Red Buttons Show: Red Buttons Promotional TV Photo

The Red Buttons Show was a comedy-variety series and later a sitcom that aired from October 1952 until May 1955 on CBS and NBC.

Though it is scarcely recalled today, The Red Buttons Show was hailed almost universally as the most promising new show of the 1952-1953 season. ( Buttons even appeared on the cover of Time Magazine that season). But by the end of its second season, after several changes in format and writers, the show's popularity had sagged considerably, and it was dropped by CBS. NBC picked up the show for the 1954-1955 season ( where it was slated on Friday nights , with The Jack Carson Show occupying the slot approximately every fourth week), but it did even less well.

Red Buttons had had considerable experience as a burlesque comedian, and his show began as a comedy-variety show; it was introduced by his familiar theme song , " The Ho Ho Song." Red would put his hands together in what appeared to be a gesture of supplication, lean his head against them at a funny angle , and hop around the stage singing " Ho! Ho!...He! He!...Ha! Ha!.. . Strange things are happenening." For a time that song became a national craze that infected millions of children around the country. The show itself featured monologues and dance numbers by Red, and sketches with his regulars and any guest stars. Some of the recurring characters portrayed by Red were Rocky Bottons, a punchy boxer; the Kupke kid, a lovable little boy; the sad sack; and Keeglefarven, a dumb, blundering German. There were also regular sketches about Red and his wife ( in a style that was to be imitated by George Gobel later in the 1950s) with Dorothy Jolliffe as his wife when the show first started. She was replaced in October by Beverly Dennis, and Miss Dennis gave way to Betty Ann Grove at the start of the 1953-1954 season. Other regulars included Pat Carroll, Allan Walker, Joe Silver, Jeanne Carson, Sara Seegar, Jimmy Little, Ralph Stanley, Sammy Birch and the Elliott Lawrence Orchestra.

A smash hit in its first season, The Red Buttons Show began to fade in its second year on CBS and was picked up by NBC after it had been canceled. The NBC series started as a variety show with guests but no regulars other than Red. That didn't seem to work so the format was changed to a situation comedy at the end of January. Red played himself as a TV comic who was always getting into troubles of one sort or another. Phyllis Kirk was his new wife, Bobby Sherwood his pal and director of the TV show and Paul Lynde, a newcomer to TV played Mr. Standish, a network vice president with whom Red had constant run-ins. Nothing seemed to help and Red, who had gone through literally dozens of writers in a quest to find a workable format, left the air that spring.

After the demise of his series, Red continued to appear in dramatic roles on television and on film, winning an Academy Award in 1957 for his performance in Sayanora. He later starred in a 1966 sitcom called The Double Life of Henry Phyfe. Red died on July 13, 2006.

An Article from Time Magazine

Next Week, a Cadillac?
Monday, Oct. 27, 1952

"I've just broken out of oblivion," says Red Buttons breathlessly. "I haven't slept for five nights in a row. I'm walking on air." Comedian Buttons, 33, has been playing around Manhattan for the past 17 years, mostly in burlesque and quick-folding musical comedies and nightclubs ("I wasn't any Danny Thomas, but I was doing all right"). Last week his Red Buttons Show (Tues. 8:30 p.m., CBS-TV) went on the air with little advance buildup, no sponsor and few prospects of one.

He opened with a strictly autobiographical monologue: "I grew up in the lower East Side. It was a pretty tough block. You either grew up to be a judge or you went to the chair." His family, he said, was poor: "To give you an idea, when we got a phone call at the corner candy store, we had to run upstairs to answer it." He did a couple of comedy skits and wound up with an emotional "Thank you, everybody, for everything." The CBS switchboard operators, with some amazement, reported one of the biggest responses to a single show they had ever had. The critics were kindly. Several prospective sponsors began pricing the show. Buttons, of course, was ecstatic.

The small (5 ft. 6½ in.), earnest funnyman was born Aaron Chwatt, the son of an immigrant hat blocker. He got the name "Red Buttons" because of his flaming hair—now prematurely grey—and a bellhop uniform he wore on his first comedy job while he was still attending a Bronx high school. Before the surprising success of his new show, Buttons had made some eight or nine guest appearances on TV without causing any particular excitement ("My first spot was on the Milton Berle show four years ago. And now—think of it—I'm playing in competition to Berle").

"When you ask me what kind of comedy I do," Buttons says, "I can't pinpoint it. I'm a little guy, and that's what I play all the time—a little guy and his troubles." He thinks of himself as a reporter: "Every comedian is one. You go somewhere, and look around you and say to yourself, 'Wouldn't it be funny if such & such happened?' " Success is happening so fast that Buttons still drives a Pontiac ("Next week, a Cadillac, maybe"). As for the future: "I'm going to be perfectly honest with you. I'm not thinking any further ahead than next Tuesday night at 8:30."

An Article from Time Magazine

Such Sweet Sorrow
Monday, Jun. 21, 1954

There was scarcely a dry eye last week on a trio of radio & TV shows. On CBS, Funnyman Red Buttons' career came to a halt almost as suddenly as it began. Two years ago Buttons came from nowhere (small parts in show business) to rank in the first five of TV's most popular shows. This year his rating dipped sharply and, though it strengthened in the past few months, Sponsor Maxwell House Coffee decided to drop him for a completely new show this fall.

Buttons will undoubtedly be back, but the award-winning Your Show of Shows said goodbye forever. The five-year-old revue was one of the few shows to run 1½ hours and was notable for raising Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca to stardom, for television pioneering in ballet and opera, for its parodies of U.S. and foreign films, and for pantomime sketches. Both Caesar and Coca will appear next year in their own separate TV shows, while veteran Producer-Director Max Liebman will take on the new job of overseeing NBC's big color TV spectacles planned for fall.

The breakup of Your Show of Shows caused a major displacement of the venerable Voice of Firestone, whose semiclas-sical music has been heard for 25 years over NBC radio and for five years over NBC-TV on the same day and time (Mon. 8:30 p.m.). NBC pre-empted the Firestone time period for its forthcoming Sid Caesar show and was hopeful that Firestone would drop the Voice and sponsor Caesar. Instead, Firestone stubbornly insisted on staying with its old format of orchestra and opera singers, whose opening theme ( If I Could Tell You) and closing theme (In My Garden) were both written by Idabelle Firestone, wife of the founder of the company. Firestone also refused alternate time periods suggested by NBC. After both sides read polite but edgy announcements over the air, Firestone this week took its radio and TV business to rival ABC, where the Voice will continue to be heard, as usual, on Monday nights at 8:30.

Here's Red Button's Obituary from The New York Times

Comedian Red Buttons Dies at 87

By MERVYN ROTHSTEIN
Published: July 13, 2006

Red Buttons, a 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 the Academy Award as best supporting actor in 1958 for his dramatic performance in “Sayonara,” died today at his home in Los Angeles. He was 87.

The cause was vascular disease, his publicist Warren Cown told The Associated Press.

Mr. Buttons took the Oscar for his portrayal of Sgt. Joe Kelly, an American serviceman in Japan after World War II who is ostracized by the military for marrying a Japanese woman. Miyoshi Umeki, the actress who played his wife, was also awarded an Academy Award for her role in the movie, which starred Marlon Brando, was directed by Josh Logan and was based on the James Michener novel about prejudice and interracial marriage.

Six years earlier, CBS executives, looking for a program 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 gained nationwide notice in October 1951 on an episode of the “Suspense” television program about Joe E. Lewis, a nightclub star whose throat had been cut by gangsters during Prohibition.

They gave Mr. Buttons, who had also made several guest appearances on the Berle show, his own half-hour variety program, which began Oct. 14, 1952. Later that evening, switchboard operators at CBS reported one of the biggest and most enthusiastic responses to a single program they had ever received. Critics praised him, too; Jack Gould, in The New York Times, declared that Mr. Buttons was “easy to like.”

The next week, though, just before air time (programs were live in those days) Mr. Buttons collapsed from the exhaustion of strenuous rehearsals, and that evening’s show was canceled at the last minute. He quickly recovered, and in the ensuing weeks ratings soared.

Audiences were amused by Mr. Buttons’s 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. For the role Mr. Buttons wore a kupke (Yiddish for stocking cap), a prop he had brought with him from his burlesque days.

“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 feet 6 and, in his prime, weighed 140 pounds.

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.

At the end of the first year, Mr. Buttons told an interviewer: “Friends have been asking me what my future plans are now that the TV show has been going so well. You know what? I don’t have any other plans. I’ll be plenty happy just to see this thing last. I’m a guy who never uncrosses his fingers.”

It didn’t last. As the second season began, television audiences suddenly and inexplicably lost interest in Mr. Buttons, and a strange thing began to happen: 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.

“I kept firing writers one after the other,” Mr. Buttons recalled. “I never could get quite what I wanted. When a guy does a TV show every week, he is only as good as his scripts.” The revolving door for writers — 163 of them over two years — became a standing joke in show business. But 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 failed to reach anything like their first-year levels, and in May 1955, his sponsor, Pontiac, canceled the program.

For the next two years, Mr. Buttons appeared primarily in nightclubs, and although he would make an occasional television guest appearance, he was essentially a nonentity on the small screen. He was 36 and rich, but newspaper profiles at the time called him a “has-been.”

But then Josh 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, he harked back to his early days playing stand-up dates in the Catskill, writing, “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 — 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, and Mr. Buttons said that he would get into a fight every day.

“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 176th Street and Marmion Avenue in the Bronx. 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 old 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. It was there that 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 for some unknown reason his hair turned dark brown as he got older. (Josh 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, Jose 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 and 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 turkey. 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).

In the mid-1970’s he was a regular on the NBC comic tribute series “Dean Martin’s Celebrity Roast”; he portrayed the White Rabbit in the 1985 musical miniseries “Alice in Wonderland,” and in 1987 he played 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. Ben Brantley in The Times wrote that Mr. Buttons, “trim and agile at 76,” was “able to command a stage for nearly two hours with a medley of Borscht Belt and burlesque shtick, songs and impersonations.”

As a stand-up comic, he was known primarily for his contributions to Friar’s Roasts. For several years, he was perhaps seen most often as the spokesman in an advertising campaign for the Century Village retirement communities in South Florida.

“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.”

For a biography of Red Buttons go to www.amdest.com/stars/redb.html

To listen to the Theme Song of THe Red Buttons Show go to http://www.televisiontunes.com/Red_Buttons_Show_(The).html