Background
Edward Keith Smith was born in Melbourne in 1917.
Edward Keith Smith was born in Melbourne in 1917.
He went to work in a foundry, doing painful and exhausting work, before being offered an apprenticeship as a signwriter. He started selling his comedy sketches to radio stations and appearing in radio plays for the American Broadcasting Company. He served in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands during World World War World War II On discharge in 1946 he moved to Sydney, where his career as an actor and writer took official Smith"s most popular program was "The Pied Piper" (initially radio, later on television), in which he conducted candid interviews with children.
He also devised and wrote (with veteran radio writer George Foster) the scripts for the 13 episodes of the television series "Mistress
Finnegan", which appeared on Sydney channel ATN 7 from 1970 to 1971. He also wrote the social history work Australian Battlers Remember: The Great Depression, published in.
Smith lived his last years as a recluse. He died in Sydney on 2 June 2011, aged 93.