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Buddy Lester, a stand-up comedian and character actor known for his work on television and in films, was born in Chicago and remained a mainstay on the international nightclub scene for seven decades. In Las Vegas, he opened for Frank Sinatra multiple times and appeared in the Rat Pack movies Ocean's Eleven (1960) and Sergeants 3 (1962). Lester also acted alongside Jerry Lewis in five films: The Ladies Man (1961), The Nutty Professor (1963), The Patsy (1964), Three on a Couch (1966), and The Big Mouth (1967). He made his film debut playing himself as an entertainer in The Gene Krupa Story (1959), starring Sal Mineo. Lester gained even greater popularity on television, joining the regular cast of The New Phil Silvers Show (1963). He appeared in several episodes of the police dramas Adam-12 (1968) and Barney Miller (1975), and was a familiar presence on Love, American Style (1969), The New Dick Van Dyke Show (1971), The Odd Couple (1970), and Starsky and Hutch (1975).
With dark hair and striking looks, Lester often portrayed mockingly menacing characters, aided by a distinctive scar to the right of his mouth. He enjoyed inventing various tales about how he got the scar, including being blown off a barge at Guadalcanal, intimidating tough patrons at a Chicago nightclub, and fencing in Heidelberg during his student days. However, in a 1961 interview with the now-defunct Los Angeles Mirror, he revealed the truth: "I fell off a chair onto a broken water glass when I was 3 years old." Though he once contemplated plastic surgery to remove the scar, he changed his mind after a movie makeup artist praised it and even enhanced it for his scenes.
Lester passed away on Friday, October 4, 2002, from cancer at a nursing home in Van Nuys. He was 87. He is survived by his son Paul, daughter Sylvia Jensen, four grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
