In the days when television sets were rare and children gathered each afternoon at the neighborhood house in which one of those big, boxy black-and-white sets stood, “The Howdy Doody Show” was one of the biggest draws, and a blessing for mothers making dinner.

“It’s the type of show that could be responsible for the sale of lots of sets,” Variety said in 1947. “In the middle-class home there is perhaps nothing as welcome to the mother as something that will keep the small fry intently absorbed, and out of possible mischief, for an hour.” The program, Variety added, “can almost be guaranteed to pin down the squirmiest of the brood.”

For the next eight years, as televisions became standard furniture in home after home, no one was more responsible for pinning down those squirmy children than Edward Kean, who died on Aug. 13 at 85.

“Eddie Kean was Howdy’s chief writer, philosopher and theoretician,” Stephen Davis wrote in his history of the show, “Say Kids! What Time Is It?” (Little, Brown, 1987). The book’s title is taken from the show’s opening line, to which the gaggle of youngsters in the Peanut Gallery would scream, “It’s Howdy Doody time!” as Howdy, the chubby-cheeked marionette in dungarees and cowboy boots, and his flesh-and-blood mentor, Buffalo Bob Smith, took the stage.