He was known for playing the villain King Tut in the television series Batman (1966–1968) and musician Edwin Flagg in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

He was a busy actor from his late teens until his death at the age of 43 and, with his large size and sonorous voice, he made a career of playing men much older than he was.

[1] His father was a former police officer and bail bondsman who was sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit robbery in 1959.

[2] Released on parole after seven years but forced to serve a further sentence due to a previous conviction for bird smuggling, Victor Sr. continued to manage the affairs of his son while in prison.

[1][3] Buono started appearing on local radio and television stations, and at age 18 joined the Globe Theater Players in San Diego.

[citation needed] 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.

[6] Buono made his first network TV appearance playing the bearded poet Bongo Benny in an episode of 77 Sunset Strip.

Moon", in which he played a San Francisco art and antique dealer who hijacked a supply of the paper used for printing United States currency.

In a 1963 episode of the same series, titled The Gang War, he played Pamise Surigao, a liquor smuggler competing with the Chicago mob.

In the episode "Firebug" (January 27, 1963) of the anthology series GE True, hosted by Jack Webb, Buono played a barber in Los Angeles who is by night a pyromaniac.

[10] In season 9, (February 27, 1966), he appeared in "The Case of the Twice Told Twist", the only color episode, as Ben Huggins, the ringleader of a car-stripping ring.

A Jekyll-and-Hyde character, William McElroy is a timid Yale professor of Egyptology who, after being hit in the head with a brick at a peace rally, assumes the persona of the charismatic, monomaniacal Egyptian King Tut.

[12] He played another campy villain, "Mr. Memory", in a 1967 unsold TV pilot film based on the Dick Tracy comic strip, from the same producers as Batman and The Green Hornet.

In the 1970s, Buono released several comedy record albums which poked fun at his large stature, the first of which was Heavy!,[14] as well as a book of comic poetry called It Could Be Verse.

After all, if it was good enough for Monty Clift or Sal Mineo..."[20] Buono was closeted, like most gay actors at the time, but lived with boyfriends, and referred to himself as a "conscientious objector" in the "morality revolution" of the 1960s.