The older he got, the more loyal were his public.
In 1995 he celebrated 60 show business years with Buttons on Broadway. His last screen appearance (and fifth ER) was in 2005.īuttons continued on the Borsht Belt's Atlantic City and Las Vegas successor venues. Later work included Knots Landing, Cosby, Roseanne, The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. On television, The Double Life of Henry Phyfe (1966) flopped but in the 1970s he was prominent on Dean Martin's show. In 1972 he was one of the voyagers in The Poseidon Adventure. Other films included Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961), Hatari (1962), a voice in the cartoon picture Gay Purr-ee (1962) and a part in the 1966 Stagecoach remake. Three years later came the spy film, 13 Rue Madeleine. Both featured in the Winged Victory movie (1944). One of his new - and long-lasting friendships - was with another performer in the show, Mario Lanza. He also played Minsky's and the Gaiety in New York.ĭuring the war, he served with the US Army Air Force and was selected for the Winged Victory touring show. But from burlesque, he moved, in 1935, to the friendlier environment of the Catskills. Audiences expected to see the same sketches with the same comedians and the same girls. With the innocence of youth, Buttons thought he would appeal because he was going to inject new material - not always a good thing. He moved from the tavern to the next rung on the ladder, and the lowest form of variety, burlesque.
His employer looked at his red hair and called him Red Buttons.
"Red Buttons" came his way while working as a singing waiter at Dinty Moore's Tavern, where he had to wear a uniform with 48 buttons. "On my block," he said, "you either grew up to be a judge, or you went to the electric chair." The family moved to the Bronx, he was educated at Evander Childs High School and, aged 12, he won a talent contest at the Fox Corona Theatre as "Little Skippy". His father was a millinery worker and the family lived on Third Street on New York City's Lower East Side. Seven years later came another landmark, with Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), a movie about the 1930s marathon dance craze.īorn Aaron Chwatt, Buttons was the second of three children. It was a part that few who saw it have forgotten, least of all Buttons himself, who told me, in his luxurious house in Beverly Hills: "Whatever I do, I'll always be remembered for that goddamned clock tower." For British audiences, it is on screen that Buttons will be remembered (he has recently been in ER), notably in 1962 as a paratrooper hanging from a clock tower in the D-Day movie The Longest Day.
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