Early Life and Career
Buono was born in San Diego, California, the son of Myrtle Belle (née Keller; 1909–1979) and Victor Francis Buono (1907–1981). His maternal grandmother, Myrtle Glied (1886–1969), was a Vaudeville performer on the Orpheum Circuit. When he was a boy, she taught him songs and recitations and encouraged him to perform for visitors. Even though the young Buono enjoyed the polite applause of those captive audiences, he aspired to be a doctor. When he was sixteen, Father John Aherne, OSA, of St. Augustine High School in San Diego cast him as Papa Barrett in the play The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Buono appeared in three plays a year during high school, including Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp and Shakespearean dramas and played the title role of Hamlet.
He started appearing on local radio and television stations, and at the age of eighteen he joined the Globe Theater Players in San Diego. The director had confidence in Buono and cast him in Volpone, A Midsummer Night's Dream and other Globe presentations. He received good notices for his various Shakespearean roles and in modern plays such as The Man Who Came to Dinner and Witness for the Prosecution.
In the summer of 1959, a talent scout from Warner Bros. saw the heavy-set Buono play Falstaff at the Globe and took him to Hollywood for a screen test. He made his first network TV appearance playing the bearded poet Bongo Benny in an episode of 77 Sunset Strip. Over the next few years, he played menacing heavies in nearly every Grade "A" private eye series on TV and also appeared on The Untouchables. Because of his size and early hair loss, Buono usually played older characters. After appearing in a few uncredited film roles, director Robert Aldrich cast him in the psychological horror movie What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). The film starred Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, and Buono played the part of the ne'er-do-well musical accompanist, Edwin Flagg, a performance that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
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