Actor-comedian Red Buttons dies at age 87

Red Buttons

LOS ANGELES - Red Buttons, the flame-haired comedian and Oscar-winning actor of 1957 film Sayonara, died today at his Los Angeles-area home at the age of 87 of vascular disease, his publicist said.

Buttons, who started his 60-year career as a kid singing for pennies on New York's street corners, had been ill for some time. His family was with him when he died, publicist Warren Cowan said.

Buttons' career spanned film, Broadway, television, comedy clubs and Las Vegas. He won a best supporting actor Oscar for his role as a US soldier involved in an ill-fated interracial marriage in post-World War Two Japan in Sayonara.

Born Aaron Chwatt in February 1919, the actor earned the name Buttons for a uniform he wore while working as a singing bellhop and the name Red from the colour of his hair.

At 16, he got a job playing a comedy act in the Catskills resort area of New York and then worked the burlesque theatre circuit before joining the US Army Air Corps. During World War Two, he travelled Europe entertaining the troops with actor Mickey Rooney.

In 1952 he landed his own TV variety series -- The Red Buttons Show -- which lasted for three years and earned Buttons the equivalent of a modern-day Emmy award, US television's top honour.

His big film break came with Sayonara in which he co-starred with the young Marlon Brando, and a new career as a movie star followed with appearances in The Longest Day, Stagecoach, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, and in 1972 The Poseidon Adventure.

He won acclaim in the 1960s for his part in the TV series The Double Life of Henry Phyfe and for his appearances on the Dean Martin Celebrity Roast where he performed his Never Got a Dinner act.

In later years, he appeared on TV in The Love Boat, Knots Landing and, as recently as 2005, in the hospital drama ER. He also made frequent guest star appearances in Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

Buttons was married three times and had two children.

- REUTERS