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Red Buttons
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Red Buttons was born Aaron Chwatt on February 5, 1919, in New York City. He won an amateur night contest at age of 12. At the age of 16 years old, he got a job as an entertaining bellhop at Ryan’s Tavern in City Island, Bronx. It was there that he adopted the stage name “Red Buttons.” In 1939, Buttons started working for Minsky’s Burlesque. Then in 1941, he was chosen to perform in a Broadway show The Admiral Had a Wife, but the show never opened, as it was deemed inappropriate after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
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Red Buttons was thrice married. He and his first wife, Roxanne, a burlesque performer, divorced in 1951. His second marriage, to Helayne McNorton, was ... dissolved (Helayne called her husband "Rouge", because "it's prettier"). His third wife, Alicia, with whom he had a son and daughter, predeceased him.
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One of the last surviving cast members of The Poseidon Adventure, Red Buttons, has died. An Oscar winner, TV pioneer, creator of TV catch-phrases, and reliable character actor, was 87 (born in 1919! Wow!). Last appeared on the screen in ER back in 2005. The picture is from Oscar night.
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After two years on CBS, Red Buttons changed networks in the fall of 1954. After 13 episodes, the suits at NBC decided to turn the variety show into a situation comedy. Red played a fictional version of himself. His TV wife was played by Phyllis Kirk. Paul Lynde appeared as Tom Standish, an NBC vice-president who frequently battled with Red. The new format was supposed to debut on January 21, 1955, but Red wound up in the hospital that week.
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Red Buttons died Thursday. He was 87. The red-haired entertainer won an Oscar for his acting, but first made his name with comedy. He was born Aaron Chwatt in New York City. He won an Oscar for the film Sayonara, in which he played a soldier in Japan after World War II.
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Although Red Buttons is best known as a stand-up comic, he is ... a successful songwriter, an Academy Award-winning actor (and has been nominated for two Golden Globe awards) and an accomplished singer. Born Aaron Chwatt in New York City's Lower East Side, Buttons (who got his name from a uniform he wore while working as a singing bellhop) started his show-business career singing on street corners as a child. At 16 he got a job as part of a comedy act playing the famed Catskills resort area in upstate New York (his partner was future actor Robert Alda). Buttons worked the burlesque circuit as a comic and even landed a role in a Broadway play, "Vicki", in 1942. He soon joined the U.S. Marine Corps, and in 1943 was picked for a role in Moss Hart's service play "Winged Victory" on Broadway, and soon afterwards journeyed to Hollywood to make the film version. After his discharge from the service he returned to Broadway, both in plays and as a comic with several big-band orchestras.
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Red Buttons