FeedsWriter who influenced a generation of Americans pays rare local visit
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Edward Kean, the writer of The Howdy Doody Show, plays some of his songs during a rare personal appearance this month.The man credited with influencing the character of an entire generation of Americans isn’t a big fan of television today.
Edward Kean, the last surviving member of the original Howdy Doody Show, made a rare personal appearance in Westland recently to speak to a crowd at the library about the early days of television.
Kean, a songwriter and pianist, wrote more than 2,000 episodes of Howdy Doody, and 90 songs with titles and lyrics like, Be Kind To Animals, Cross The Street With Your Eyes and Hurray For Santa Claus. Every song and every episode stressed the importance of kindness, respect and high moral conduct, without ever lecturing or condescending to the vast audience of children.
Today, things are a little different.
“If you gave me a half hour of empty television time, I wouldn’t know how to fill it. Everything has been exhausted. I just don’t know how to identify children’s TV today. It’s all wrong and it all has a grownup motive. It’s part of what’s going on today, gangs, children getting shot. There isn’t any real kids’ TV anymore, other than Sesame Street, which is evergreen and wonderful.”
And Kean is a man who should know.
Howdy Doody was the first children’s show that aired five days a week. It was always preceded by the test pattern on NBC and was also the first show to be broadcast in color. Howdy Doody was also the first to air more than 1,000 continuous new episodes, due mainly to Kean’s prolific output.
“I would write and it did get tedious. I would go to the piano to write a song just to avoid the typewriter,” he confessed.
It’s Howdy Doody Time still pays him royalties, which totaled about $521 in 2007 from about 35 foreign countries when his song was on an episode of Happy Days that was translated and shown on TV around the world, including Japan.
“That’s the one that impressed me. When I was in the service during World War II, the Japanese were trying to kill me, and now they’re singing my song,” he said.
His song was also in the Indiana Jones and the Adventure of the Crystal Skull film, but his royalty check hasn’t come yet because the movie hasn’t been shown on TV.
“My son said it was a miserable movie, but my song was it in, and was translated into more languages than you can imagine.”
Steven Spielberg is among Kean’s fans and has used his songs in several movies.
Kean is credited, along with Buffalo Bob Smith, with the establishment of NBC as a viable television network. The Howdy Doody Show was on 200 stations and reached 98 percent of American homes with television sets, and children, daily.
“An entire generation watched us, every day. And it was different. We did the entire half hour, we only had six minutes of commercials,” Kean said.
But even back then, there were complaints about the conduct of the characters.
“Parents said the show was too noisy and it was too violent when Bob got squirted with Clarabelle’s seltzer water,” Kean said.
But the complaints were few and far between. The waiting list for children to appear in the famous “peanut gallery” included letters from pregnant women, hoping their soon-to-be born babies would be included when they were 5 or 6.
Kean is the man who created the word Cowabunga. He also named Princess Summerfall Winterspring, Clarabelle the Clown and the Flub-a-dub.
Flub-a-dub was created as a merchandising tool because network management wanted something they could market. Kean said that after weeks of discussion about what kind of animal should join the show, one worn-out, frustrated network executive asked why they didn’t just make it a dog and a cat and a bird and a chicken…and the Flub-a-dub was created, named appropriately by Kean.
“It was a strange thing, but I took the name from the dictionary because I liked the sounds. It was quite a creature, about nine animals in one,” he said.
He also created the Flapdoodle, a machine that would provide whatever it was asked for and many other fanciful machines and characters that were the primary entertainment for children of the era.
All wasn’t as much fun behind the scenes as it appeared on the tiny television screens in homes, however.
Bob Keeshan, who eventually became the beloved Captain Kangaroo, was the original Clarabelle the Clown. Clarabelle, a man with a woman’s name, was the only non-speaking cast member, but Keeshan demanded to be paid the same amount as the characters who had lines on the show.
Management wouldn’t give in, and eventually, the entire cast, Smith withstanding, walked out.
“That was quite a week. We did an entire week of riddles I got from a riddle book,” Kean noted. “That was the most unhappy time I had on the show.”
His own celebrity as the creator and writer of Howdy Doody provided Kean with the opportunity to meet many other notables of the time. His favorite was, without question, Ronald Reagan.
“He was a lovely, lovely man,” Kean said. “Very gracious and open.”
Kean met many, many others and was privy to a great deal of celebrity gossip of the era, which compared to today, was pretty mild
Kean also wrote several Howdy Doody books for Golden Books, but found that wasn’t exactly lucrative.
“Well, the books sold for 25 cents and the writer got 1/16th of a penny for each one, so I didn’t get rich,” he said.
When he left the show, Kean became a public relations executive with some large agencies, then wrote for one of Merv Griffin’s numerous television shows. He also wrote a popular newspaper column, The Consumer Madvocate, for a few years.
His real love is, and always will be, he says, playing the piano.
His repertoire of songs and music is astronomical and he has played at the Hyatt in Dearborn, the Ritz Carleton, the Big Fish and many other area clubs and restaurants. Most diners and restaurant staff have no idea that one of the most famous names in network television of the 50s is entertaining them.
Now in his 80s, he has cut down his performances and spends most of his time with his wife, Vivian, at home.
“We’re of a singular mind about television. We have a hard time watching it. I keep hearing the director yelling ‘Cut. That just wasn’t funny enough.’ We are so impatient with the hospital and crime shows, we spend our time with CNN news and talk shows.”
He’s still writing children’s songs though, and hopes It’s Crude to Be Rude Dude, a rap song he wrote about manners, catches on with the new generation of American kids.
But Cowabunga, a word that has infiltrated the American vernacular, will always be his claim to fame, he said.
“You know, I once tried to get my phone number listed as Cowabunga Kean, but couldn’t get them to do it. But I did once get a letter from American Express offering me an account in the name of Kean Cowabunga.”
