March 08, 2011

Eddie Brandt, Composer, Songwriter and Movie & TV Memorabilia King, Dies

In addition to numerous credits as a composer, writer and animator, Brandt achieved renown for his North Hollywood store, Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee.

Eddie Brandt, a composer and songwriter who also achieved renown as the founder and proprietor of a Los Angeles films and television memorabilia store, died February 20, 2011, in North Hollywood. He was 88.

According to news reports, the cause was colon cancer.

A native of Chicago, Brandt taught himself to play the piano and started his first band, Eddie Brandt and the Hollywood Hicks, while serving in the Navy during World War II. In the 1940s he composed music with Spike Jones, Spade Cooley, Eddie Cantor and George Motola, and produced such hit songs as “Heaven Knows,” “None but the Lonely Heart,” “There’s No Place Like Hawaii,” “I’m Drowning My Sorrows,” “The Tears in Your Eyes,” “High School Romance,” “Shortnin’ Bread Rock” and “Rock and Roll Wedding.”

As a writer, Brandt contributed to the 1950s television series The Colgate Comedy Hour and The Spike Jones Show.

His versatility extended to drawing, and in the 1960s he worked as a cartoonist with noted animator Bob Clampett. He wrote episodes of Clampett’s children’s series Beany and Cecil, composed the music for them and even provided additional voices. He also wrote for cartoons at Hanna-Barbera. His credits included Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles, Moby Dick and the Mighty Mightor and Cattanooga Cats.

For all of his many professional achievements, his most enduring legacy may have been his store, Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee Video in North Hollywood, which Brandt and his wife, Claire, opened in 1967. He had been collecting movie memorabilia since his Depression-era childhood, and the store offered stills, lobby cards, posters and, later, videos, including many out of print and some that Brandt recorded himself.

He is survived by his wife, two sons and four daughters.

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