Eddie Brandt

Composer, songwriter and noted Los Angeles movie/TV memorabilia store owner Eddie Brandt died Feb. 20 in North Hollywood of colon cancer. He was 88.

Born in Chicago, Brandt taught himself to play the piano and started his first band, Eddie Brandt and the Hollywood Hicks, during service in the Navy in WWII. He composed music with Spike Jones, Spade Cooley, Eddie Cantor and George Motola in the 1940s, producing hit songs including “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.”

During the 1950s Eddie wrote for TV’s “The Colgate Comedy Hour” and “The Spike Jones Show.”

He was also a cartoonist, working with Bob Clampett in the ’60s. He penned a couple of episodes of “Beany and Cecil,” composed the music for them and even provided additional voices. He contributed to the writing of several cartoons at Hanna-Barbera. Among his credits were “Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles,” “Moby Dick and the Mighty Mightor” and “Cattanooga Cats.”

But he was ultimately known most, at least in the Los Angeles area, for his store, Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee Video in North Hollywood, which Brandt and his wife, Claire, opened in 1967. He started collecting movie memorabilia as a child during the Depression, and the store offered stills, lobby cards, posters and, later, videos, including many out of print and some that Brandt recorded himself.

A 1991 article in the L.A. Times Calendar section noted that Disney’s Imagineers rented from the store so often that they had a corporate account.

In addition to his wife, Brandt is survived by two sons and four daughters.