Buzzell appeared on Broadway, and was hired to star in the 1929 film version of George M. Cohan's Little Johnny Jones with Alice Day. Buzzell appeared in a few Vitaphone shorts, and a two-strip Technicolor short The Devil's Cabaret (1930) as Satan's assistant. He wrote a few screenplays in the early 1930s, and later produced The Milton Berle Show which premiered on television in 1948.
Buzzell married actress Ona Munson in 1927, and they divorced in the early 30's. He later married actress Lorraine Miller.