So there was this man named Eddie Brandt…funny guy, very creative. Good musician. He mostly played piano for bandleaders who had a good sense of humor like Spade Cooley and Spike Jones. When that kind of music began to go out of vogue, a couple of Spike's band members wound up in animation, mostly at Hanna-Barbera, mostly in the editing department. Eddie was hired as a writer and he worked on a number of H-B shows in the sixties. He hated the work. He liked writing funny stuff but the folks at the network level were especially bad then with what they wanted and what they didn't want. They didn't want anything Eddie thought was funny…and sight unseen, without knowing any of the particulars, I can tell you that they were wrong and Eddie was right.
It is said that the show that drove him over the edge was Moby Dick, which H-B produced from 1967 to 1969. It was one of those shows that no one liked…not the people who made it nor the kids who watched it. Someone who was briefly a vice-president at CBS came up with the idea and Eddie had to make it work. At one point, he felt some sort of nervous, ulcerous collapse coming on and he walked off the show, out of the business and down to North Hollywood where he opened a store called Eddie Brandt's Saturday Matinee.
Originally, it was a memorabilia shop and you should have seen it in those days. It was crammed full of movie posters and stills and 16mm movies and books and animation art. Where did he get it all? To a large extent, it was a big garage sale for his friends in the music and cartoon businesses. Everyone Eddie knew — and he knew a lot of people — emptied their attics and closets and gave him stuff to sell. The great cartoon director Tex Avery supplied thousands of old animation drawings he had stashed in his garage. The first time I went into Eddie's shop, I bought 50 drawings and cels from old Avery MGM cartoons.
One time, he asked me, "Would you like to see an original Friz Freleng?" I said yes…and he took me over and introduced me to a short, older man. It was, of course, Friz Freleng. He was not for sale but I could (and did) buy a couple of Bugs Bunny cels that Friz had brought in for Eddie to sell. It was that kind of place.
Then it turned into another kind of place. Home video began coming out just about the time Eddie's sources of stuff to sell were drying up. He knew how big that business would be so he began stocking Betamax tapes. Then when VHS came out, he began stocking VHS…and he had everything. Everything. No movie was too obscure, no video company too small. Tapes you couldn't find anywhere else, you could find at Eddie Brandt's. If you were a film buff — especially if you liked weird, esoteric fare — it was the way you wanted every video store to be.
If you were lucky, you could find that film you always wanted to see again…or even for the first time. If you were really lucky, you got to talk to Eddie, who was full of facts and stories and always interesting…but you didn't see Eddie there a lot the last ten years. He increasingly retired and handed operations over to other members of his family. And then on February 20, he died at his home at the age of 89. He was a helluva guy and he leaves behind a helluva store — a place where movies are bought and rented by and to people who actually love movies.