That Original Brewster Boy (Eddie Firestone, Jr.), RIP

That original Brewster boy, Eddie Firestone, Jr., the first actor to play title role Joey Brewster in the old-time radio hit (NBC, 1941-45), died 1 March, of respiratory and heart failure, at age 86, in Sherman Oaks, California.

That Brewster Boy was one of two title roles the San Francisco-born (1920) actor played in radio, the other being the shorter-lived situation comedy Harold Teen, the third actor to play the role following Charles Flynn and Willard Farnum. Firestone was one of three actors to play Joey Brewster; future Bewitched co-star Dick York was the third and final Joey.

Long enough considered to be something of a second-hand version of The Aldrich Family, That Brewster Boy would be overhauled in 1945 into the short-lived Those Websters. According to third Brewster boy Dick York, the move was made because the show's sponsor objected to writer/directors Pauline Hopkins and Owen Vincent having sent bundles to Communists fighting Nazis in World War II. (Only three of the Brewster cast played in Those Websters.)

Firestone enjoyed an active radio career with at least one intriguing case of turnabout: he was succeeded as Joey Brewster by Arnold Stang . . . whom Firestone himself succeeded as Seymour Fingerhood in The Goldbergs. He also had roles in several radio soap operas, including Hawthorne House (as the first Billy Sherwood), One Man's Family (as the fourth Pinky Murray, following Richard Svilus, Dix Davis, and Vic and Sade co-star Bill Idelson), The Story of Mary Marlin (as the first Dennie McKenzie, succeeded by Bill Lipton), and Woman in White (as Tim Barnes, the only actor to play the role).

His other radio credits include appearances in Suspense and The Halls of Ivy.

Firestone moved on to a long career as a character actor in television with credits including Dragnet, Four Star Playhouse, Medic, Ford Star Jubilee, Playhouse 90, Studio One, Disneyland, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Dick Van Dyke Show (as Thomas Edison, in "Sally and the Lab Technician"), Perry Mason, The Fugitive, The Big Valley, Hogan's Heroes, Gunsmoke, The Rockford Files, and Dallas.

He was buried 10 March in Pierce Brothers Valhalla Memorial Park, in Hollywood.

RIP, CONTINUED . . .

FRANKIE LAINE---Born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio in Chicago's Little Italy, the jazz-and-blues rooted popular singer of the 1940s and 1950s ("Mule Train," "High Noon," "That Lucky Old Sun," "Moonlight Gambler," others, not to mention the voice singing the theme from television's Rawhide) was a frequent guest on Tallulah Bankhead's legendary radio variety, The Big Show. (NBC.) Died 6 February, age 93, of complications following hip surgery.

After several years' struggling to make it through the Depression and the early war years, Laine got his big break when New York radio station WINS let him audition, leading to a $5 a week gig singing on a local half-hour program in the 1940s . . . and the name under which he would become famous.

Laine's first major hit, "Desire," in 1947, took almost a year to hit big. He was 34 years old. Legendary Columbia Records artists and repertoire autocrat Mitch Miller fashioned Laine into a pop singer, though Laine fretted at first that he'd lose his hard-won jazz following while Miller convinced him he'd gain a larger pop following.