Biography
Edward Keith Smith was born in Melbourne in 1917. He was taken out of school at age 13 as his parents could not afford to keep him there. 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 ABC. He served in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands during World War II. On discharge in 1946 he moved to Sydney, where his career as an actor and writer took off.
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 "Mrs. Finnegan", which appeared on Sydney channel ATN 7 from 1970 to 1971.
He published the parenting book How to Get Closer to Your Children in 1985 and two volumes of Supernatural!: Australian Encounters in 1991 and 1993, about ghost sightings in Australia. He also wrote the social history work Australian Battlers Remember: The Great Depression, published in 2003.
Smith lived his last years as a recluse. He died in Sydney on 2 June 2011, aged 93.
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