BANANA MAN; LIFE DEDICATED TO TROPICAL FRUIT.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

``I like bananas because they have no bones,'' blares the song from the banana-colored radio in the corner.

Ken Bannister - or, Bananaster, as he invariably introduces himself - is wearing a banana-colored jacket with a 6-inch embroidered banana on the lapel, talking on a banana-shaped telephone, within arm's reach of a tiny fridge filled with bananas.

When Bannister, 59, hangs up, he flops down on a banana-colored sofa with a dozen stuffed banana dolls in the Altadena storefront that houses his International Banana Museum.

There are bananas everywhere: on the walls, on the floor, on the counter tops, hanging from the ceiling.

It's as if you've stepped through the looking glass and emerged in the middle of the fruit bowl on Carmen Miranda's hat.

Er, make that Chiquita Banana's hat.

``When people come in, their mouths drop open,'' Bannister said with a grin. ``I love it because they all laugh. I laugh every time I come in here.''

The cramped museum, a single room barely big enough to peel a banana in, is Bannister's attempt to take some of the seriousness out of life.

``It seems that people are mad at something all the time. I can't stand to see people upset and yelling and screaming, and I'll do anything to cheer them up,'' he said, donning a set of lensless horn-rimmed glassed with a half-banana nose attached.

``People need a vehicle to keep them a little more positive and keep their spirits up. That's what this is all about. Everybody's getting so uptight. We all need to loosen up a little bit, have some fun.''

And Bannister does, said his wife, Chris, 56, a nurse who, along with her three daughters and five grandchildren, appreciates her husband's sense of humor.

``He's a really good businessman, and he gets intense when he's working (marketing photo equipment),'' she said. ``But with bananas, it's just the opposite. He's kept me laughing for nearly 37 years. Somebody once called him the morale officer for the world.''

But why bananas?

Because bananas, as everybody who's ever seen a silent movie knows, are a funny fruit. Think of all the comedians who got a laugh slipping on a banana peel.

``Nobody smiles at apples or dates. But everybody smiles at bananas,'' said Bannister, who proudly wears his official title of Top Banana of the museum's International Banana Club. ``Bananas are funny because they come in the shape of a smile.''

Funny business aside, the man ``Tonight Show'' host Jay Leno recently dubbed a ``banana evangelist'' is pretty serious about taking his banana campaign on the road. He's declared 1998 the Year of the Banana. And he's determined to spread the fruit's glories to the world via proclamations from President Clinton and mayors of all the cities he plans to visit this year.

Fruity idea

The photographer and president of two small photo-equipment manufacturing firms started going bananas in 1972, the year he discovered a way to bring out some smiles at the endless number of deadly dull and stressful photo trade shows and conventions he had to attend every year.

``Before one convention, my secretary gave me a big roll of Chiquita banana stickers - her husband was a stevedore who unloaded banana boats - and I took them with me. At the show, I started sticking them on everybody who came by, just to cheer them up - and mostly to draw attention to our product. It made people laugh. And they started calling me the Banana Man.''

Soon the people he'd plastered with stickers began to send him banana-related items; he'd show them off, and more banana items would continue to arrive.

Three years later, he had to rent a storefront to hold the banana stuff that had begun to fill his Arcadia home and his office. He hasn't counted lately, but figures he has more than 17,000 banana-related items worth an estimated $200,000 on display in his museum.

There are banana T-shirts, boxer shorts, books, dolls, stuffed toys, ceramic dishes, food items, drinks, even a banana-shaped surfboard and a golf putter with a head shaped like a banana. The walls are covered with banana photographs, drawings, cartoons, posters and more. A centerpiece is a traditional portrait of a beautiful bride in a white gown - holding a bouquet of bananas.

``I've got so much stuff, I could fill up the new Getty Museum if everything was displayed properly,'' Bannister boasted.

His favorite item? The dried-up specimen he's dubbed the Petrified Banana, found five years past its prime in a friend's closet 15 years ago. It's framed and hangs amid bunches of other banana silliness on a museum wall.

Most bananas that come anywhere near Bannister don't have a chance to petrify; he gobbles them right up.

``I'm a hand-a-week guy,'' Bannister said, using banana growers' term for a bunch of bananas. ``Two a day, 250 pounds a year. They're the perfect fruit - a meal in a peel. They have vitamins, minerals, tryptophan to reduce stress, potassium. And they don't squirt, squeak or leak. I eat 'em sideways, like an ear of corn. It looks silly, but it makes people laugh.''

Yellow alert

Bannister's International Banana Club, based at the museum, is a silly group that has no meetings and no rules. ``Anything goes - as long as there's nothing rude, crude or lascivious,'' he said.

As its credo, the club has a simple statement: ``The whole world is going bananas. You owe it to yourself to become one of the bunch.''

It costs $15 to join the club; members get a membership card, bumper sticker and other goodies.

In the past 25 years, more than 25,000 people - including Jay Leno, golfer Sam Sneed and former President Ronald Reagan - have held Banana Club memberships (many of them honorary), and Bannister still receives more than 100 letters about membership - and more banana-related stuff - every week. The club now has about 8,000 active members in 23 countries.

The Banana Club, which has teamed up with the similar Banana Busters organization on the East Coast, has made an impression nationwide.

In dozens of schools around the United States, teachers dole out Banana Club stickers to students for achievement instead of gold stars. (Bannister credits two of his three daughters, who are elementary school teachers, with getting that idea started.)

A banana-themed tennis tournament, with competitors sporting banana-colored garb and refreshing themselves with banana-flavored snacks, is staged annually in Hilton Head, S.C.

There's a banana-based ski race in Colorado every winter with skiers all decked out in yellow.

The club sponsors its own regional banana-lovers' picnic every summer. More than 500 banana lovers attended last summer's event in an Arcadia park, competing in banana-themed events and chowing down on foods that included banana brownies, banana cream pie and banana pudding. (Bannister's favorite picnic event is the draw-and-peel, in which competitors yank a banana, six-shooter-like, from a pocket and peel it; the first one with a naked fruit wins.)

Bannister has appeared at hundreds of supermarket openings and grocery promotions and on dozens of radio and TV shows. Recently, he gave Jay Leno an on-camera banana-and-honey facial, then used the banana peel to shine Leno's shoes.

Now semi-retired from the photo equipment business, Bannister plans to work full time at being Banana Man, increasing the number of public appearances, thanks to a newly hired agent, and branching out into more lucrative pursuits.

This year, he'll seek corporate support for his museum, which costs about $12,000 annually to operate, and for two banana-themed toys he plans to market. He's finagling to become a spokesman for a banana producer. And he wants to host a kids' banana-themed TV game show he's pitched to Sony.

Bannister - who favors banana-logoed clothing and banana-colored glasses - sees years of fun and buckets of bananas in his future.

``I'll go bananas till I die,'' he said. ``In my will, I've specified that I want to be buried in a banana-shaped coffin. My wife isn't too happy about that, but I don't want anybody crying. They'll all laugh as I go down for the last time.''

THE FACTS

International Banana Museum, 2524 N. El Molino Ave., Altadena, is open by appointment only. A lifetime Banana Club membership costs $15 per person and includes free museum visits. Nonmembers may also visit the museum at a cost of $10 per group. For information on museum visits, call [phone].

For more information on joining the club, call [phone] or check out its Web site at www.banana-club.com.

CAPTION(S):

5 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) TOP BANANA

One man's passion for a yellow fruit spawns a museum

(2--Color) Ken Bannister indulges his obsession at the International Banana Museum in an Altadena storefront.

(3--Color) One of the museum's attractions is the Petrified Banana, found 15 years ago in a friend's closet.

(4--Color) If it has anything to do with bananas, Bannister wants it in his cramped museum. ``I've got so much stuff, I could fill up the new Getty museum if everything was displayed properly,'' he boasts.

(5--Color) Bannister estimates that he has more than 17,000 banana-related items worth an estimated $200,000 on display in his museum.

Gus Ruelas/Daily News