruit stand owner is Greek gives it an interesting place in American history. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a massive surge of Greek immigrants, mostly young men. The 1910s were the peak of Greek immigration, with more than 126,000 Greeks coming to America. From 1920 to 1930, 70,000 more arrived. During this time, Frank Silver stopped by a Greek-owned fruit stand, and the proprietor spoke in the style of the song’s main character.

Greeks in America at that time had faced many hardships. Many of these immigrants came from regions controlled by the Ottoman Empire, such as Macedonia and Crete. The social and economic hardships caused by Ottoman rule, the Balkan Wars, and World War I drove many young Greek men to America seeking income to send home as dowries for their sisters. American capitalists quickly exploited this influx of cheap labor, forcing workers into dirty and sometimes dangerous jobs, like shoveling coal into massive furnaces on the very steamships they rode to get to America.

When Greek immigrants did arrive in America, more obstacles rose before them: the first, Ellis Island. Called by some “the island of tears and fear”, Ellis Island was the gateway to America, and the gate was open only to the healthy, and those who could afford the fees. The Immigration Act of 1917 forbid entry to people with mental illness, as well as epileptics, persons afflicted with tuberculosis, chronic alcoholics, paupers, beggars, vagrants, convicted criminals, polygamists, anarchists, prostitutes, contract laborers, persons who could not read in any language, and many, many other individuals. This law along with immigration quotas, which shrunk dramatically in 1924, made it very difficult for Greeks to enter the country. Pregnant women were also held on the island until after they gave birth so their children would not be citizens: 350 children were born on Ellis Island. Ten times that many died waiting to get into America.

Even after getting into the country, the half-million Greek immigrants who entered the country between 1892 and 1924 did not have it easy. Many Americans called them slurs such as “dirty Greeks” or “greaseballs.” Greeks in the South were subject to the same race laws as African Americans and were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan. Frances E. Clark included “Scum of the Earth,” a poem by Robert Haven Shauffler, which mourns the attitude of Americans toward Immigrants, in the introduction of his book Old Homes of New Americans.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

cognomen: a distinguishing name or epithet given to a person or assumed by himself; a nickname.

Resources for Further Study

• “Greek immigrant in the United States since 1910” (1950) by Mitcho Pappas is an immigrant’s understanding of Greek immigration.
• Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel Zorba the Greek (1946) and the movie by the same name (1964) include reasonably accurate contemporaneous American understanding of Greeks.
• USA Today’s article “Ellis Island: Thousands of Greeks’ First Sight of America” by Philip Chrysopoulos is an up-front and unapologetic account of the Greek experience on Ellis Island

Contemporary Connections

Over the years, “Yes We Have No Bananas” has continually appeared in popular culture, including Tender is the Night (1934) by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Only Angels Have Wings (1939) starring Cary Grant and Jean Arthur, Sabrina (1954) starring Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, and The Simpsons episode “Bart’s Girlfriend” (November 6, 1994). It has been covered by Bill Murray, Benny Goodman, and Al Jolson (in blackface)as well as many others. In 2020, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs the Reverend also featured the tune. Irving Cohn’s IMDB page has a comprehensive list of film, television, and audio recordings of the song.