Today's Bonus Video Link

This is something I've been looking for for some time: A late performance by The Banana Man, an eccentric performer who turned up on every national kid's show when I was a kid. If you're anywhere near my age (physically 56, emotionally 9), you'll remember this guy and his odd act, which never varied much except for time constraints.

There were actually a couple of Banana Men. The act was originated by a man named A. Robins but at some point, it passed on to a gent named Sam Levine, and this must be Levine doing it on the Captain Kangaroo show in the late sixties. I wrote about the act and linked to a clip of Robins in this post. There may even have been a third Banana Man between Robins and Levine…but they all seem to have used the same props.

Here's an anecdote about this performance which may or may not be true. The Banana Man was seen many times on the Good Captain's program. This was not a simple thing because for a long time, Captain Kangaroo was done live, twice in a row. Because of different time zones, Bob Keeshan would do the show for one time zone every morning and then, after saying their goodbyes and rolling credits, they'd have about sixty seconds to reset everything and do the entire show again for another time zone.

This was a special problem for The Banana Man because it took him a long time to prep all his tricks and load his pockets. So he'd finish one performance and then have to race like the dickens to get ready to do it again in one hour. Somehow, he always managed. After a while, the Cap'n went to tape and it got a lot easier for everyone but especially The Banana Man. They stopped having him come in at all. When they wanted him on the show, which was every few months, they'd just reuse the old tape and pay him again. After all, it wasn't like he was going to do anything different if he came in and took the same bananas out of the same pockets and made all the same silly noises.

This was black-and-white footage and when the show went to color, they needed to have him come back and perform it again for color cameras. By this point, Levine was pretty much retired but he hauled the props out, did a little refurbishment on the shabbier ones and trucked them into the studio. The problem was — and this is the part that may be legend, not reality — that all the props and costume pieces were old and moldy by then and Levine was afraid that if he tried cleaning them, they'd fall apart. So the act was taped with the crew literally sickened by the stench…and after he left, they had to spray the studio down.

I don't know if I believe that or not but it's a funny story. Talk about an act stinking up the joint. If it is true, this may be tape of it being true.

Thanks to Earl Kress for telling me about this. And now, I give you in one of his rare color appearances — The Banana Man…