Victor Charles Buono

 Victor Charles Buono (February 3, 1938 – January 1, 1982)

Buono was most famous for playing the villain King Tut on the television series Batman and musician Edwin Flagg in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. He started appearing on local radio and television stations, and at the age of eighteen 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. Buono made his first network TV appearance playing the bearded poet Bongo Benny in an episode of 77 Sunset Strip. He also He also appeared in 4 for Texas (1963), Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964), The Silencers (1966), Who's Minding the Mint? (1967), Target: Harry (1969), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) and The Mad Butcher (1972). In the late 1970s and in 1980, Buono played the millionaire father of memory-impaired Reverend Jim Ignatowski on Taxi. Buono died before the end of the series and another actor briefly assumed the role. The character was eventually killed off, followed by an episode where Jim learns to cope with his father's death. Victor Buono was found dead at his home in Apple Valley, California, on New Year's Day 1982. The cause of death was a heart attack. He is entombed with his mother Myrtle in Greenwood Memorial Park in San Diego, but his name is not inscribed on the crypt.