Next Week, a Cadillac?

"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. 6 1/2 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."

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