AncientFaces Your browser does not support JavaScript!
Please enable JavaScript to view the entire contents of this page.

Red Buttons 1919 - 2006

Red Buttons of Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, CA was born on February 5, 1919 at Lower East Side in New York, New York County, New York United States, and died at age 87 years old on July 13, 2006 in Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, CA.

Red Buttons

Aaron Chwatt

Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, CA 90405

February 5, 1919

Lower East Side in New York, New York County, New York, United States

July 13, 2006

Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California, United States

Male

Looking for someone else

Red Buttons Red Buttons (1919 - 2006)

ADVERTISEMENT BY ANCESTRY.COM

This page exists for YOU
and everyone who remembers Red.

Share what you know,
even ask what you wish you knew.

Invite others to do the same,
but don't worry if you can't...

Someone, somewhere will find this page,
and we'll notify you when they do.

Red Buttons' History: 1919 - 2006

Uncover new discoveries and connections today by sharing about people & moments from yesterday.

- Discover how AncientFaces works.

02/5

1919

Birthday

February 5, 1919

Birthdate

Lower East Side in New York, New York County, New York United States

Birthplace

ADVERTISEMENT BY
Religious Beliefs

Jewish.
Military Service

Mr. Buttons joined the Army in 1943 and spent the rest of World War II in its entertainment unit, appearing in a hit show called “Winged Victory,” which was written and directed by Moss Hart. It was turned into a movie in 1944. Other future stars in the show included Mario Lanza, Karl Malden, Barry Nelson, Louis Nye, Peter Lind Hayes, John Forsythe and Gary Merrill. They were recruited by Irving Lazar, who would acquire the nickname “Swifty” and become one of Broadway and Hollywood’s leading agents. After the war, Mr. Buttons returned to nightclubs and appeared in an occasional Broadway flop. Then came the “Suspense” episode, stardom, his descent and the Oscar.
Professional Career

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Red Buttons, the carrot-topped burlesque comedian who became a top star in early television then went dramatic to win the 1957 Oscar as supporting actor in "Sayonara," died Thursday. He was 87. Buttons died of vascular disease at his home in the Century City area of Los Angeles, publicist Warren Cowan said. He had been ill for some time, and was with family members when he died, Cowan said. With his eager manner and rapid-fire wit, Buttons excelled in every phase of show business, from the Borscht Belt of the 1930s to celebrity roasts in the 1990s. His greatest achievement came with his "Sayonara" role as Sgt. Joe Kelly, the soldier in the occupation forces in Japan whose romance with a Japanese woman (Myoshi Umeki, who also won an Academy Award) ends in tragedy. Josh Logan, who directed the James Michener story that starred Marlon Brando, was at first hesitant to cast a well-known comedian in such a somber role. "The tests were so extensive that they could just put scenery around them and release the footage as a feature film," Buttons remarked. Buttons' Academy Award led to other films, both dramas and comedies. They included "Imitation General," "The Big Circus," "Hatari!" "The Longest Day," "Up From the Beach," "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" "The Poseidon Adventure," "Gable and Lombard" and "Pete's Dragon." A performer since his teens, Buttons was noticed by burlesque theater owners and he became the youngest comic on the circuit. He had graduated to small roles on Broadway before being drafted in 1943. Red Buttons passed away on July 13, 2006 at 87 years old. He was born on February 5, 1919. We know that Red Buttons had been residing in Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, California 90405.
07/13

2006

Death

July 13, 2006

Death date

Vascular Disease

Cause of death

Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California United States
Death location

ADVERTISEMENT BY
Obituary

Comedian Red Buttons Dies at 87 By Mervyn Rothstein July 14, 2006 Red Buttons, the Borscht Belt comic who rose to instant television stardom on his own variety show in 1952, descended to obscurity three years later after his program was canceled and then rebounded to win an Academy Award for his dramatic performance in the 1957 film “Sayonara,” died yesterday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 87. The cause was vascular disease, his publicist, Warren Cowan, said. To television watchers in the mid-1970’s, Mr. Buttons was perhaps best recognized as a witty regular and master of the gentle barb on the NBC comic tribute series “The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast.” But it was his Oscar, for best supporting actor, that brought him his greatest renown almost 20 years earlier. The award was for his portrayal of Airman Joe Kelly, an American serviceman in Japan after World War II who is ostracized by the military for marrying a Japanese woman. Miyoshi Umeki, who played his wife, received the best supporting actress award. The movie starred Marlon Brando and was based on the James A. Michener novel. Five years earlier, CBS executives, looking for a show to compete with Milton Berle’s “Texaco Star Theater” on NBC on Tuesdays at 8 P.M., turned to Mr. Buttons. At the time he was a 33-year-old comedian who had made guest appearances on the Berle show and won some acclaim for his acting in a 1951 episode of the “Suspense” television series. CBS gave Mr. Buttons his own half-hour variety program, which began Oct. 14, 1952. Later that evening, switchboard operators at the network reported one of the biggest and most enthusiastic responses to a single program they had ever received. Audiences enjoyed his sketch comedy routines and his characters. He was Rocky Buttons, a punch-drunk prizefighter with a heart of gold; Muggsy Buttons, a juvenile delinquent with a core of kindness; Keeglefarven, a German military officer presented in dialect, and the Kupke Kid, a child laborer who aroused in others a compulsion to pick him up after first knocking him down. “I’m a little guy, and that’s what I play — a little guy with a little guy’s troubles,” said Mr. Buttons, who stood 5-foot-6 and weighed 140 pounds in his prime. Between bits this puckish, almost elflike comedian would cup his ears and sing, “Hey-hey, ho-ho, strange things are happening,” providing different strange things each week. Soon “Strange things are happening” became a catch phrase among the nation’s teenagers. The success didn’t last. As the second season began, television audiences lost interest in Mr. Buttons, and his ratings dropped. Frantically seeking to rediscover a winning format, he hired and fired writers almost every week, among them Larry Gelbart and Neil Simon. The revolving door for writers — 163 of them over two years — became a standing joke in show business. Nothing helped. The ratings kept plummeting, and his CBS show was canceled. NBC, however, picked him up, and in the third year a situation-comedy format was tried in a new time slot. But the ratings didn’t approach their first-year levels, and in May 1955, his sponsor, Pontiac, ended the show. For the next two years, Mr. Buttons appeared mainly in nightclubs, although he made an occasional television guest appearance. He was 36 and rich, but newspaper articles at the time called him a has-been. But then the director Joshua Logan, after some initial misgivings about using a comedian in a dramatic role, asked him to join the cast of “Sayonara.” An eager Mr. Buttons went off to Japan. While on location, he sent his agent a postcard of Kyoto’s snow-covered hills. On the front, harking back to his early stand-up days playing the Catskills, he wrote, “Hey, look, you’ve got me working in the mountains again.” Red Buttons was born Aaron Chwatt on Feb. 5, 1919, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He was the son of Michael Chwatt, a millinery worker, and Sophie Chwatt, a housewife. Aaron and his family — there was an older brother, Joe, and a younger sister, Ida — lived in a tenement apartment on Third Street between Avenues A and B. It was a tough neighborhood. “On my block, you either grew up to be a judge or you went to the electric chair,” he often said. He first attended P.S. 104 on East Fourth Street, but then his family moved to the Bronx, to 176th Street and Marmion Avenue. He made his first stage appearance at age 12 under the name Little Skippy, dressed in a sailor suit and singing “Sweet Jennie Lee” in an amateur contest at the Fox Corona Theater. He won. While attending Evander Childs High School, Aaron got a job as a bellhop and singer at Ryan’s, a bar on City Island in the Bronx, where he got the name Red Buttons: since he wore a bellhop uniform, he was, naturally, called Buttons, and at the time his hair was red. The name stuck, even though his hair turned dark brown as he got older. (Mr. Logan had him dye it red for “Sayonara.”) His first job in the Catskills was in the summer of 1935, as a singer at Greenfield Park. “My voice cracked, so they made me a comedian,” he recalled. He began working in burlesque, at Minsky’s, at the Gaiety on Broadway and 46th Street, and in Western Wheel, the Midwest burlesque circuit, doing comic numbers like “Sam, You Made the Pants Too Long.” In 1940 he married a stripper known as Roxanne, but the marriage was annulled two years later. In 1941, José Ferrer discovered him and cast him in a Broadway-bound comedy called “The Admiral Takes a Wife.” The play received good out-of-town reviews, came into New York on a Sunday in December and was scheduled to open the following day. The comedy, however, was a satire on life at a naval base in Hawaii: Pearl Harbor. The Sunday it arrived was Dec. 7, 1941, and the show never opened. Mr. Buttons joined the Army in 1943 and spent the rest of World War II in its entertainment unit, appearing in a hit show called “Winged Victory,” which was written and directed by Moss Hart. It was turned into a movie in 1944. Other future stars in the show included Mario Lanza, Karl Malden, Barry Nelson, Louis Nye, Peter Lind Hayes, John Forsythe and Gary Merrill. They were recruited by Irving Lazar, who would acquire the nickname “Swifty” and become one of Broadway and Hollywood’s leading agents. After the war, Mr. Buttons returned to nightclubs and appeared in an occasional Broadway flop. Then came the “Suspense” episode, stardom, his descent and the Oscar. In 1966, he starred on a short-lived television series, “The Double Life of Henry Phyfe,” as a meek accountant-turned-spy. His other movies included “Imitation General” (1958), “Hatari!” with John Wayne (1962), “The Longest Day” (1962), “A Ticklish Affair” (1963), “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969), “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972), “Gable and Lombard” (1976) and “It Could Happen to You” (1994). After his run with “Dean Martin’s Celebrity Roast” in the 1970’s, he landed other television roles, portraying the White Rabbit in the 1985 musical miniseries “Alice in Wonderland” and, in 1987, playing the recurring role of Al Baker on “Knots Landing.” He also made guest appearances on “Roseanne” and “E.R.” In 1995, he celebrated his 60th year in show business by presenting a one-man show, “Buttons on Broadway,” at the Ambassador Theater. Writing in The New York Times, Ben Brantley said Mr. Buttons was “trim and agile at 76” and “able to command a stage for nearly two hours with a medley of Borscht Belt and burlesque shtick, songs and impersonations.” In his later years he was a sought-after entertainer for Friars Roasts and other testimonial dinners with his “Never had a dinner” routine, identifying famous people who had never been so honored. Example: “Abe Lincoln, who said ‘A house divided is a condominium,’ never had a dinner.” He also remained in the public eye as the spokesman in an advertising campaign for the Century Village retirement communities in Florida. Of his three marriages, two ended in divorce early in his career. His third wife, Alicia, died in 2001. They had a daughter, Amy Norgress, and a son, Adam, who survive him, as do his brother and sister. “I’ve been a performer all my life,” Mr. Buttons once said. “It’s a very satisfactory profession. You get paid off on the spot. When they cheer, that’s payment.”RED BUTTONS OBITUARY

ADVERTISEMENT BY
Looking for more information?
share

Memories

below

Join 2 others
who remember Red

Select options below to share special moments.

Introduction Ethnicity & Family History Nationality & Locations Early Life & Education Baptism Personal Life & Family Gravesite & Burial Add Memory Add Photo

Share what you remember.
Ask what you wish to know.
Connect to discover more.
Advertisement
Did you know?

Red Buttons lived 13 years longer than the average family member when died at the age of 87.

ADVERTISEMENT BY
Looking for more information?
share

Memories

below