Banana Splits
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- For the dessert, see banana split.
The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, syndicated as The Banana Splits and Friends Show, was an hour-long American package television program featuring both live action and animated segments, that ran for 31 episodes on NBC Saturday mornings from September 7, 1968 to September 5, 1970. The series was produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions; the Banana Splits characters were designed by Sid and Marty Krofft; the series' sponsor was Kellogg's Cereals.
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[edit] Format
The wraparounds featured the adventures of a musical quartet, meant to be reminiscent of the Beatles and the Monkees, consisting of Fleegle, a beagle; Bingo, a gorilla; Drooper, a lion and Snorky, an elephant. Fleegle would often assume the role as leader of the Banana Splits. The characters were played by actors in fleecy costumes similar to later Krofft series such as H.R. Pufnstuf.
The Splits' segments, including songs-of-the-week and comedy skits, served as wraparounds for a number of individual segments. In the United States, The Banana Splits Adventure Hour featured the first appearances of the animated segments The Arabian Knights, The Three Musketeers, and Micro Ventures. In the second season, The Three Musketeers segments were replaced with repeats of The Hillbilly Bears, a cartoon segment that previously appeared on The Atom Ant Show (1965-1968).
During the first season, the Banana Splits segments often concerned the group's confrontations with a rival club, the Sour Grapes Bunch. Drooper and Bingo offered advice to viewers in the "Dear Drooper" segment, while Fleegle served as the reporter for "Banana Splits News."
In the second season, Fleegle attempted (quite unsuccessfully) to perform magic tricks as alter ego "The Great Fleegali," while "Super Drooper" fought crime and "Coach Bingo" kept the rest of the group active in sports competitions. Other new elements included "School Time," "Nursery Rhymes" and a "Gag Wall" segment (reminiscent of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In), as well as "Fan Club" meetings where the Banana Splits would read viewer mail. Goofy Gopher (voiced by Paul Winchell) would pop out from a flower pot to deliver the occasional one-liner, joining the Cuckoo Clock and Banana Vac as secondary characters. The characters' costume designs also received an overhaul (introduced in the next-to-last Season 1 episode, "The Great Banana Splits Buggy Race"), with Snorky now sporting a yellow and blue striped vest.
In syndication, the show was re-edited into a half-hour format and retitled The Banana Splits And Friends Show. That package consisted of 125 half-hours, including 36 Banana Splits Adventure Hour cutdowns (edited from the 18 original first season shows; 13 additional episodes produced for the 1969-1970 season were not included in the syndicated package; this is the version that continues to air on Boomerang today). Four other Hanna-Barbera series (originally unrelated to The Banana Splits, apart from having been produced by the same studio) were folded into the syndicated series as well: Atom Ant (26 half-hours, also featuring Precious Pupp and The Hillbilly Bears), Secret Squirrel (26 half-hours, also featuring Squiddly Diddly and Winsome Witch), and The Adventures of Gulliver (17 half-hours), as well as The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (20 half-hours, originally seen in prime-time and here introduced as The Adventures Of Huck Finn) which combined live-action with animation. The four unrelated shows in question can occasionally be seen on Boomerang in their original, non-Banana Split configurations. (The syndicated Atom Ant, Secret Squirel and Gulliver episodes had a rotation of eight repeating clips edited into them, with Paul Winchell redubbing Fleegle's voice to introduce various cartoon segments. This footage, all one and a half minutes of it, originated from Season 2 shows, as did the syndicated series' opening and closing titles. It was the only Season 2 material included in the syndicated package.)
The original show, as well as the syndicated package, also contained the live-action segment Danger Island, a cliffhanger serial starring a young Jan-Michael Vincent, billed as Michael Vincent, as Lincoln "Link" Simmons. Also Ronne Troup, who later joined the cast of My Three Sons. (Each of the ten-minute chapters was cut into two five-minute segments in syndication.) The first season of The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, including Danger Island, was directed by future Superman director Richard Donner. Danger Island was meant to be a live action equivalent to Jonny Quest, another Hanna-Barbera property. (Just to keep things as confusing as possible, the second season closing credits were edited onto the syndicated half-hour episodes, crediting Tom Boutross as the show's main director. This led to a long-standing and commonly-held misconception that Donner only directed Danger Island. Syndicated reruns of other Hanna-Barbera series, including The Flintstones, Top Cat and The Jetsons, frequently aired with only one set of credits tacked onto the end of many if not all episodes, often resulting in incorrect writer and voice credits.)
After the cancellation of the original series, the characters were revived in the TV special The Banana Splits in Hocus Pocus Park, which first aired as an hour-long installment of The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie on Saturday, November 25, 1972. Unlike the television show, The Splits spent most of the film in animated form.
[edit] Music
The Banana Splits' bubblegum pop rock and roll was provided by studio professionals, including Al Kooper ("You're the Lovin' End"), Barry White ("Doin' the Banana Split"), and Gene Pitney ("Two Ton Tessie"). The music director was prolific songwriter and producer Mark Barkan who also wrote the main theme. David Mook produced all of the released tracks (co-producing the single sides "Long Live Love" and "Pretty Painted Carousel" with Aaron Schroeder). Arranger Jack Eskew also orchestrated some of the Splits' tunes. Three singles, "The Tra La La Song", "Wait Till Tomorrow", and "Long Live Love" were released by the Splits along with an album, We're the Banana Splits. Two 45 RPM EP records with four songs each were available via an offer on the back of Kellogg's cereal boxes. Two of the three singles as well as both EPs were issued with picture sleeves.
A bootleg recording of all the released Splits recordings was made and released on CD in the late 1990s on the "Hollywood Library" label. (This CD was mastered from vinyl sources at a slightly increased speed, with some rather heavy-handed noise-reduction, resulting in a noticeable "echo" effect, especially at the end of songs.) One song, "Wait Til Tomorrow," later appeared on a various-artists bubblegum hits CD, sourced from the Hollywood Library bootleg. Fake reproductions of the Decca Records album also appeared during the 1990s. They are identifiable by the absence of the Decca Records logo from the lower right corner of the front cover, and the elimination of all references to Decca Records on the back cover. Additionally, all copies are "white label promos." (The Decca logo does appear on the label.) An earlier, picture-disc vinyl bootleg also appeared in the 1980s.
The Californian punk band The Dickies released a sped-up version of "The Tra La La Song" as the "Banana Splits (Tra La La Song)" which entered the UK charts in 1979. [citation needed]
The Bob Marley and the Wailers song "Buffalo Soldier", from the 1983 album Confrontation, features a coincidentally very similar melody to the "The Tra La La Song" in its chorus.[citation needed]
"The Tra La La Song" chorus tune is nearly identical to the tune used for the verse of the folk song "Shortnin' Bread."[citation needed]Liz Phair and Material Issue recorded the "The Tra La La Song" for the 1995 compilation album Saturday Morning Cartoons' Greatest Hits.[citation needed]
In 2005, "I Enjoy Being A Boy" was covered by They Might Be Giants for their first podcast. The separate mp3 was released for free on their site.[citation needed]
[edit] Trivia
- The Banana Splits lived in Hocus Pocus Park, where the cuckoo clock always read 6:55. (This trivia "fact," from Fred L. Worth's "Trivia Encyclopedia," is only partly correct. The cuckoo clock in the "Banana Pad" does indeed always read 6:55. However, the Splits only visited Hocus Pocus Park once, for a 1972 one-shot revival.)
- Fleegle was the only character that did not wear eyeglasses.
- Snorky was the only character that did not talk. He made a honking sound whose meaning was interpreted by other characters.
- The arch-enemy gang of the Banana Splits were the Sour Grape Bunch, which were always represented by individual young girls who would dance messages to their front door.
- The song "Wait Till Tomorrow" was filmed on location in San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf area, an area frequented by tourists.
- Paul Winchell (the voice of Fleegle) also performed the voice of the cuckoo bird (who occasionally pops out of the cuckoo clock). The aforementioned "Trivia Encyclopedia" states the bird's name is "Kookie," but in the episodes, the character is simply called "Cuckoo." Winchell also voiced the Goofy Gopher (who would pop up from a flower pot) in the second season. Allan Melvin (the voice of Drooper) also performed the voice of "Banana Vac," the character resembling a moose head mounted on the wall of the Banana Pad. (In a 1970 licensed coloring book, the character is drawn as a moose.)
- The Banana Splits are mentioned in the Saturday Night Live Bill Brasky sketches:
"Did I ever tell you about the time Brasky went hunting? Brasky decides he's going to hunt down all four of the Banana Splits. He stalks and kills every one of them with a machete. They all begged for their lives...except Fleegle."
[edit] Cast
- Fleegle: (Actor: Jeffrey Winkless, billed as Jeffrey Brock) (Voice: Paul Winchell)
- Bingo: (Actor: Terry Winkless, billed as Terrence Henry) (Voice: Daws Butler)
- Drooper: (Actor: Dan Winkless, billed as Daniel Owen) (Voice: Allan Melvin)
- Snorky: (Actor: James "Jimmy" Dove, later replaced by Robert Towers) (Although Snorky's voice often has been mistakenly credited to Don Messick, the character never actually spoke.)
(Cast trivia: Jeffrey, Terry and Dan are brothers, and are the sons of N. B. Winkless Jr., a jingle writer for the show's sponsor, Kellogg's. Winkless composed some of the memorable Kellogg's cereal jingles, including "the best to you each morning," and also co-wrote "The Beautiful Calliopa," a song used on the series. The actors' names were changed in the show's credits to avoid the appearance of nepotism.)
