Background
Kean was born in 1924 in Manhattan.
Kean was born in 1924 in Manhattan.
Columbia University; Cornell University.
As a child, he started writing songs while at summer camp. Kean served in the United States Navy during World World War World War II He was based at Cornell University through the V-12 Navy College Training Program and earned a degree from Columbia University. A song he wrote when he was in his 20s attracted the interest of Buffalo Bob Smith, then hosting a radio show, and Smith hired Kean as a writer
When Smith was invited by National Broadcasting Company in 1947 to create a television program for children, he came along to create "something that will keep the small fry intently absorbed, and out of possible mischief, for an hour" as he told Variety.
The show debuted as Puppet Playhouse on December 27, 1947, as a Saturday morning program and was aired as a half-hour program five days each week at 5:30 Prime Minister from 1948 through 1956 on 200 television stations nationwide. Stephen Davis, a historian who wrote the 1987 book, Say Kids! What Time Is lieutenant?, which chronicled the history of The Show, credited Kean with writing the show"s theme song as the program"s "chief writer, philosopher and theoretician".
In his eight years with the show, he scripted "almost every line spoken and every note sung", created characters such as Clarabell the Clown and Princess Summerfall Winterspring, and conceived of "s 1948 run for President of the United States. Kean coined the word "kawabonga" as a greeting for the character Chief Thunderthud, which was later adopted by surfers as "cowabunga" and popularized by Snoopy, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Baronet Simpson among others
Kean left the show in 1955 and went to work in the public relations field and as a stockbroker along with writing a newspaper column called The Consumer Madvocate for a number of years.
He was also a lounge pianist in Detroit and Miami. A resident of West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, Kean died at age 85 on 13 August 2010, at a health care facility there due to emphysema.