Colonel Heeza Liar's Forbidden Fruit

Vernon Stallings
1923-11-01

3
11 min

Forbidden Fruit begins with New York in the grip of a banana shortage. Residents sing (or scream) “Yes! We Have No Bananas,” the hit novelty song of 1923 (inspired by real-life banana shortages—the film also references current events by mentioning mobster Louis Cohen, arrested for murder the same year). The scene shifts to animator Walter Lantz strumming the song on his guitar, before a co-worker presents him with a banana that transmogrifies into Colonel Heeza Liar, who tells the tale of how he ended “the great banana famine in 1923.”