First National—1918–23: Shoulder Arms, Sunnyside, The Idle Class, Pay Day, A Dog’s Life, The Kid, A Day’s Pleasure, The Pilgrim.
“BANANAS” AND OTHER SONGS
It was not my happiness to have heard Yes; We Have No Bananas first in America: and to understand phenomena one must know them in their natural setting. The phrase itself was created, or brought to notice, by Tad; as I have said in my wholly inadequate reference to his work, he is a master of slang and a creator of it; some acknowledgment to him might well appear on the cover of the song. His use of it was immeasurably more delicate and more amusing than the song, because he used it as a contradiction of all the blah and high-hat nonsense in the world; it is in his hands fantastic, funny, and impertinently pertinent. In the song I can’t see it; nor am I exceptionally taken with the music, which is largely synthetic.
However, if I cannot understand the success of the song (or misunderstand it, for it seems to me to be “merely” popular) there are those who understand better. I do not think that my quite secondary powers of analysis would have risen to the following, by J. W. T. Mason, correspondent of the London Daily Express, in New York:
New York slang usually changes monthly. Of late there has been a falling off in inspiration, and picturesque argot culled from the city’s polyglot interminglings has fallen sadly behind New York’s quick-witted reputation. At last, however, after months of waiting a creative effort has been made, and one of the most effective phrases descriptive of life in New York has resulted.
One hears it on the stage, in the drawing-room, in the kitchen, on the streets, everywhere: “Yes; we have no bananas.” A song has been written about it, and is the musical rage of the moment.
Cardboard imitations of bunches of bananas are making their appearance bearing the legend, “Yes; we have no bananas.” Business men hang these ornaments in their offices, as a reminder that, after all, there must be a way out of every difficulty. The phrase originated in the fruit shops kept in New York by Greeks, Italians, and Jews, whose knowledge of the English language is limited in verbiage, but not in volubility, nor in willingness to try.
These ancient races come to the New World for profit, and never like to turn a customer away. So they have evolved a curious positive and negative for the same sentence. Why the slangmakers hit on bananas has not been discovered. It might as well have been any other commodity. But the phrase means that one having asked for bananas in a fruit shop where there are none, the anxious proprietor, seeking to be ingratiating and not desiring to displease, answers: ‘Yes; we have no bananas.’ Thereupon he may seek to sell a cabbage or a bunch of beets instead, since most fruit shops in New York are vegetable establishments as well.
The phrase is a tribute to the optimism of the newly arrived immigrant; to his earnest fight to master the language of his temporary country, and so, somehow, is supposed to take on the American characteristic of “getting there,” even though by way of an affirmative in a negative sentence.