Barbaro is doing much better today

KENNETT SQUARE, Pa. - Barbaro was doing "much better" Friday morning, a day after his veterinarian said the Kentucky Derby winner was a "long shot" to survive a potentially fatal hoof disease.

"Barbaro was out of his sling for more than 12 hours yesterday, and he had a calm, restful night, sleeping on his side for more than four hours," Dr. Dean Richardson said in a statement issued Friday by the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center. "While his condition is stable, it remains extremely serious."

Richardson appeared upbeat earlier when he told The Associated Press that Barbaro had a "good night. He's doing much better."

Richardson told a packed news conference Thursday that the 3-year-old colt has a severe case of the disease laminitis in his left hind leg, and termed his prognosis as "poor."

Barbaro looked every bit the champion Thursday, but it's how he acts in the next few days that will determine how much longer he lives.

Laminitis, Richardson said, is an "exquisitely painful" condition, and Barbaro has a case so bad that 80 percent of the Derby winner's left hoof wall was removed Wednesday. It could take as long as six months for the hoof to grow back. The disease is often caused by uneven weight distribution to a limb, usually because of serious injury to another.

Barbaro shattered three bones in his right hind leg just a few yards after the start of the Preakness Stakes on May 20.

While the news was good Friday, Barbaro's condition could change at any time.

"If he starts acting like he doesn't want to stand on the leg, that's it — that will be when we call it quits," a blunt Richardson said Thursday at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center.

"It could happen within 24 hours," he added.

The vet, who has been treating Barbaro since the colt's breakdown, said Thursday that Barbaro looks fine — "his ears are up, he's bright, he's looking around." But that doesn't reflect the true nature of his condition.

"I'd be lying if I said anything other than poor," he said. "As long as the horse is not suffering, we are going to continue to try to save him. If we can keep him comfortable, we think it's worth the effort."

Barbaro is being treated aggressively with pain medication and remains in the same stall he's been in since being brought to the intensive care unit.

Only the sight of fiberglass casts on both hind legs — a longer cast is on the right leg — gives any indication that something is terribly wrong with Barbaro.

"If you look at this horse, it'd be hard to put him down," Richardson said.

That precisely is the awful task that could be imminent because of a disease that has no cure.

"It's a devastating problem in horses that nobody has a solution to," Richardson said.

Until his misstep at the Preakness, Barbaro's career was nothing short of brilliant.

He won his first five starts, including the Florida Derby. His 6 1/2-length victory at the Derby was so convincing he was being hailed as the next likely Triple Crown champion — and first since Affirmed since 1978.

But seconds after the gates swung open at Pimlico, that career was cut short when the colt broke down, his right hind leg flaring out awkwardly because of three broken bones.

Race fans at Pimlico wept and within 24 hours the entire nation seemed to be caught up in a "Barbaro watch," waiting for any news of his surgery and condition.

And for the longest time, it all seemed to be going well.

Barbaro's first six weeks of recovery were relatively smooth — despite five hours of surgery to insert a titanium plate and 27 screws into his three shattered bones.

Each day brought more optimism: Barbaro was eyeing the mares, nickering, gobbling up his feed and trying to walk out of his stall. There was great hope Barbaro somehow would overcome the odds and live a life of leisure on the farm, although he'd always have a hitch in his gait.

Richardson, along with owners Gretchen and Roy Jackson and trainer Michael Matz, all believed the colt had a chance to recover.

Until last week, when Barbaro's condition steadily worsened.

The colt underwent three surgical procedures and four cast changes on the injured leg, followed by a hoof wall resection.

"I really thought we were going to make it two weeks ago," Richardson said. "Today I'm not as confident."

Within hours of the grim update, roses and apples began arriving at the hospital, and hundreds of get-well e-mail messages were posted on a Web site set up by the New Bolton Center.

The vet didn't mince words: "It's as bad a laminitis as you can have. It's as bad as it gets."

He said he has discussed the situation closely with the Jacksons, who have stressed that their main concern is for Barbaro to be pain free.

Several telephone messages left for the Jacksons and Matz were not returned.

Richardson said Barbaro's injured right hind leg was healing well, but because a horse has to be evenly balanced to carry his weight, laminitis set in on the other foot. Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown winner, was euthanized due to laminitis in 1989.

"The reason we cut away the hoof wall is because the hoof wall is not connected" to the bone, he said. "If you had a nail that was separated from the end you'd pull it off. It's dead tissue that's in the way of living tissue."

Richardson said it would take several months for the hoof to grow back, and as long as six months to be completely healed.

Barbaro has been fitted with a sling to prevent sudden movements and allow him to shift his weight from side to side. The main goal is comfort.

"The sling is on only some of the day, when it's off, he can lie down," Richardson said. "We are not torturing this horse."

Edgar Prado, the jockey credited with saving Barbaro by quickly pulling him up in the Preakness, was devastated by the grim prognosis.

"It's very upsetting," he said. "Barbaro has shown to everyone what a fighter he is. He showed it on the track and with all the surgeries he's had. It just goes to show what kind of courage he has. He's a true champion, and is fighting every step of the way.

"All we can do now is hope and pray. We'll need a miracle, but maybe it will happen."

Red Buttons Has Died at 87

Red Buttons, the impish former burlesque comic who became an early TV sensation and an Academy Award-winning character actor during a career that spanned more than seven decades, has died. He was 87.

Buttons died today at his Century City home after a long battle with vascular disease, publicist Warren Cowan said.

A product of New York's Lower East Side, Buttons had already performed in Minsky's Burlesque and in Broadway plays and musicals by the time he became an overnight hit on television in 1952 with the launch of "The Red Buttons Show" on CBS.

A comedy-variety show, it featured the likable Buttons' monologues, dance numbers and sketches with regulars and guests. Among the comic's recurring characters were a punch-drunk prizefighter named Rocky, a juvenile delinquent called Muggsy, and a dumb "dialect" German named Kleeglefarven.

The diminutive comic — 5 feet, 6 inches and 140 pounds — inspired children around the country to mimic him singing his signature "Ho Ho Song," in which he hopped around singing, "Ho Ho! Hee Hee! Ha Ha! Strange things are happening."

The Academy of Radio and Television Arts and Sciences named him Comedian of the Year in 1954.

But Buttons' time at the top on TV was short-lived.

The show, which moved to NBC when CBS canceled it after its second season, became a sitcom and was off the air a year later.

After his show was canceled in 1955, Buttons said years later, "I couldn't get arrested." Indeed, as he said at the time, "I found out how tough show business can be."

Over the next two years, he worked only 14 weeks, primarily in nightclubs, with only three guest shots on "The Perry Como Show" and a role in a "Studio One" production.

But in late 1957 he was unexpectedly back on top with his dramatic supporting role in the screen adaptation of the James Michener novel "Sayonara," starring Marlon Brando as an Army major who falls in love with a Japanese woman after he is assigned to an air base in Japan during the Korean War.

Buttons' role as the tragic Airman Joe Kelly, an enlisted man in Brando's company who marries his Japanese sweetheart despite a military policy forbidding interracial marriage, earned him an Oscar and a Golden Globe for best supporting actor

"I'm a little guy," Buttons said at the time, "and that's what I play all the time — a little guy and his troubles."

Buttons appeared in more than 30 movies, including "Hatari!," "The Longest Day," "Harlow," "Stagecoach" (the 1966 remake), "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?," "The Poseidon Adventure," "18 Again!" and "It Could Happen to You."

In 1966, he starred in the short-lived situation comedy "The Double Life of Henry Phyfe," in which he played a bookkeeper who is asked to pose as a secret agent.

Buttons never equaled his early TV success or the high of his Oscar win, but he also never again stopped working. He appeared in TV movies and specials and made frequent series guest shots. He had a stint on "Knots Landing" in the 1980s and recurring roles on "Roseanne" in the '90s and in the Showtime series "Street Time" in 2002.

In the 1970s, he made frequent appearances on "The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast" shows, in which Buttons would begin his portion of the proceedings by noting, "Some of the most famous people in history never got a dinner!"

A popular guest at testimonial dinners over the years, Buttons offered up one-liners, including: "Alex the Great, who said on his wedding night, 'It's only a nickname'." and "George W. Bush, who said to Pope John Paul II, 'Give us a visit and bring the missus."

"You think you can reach a peak and stay there, but that's not what happens. I've been coming back continuously," Buttons said in a 1987 interview. "I've had a Humpty Dumpty career. It's been a roller coaster ride."

Born Aaron Chwatt in New York City on Feb. 5, 1919, Buttons spent his early years in tenements on the Lower East Side, the same poor neighborhood that had spawned legendary figures including Eddie Cantor, George Burns, Jimmy Durante, Fannie Brice and George and Ira Gershwin.

"I don't know," Buttons once said. "It must have been something in the seltzer."

His father, a Polish immigrant who made hats for a living, sparked his early desire to get into show business.

"He was a clown who liked to sing and dance," Buttons told Newsday in 1995. "I picked that up from him. I noticed he made people happy, smiling, laughing, and that's what I wanted to do."

As a kid, Buttons sang for pennies on the street, encouraging donations by wearing a small sign that said, "I am an orphan."

"That was my gimmick," he recalled. "People were nice to orphans."

Buttons' family, which included his brother Joe and sister Ida, moved to the Bronx while he was still in grammar school.

At 12, billing himself as Little Skippy and singing "Sweet Jennie Lee," he won an amateur night contest at a local movie theater.

At 16 in 1935, he landed a job as a bellboy and singer at Dinty Moore's Tavern on City Island in the Bronx. Customers, eyeing his red hair and uniform festooned with brass buttons, gave him the nickname that became his professional moniker.

That summer, Buttons made his first appearance on the Borscht Circuit. In exchange for room and board, he entertained at Greenfield Park in New York's Catskill Mountains.

During a summertime stint at Loch Sheldrake in the Catskills after he graduated from high school in 1938, Button was spotted by a talent scout for burlesque impresario Harold Minsky. That led to a 17-week engagement at the Gaiety Theater in New York, followed by time on what was known as the Western Wheel circuit.

Buttons made his Broadway acting debut in a supporting role in "Vickie," a farce at the Plymouth Theatre starring Jose Ferrer and Uta Hagen. He followed that by joining the "Wine, Women and Song" vaudeville-burlesque company at the Ambassador Theater in 1942.

After being inducted into the Army in 1943, Buttons joined the cast of "Winged Victory," playwright Moss Hart's Army Air Forces play to benefit Army Emergency Relief.

After 212 performances in New York, he re-created the role in the 20th Century Fox film version. That was followed by a 28-week "Winged Victory" tour.

He also had a stint with another Army unit in Europe in 1945, and that year he performed and served as master of ceremonies in a show for President Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin at the Potsdam Conference.

Back in New York after his discharge, Buttons appeared on Broadway in George Abbott's musical "Barefoot Boy With Cheek" in 1947 and the 1948 musical "Hold It," in which he impressed New York World-Telegram critic William Hawkins, who wrote: "The best out and out performance of the evening is Red Buttons, who comes into his own He can dress up comedy lines."

Forty-seven years later, in 1995, a 76-year-old Buttons was still dressing up comedy lines with "Buttons on Broadway," a one-man show filled with old stories and old jokes.

"I love to make 'em laugh. I love to hear 'em laugh. I love to entertain," he told Back Stage magazine. "That's my life. It's always been my life."