Film Buffs Can Get Their Fill at Eddie’s
The religious may be dashing to Mecca, and health seekers may be heading to Lourdes, but the only pilgrimage a film and television buff need make is to North Hollywood. Deep in the dense urban overgrowth, hidden way back off Vineland Avenue, is Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee.
With 59,000 movies and television shows available on videotape to rent, 3 million movie posters in stock to purchase and an additional 22 tons of lobby cards and old show-business photos, it is a mom-and-pop mother lode of movies and memorabilia.
If you’ve given up searching for that obscure film or television episode that you haven’t seen in decades--the one you can never forget--here’s the good news: It’s almost certainly at Eddie Brandt’s. But this is not your kid’s Blockbuster. Strongly reminiscent of the funky record store in “High Fidelity” with an ambience that combines musty Texas roadhouse and Navy Quonset hut, it causes first-time visitors to stare in awe at row upon row of tapes, organized alphabetically and subdivided by movies and TV. Besides American TV movies, episodes and pilots, the Eddie Brandt collection includes 6,000 documentaries, 8,000 foreign films and 2,000 silent films.
The remaining 43,000 cassettes contain a mammoth sci-fi, horror and fantasy selection, as well as almost every Hollywood movie ever made, from current hits to obscure titles like “Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter” and “Avenging Disco Godfathers.”
According to Donovan Brandt, Eddie’s son, who runs the store on a daily basis, Eddie Brandt, 81, began collecting film mementos as a young movie theater usher. After World War II he moved to L.A. and became a gag- and songwriter for Spike Jones. A minor Hollywood legend himself, the elder Brandt co-wrote the Spike Jones classic song “Cocktails for Two” and was one of the main writers for the cartoon “Beany and Cecil.”
In the late 1960s, Eddie Brandt approached the National Screen Co., which had distributed movie posters, still photos and lobby cards to the studio-owned theater chains for decades. Once a film had finished its run, National Screen would take back all the display memorabilia and store it. When no one would have guessed the future value of cinema collectibles, Brandt made the leap from collector to entrepreneur by buying two National Screen warehouses full of movie history, essentially paying by the pound.
He opened Saturday Matinee in 1968, and some of those original hauls still can be found in the inventory today, including items ranging from $6 photos of the stars (black-and-whites of their houses, cars and pets) to $1,000 mint-condition, classic western movie posters. According to Claire Brandt, Eddie’s wife, who manages the poster/photo part of the shop, they once sold a half-sheet Bela Lugosi “Dracula” poster for a few hundred dollars that today is valued at $500,000.
Eddie Brandt was also known in early Hollywood for collecting 16-millimeter films and throwing weekly bashes at which cinema aficionados would take turns showing their own collected movies. Ultimately, this interest led to the huge VHS tape rental collection. Today this part of the store attracts home enthusiasts and Hollywood players alike. “Every major studio, network, and production company has an account with us,” Donovan Brandt says. “I can even predict what kinds of movies are coming out by the kinds of tapes the development execs are in here renting.”
The aisles are jammed with quirky film enthusiasts, writers, actors and directors all looking for material to inspire their own projects. Celebrities such as Quentin Tarantino, Kirsten Dunst and Richard Crenna are regulars, according to Donovan. But the real star of the show is Donovan Brandt, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of movies, total recall of their inventory and an uncanny resemblance to David Spade.
A customer hollers out, “I need scenes of cars teetering on cliffs!” And, with a blink of his eye, as if his brain is downloading, Donovan will rattle off the titles of 14 movies that the customer needs to rent. A costume designer barges in: “I’m looking for Korean soldiers wearing winter gear!” Donovan shifts modes and replies effortlessly, “Alan Ladd, ‘All the Young Men,’ 1960, left side, aisle 1.”
The place fairly hums with customer appreciation. One lady in the checkout line wears a glazed look and a silly grin. A first-time customer, she’s been looking for the 1941 movie “Hellzapoppin’” for 20 years. She clutches the cassette that represents the end of her quest. “And here it is!”
Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee
5006 Vineland Ave., North Hollywood. Open Tuesdays-Fridays, 1-6 p.m.; Saturdays, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m.; closed Sundays and Mondays. Tape rental: $6 per week; $3 per half-week, plus a $15 one-time membership fee. (818) 506-4242.