LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Red Buttons: Aaron Chwatt
built 634 days ago
Red Buttons (February 5 1919 – July 13 2006) was the stage name of American comedian and actor Aaron Chwatt. He won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Airman Joe Kelly in Sayonara (1957), a rare dramatic role.
Source:
Red Buttons was born Aaron Chwatt in New York City on February 5 1919. His father, a Polish immigrant who worked in the millinery trade and made hats for Macy's department store, used to tell his son: "Boy, if you want to get ahead, get a hat."
Source:
The red-headed Buttons was born Aaron Chwatt on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1919. "It was a tough neighbourhood," he said later. "You either grew up to be a judge, or you were the guy another judge sent to the chair." Naturally musical, he won an amateur talent contest at the age of 12. At 16 he answered an advertisement for "bellboy and singer" at Dinty Moore's Tavern in the Bronx. His hair, and his garish uniform, replete with 48 buttons, prompted the customers to give him the nickname that became his stage name.
Source:
Buttons got his start in showbiz 70 years ago as a teenage singing bellhop (the uniform and his red hair became the source of young Aaron Chwatt's stage name). Over the years, he conquered the Borscht Belt comedy circuit, Broadway, movies (younger viewers probably best remember him from the original Poseidon Adventure), and TV (where his 1950s sketch comedy show once rivaled Milton Berle's in popularity). He never really slowed down; in 2000, he and several other old-school comics launched Laugh.com, an e-store for comedy recordings and videos. Last year, he earned an Emmy nomination for a guest role as a patient on ER.
Source:
At age twelve, Red worked every amateur contest he could enter. The Depression was on thick and heavy, and a five dollar first prize was a bonanza. At age sixteen, while he was still attending Evander Childs High School in the Bronx, Red auditioned for and got the job as an entertaining bell hop at a tavern called Ryan's in City Island, New York. The red hair and the bell hop's uniform with all those buttons inspired Dinty Moore, the world renowned orchestra leader, to dub our hero Red Buttons - a perfect name for the times - there being very few performers with names like Aaron Chwatt. That summer, Red worked his first job in the Catskills (that great training ground that gave us, among others, Danny Kaye, Robert Merrill, Moss Hart, Jerry Lewis, etc.,) at the Beerkill Lodge for one dollar fifty per week plus room and board. His straight man was Robert Alda whose wife was pregnant with Alan.
Source:
Buttons began in burlesque, had his own TV show in the early 1950s and won a supporting actor Academy Award for the 1957 film Sayonara, which starred Marlon Brando. His real name was Aaron Chwat Öin and he came out of the same Lower East Side tenements as Eddie Cantor, George Burns, Jimmy Durante, Fannie Brice and George and Ira Gershwin. Buttons died today at home in Century City, according to publicist Warren Cowan on the L.A. Times website.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Aaron Chwatt