The Banana Man
The Banana Man was a vaudeville character created by Adolf Proper who worked under the stage name "A. Robins". After Proper's death, the character was played on television by Sam Levine.
Adolf Proper as A. Robins
Adolf Proper was born in Vienna, and emigrated to the United States in 1911. He first performed at the Palace Theatre in New York in 1918. He played with a backdrop of cardboard cut-outs of musicians, which he worked mechanically to give the impression that they were playing. His early act involved him taking cups and saucers from hiding places in his clothing, and pouring milk from his sleeves.The Banana Man act consisted of Proper, dressed as a clownish character in a baggy tuxedo, producing an amazing and apparently impossible number of props from countless pockets and secret places in his costume. He would then perform various clown routines with the props. These props included a clarinet, a mandolin, a huge magnet, a violin, a music stand, several watermelons, and three hundred bananas. He did not speak in words, but uttered cries of delight, surprise, etc., in a nasal falsetto, and imitated the sounds of the musical instruments he "played." His costume was also capable of quick transformation, converting to a woman's dress and back again in seconds. A profile of Proper in The New Yorker reported that the costume weighed 60 pounds loaded, and it took him 45 minutes to prepare it for each performance.
Proper performed as The Banana Man in the Broadway musical Jumbo, in the short film Seeing Red starring Red Skelton, and in the 1947 feature film Mother Wore Tights starring Betty Grable. He died in hospital in Bournemouth, England, after having been taken ill when on a voyage on the transatlantic liner Queen Elizabeth.