This is a follow-up to yesterday's post about the 1966-1968 Batman TV show. This part focuses on Burgess Meredith, who played (of course) The Penguin…
In the early eighties, I worked several years on a show on ABC called That's Incredible! We did it at a studio in Hollywood, taping two shows every other week. The same company produced a kind of spin-off called Those Amazing Animals, which shared offices with us and they taped two shows each week that we weren't taping, using the same stage and most of the same crew. Burgess Meredith was one of the hosts of Those Amazing Animals.
On their tape days, I could wander down to the stage and there were long stretches when Mr. Meredith was just sitting around, waiting to be called before the cameras. Our casual friendship began with this exchange…
ME: Excuse me. My name is Mark Evanier and I'm one of the writers on That's Incredible! I thought if you weren't needed right now, this would be a good chance to meet one of my favorite actors.
HIM: By God, you aren't a fan of the Batman show, are you?
I was momentarily thrown by that but I managed to say, "A little but I was more interested in Of Mice and Men and The Twilight Zone, and I've also found that anyone who's worked with Zero Mostel has a dozen wonderful stories about him." Burgess laughed and extended his hand.
Now, they don't generally get cited here but there have been countless instances in my life of me saying the absolutely wrong thing to the absolutely wrong person at the absolutely wrong time. Once in a while though, I get it right. This, since I'm telling you about it, was one of those way-too-rare times I got it right.
His response to me…well, I don't recall for certain if he said this aloud or if I just read his mind. One way or the other, I heard, "Thank God! Someone under the age of seventy who knows I'm a serious actor!" And I noticed his face lit up when I mentioned Mr. Mostel, who had left the world stage and the world with it only a few years before.
We sat and talked a little that day and again on others. For the first few visits, I avoided the topic of Batman and instead savored his dozen wonderful stories about Zero (whom he loved) and other tales about working for Otto Preminger (whom he didn't always). He was defensive about being part of Skidoo and pleased that I had a certain fondness for Preminger's oddest film.
On Those Amazing Animals, they had a little penguin — a live mascot who'd sometimes follow Burgess around on the stage. One day when he'd just completed a brief scene with the little penguin, Mr. Meredith ambled over to where I was standing and I told him, "You know, you're lucky that on Batman, you didn't play The Rabid Hyena." He laughed and that led to us talking about that show for the one and only time.
All of these quotes are from memory but I have a pretty good memory. He said, "I was very idealistic when I entered the theater but I soon learned a necessary amount of pragmatism. Sometimes, you have to do three plays you don't want to do before you can afford to do the one you do want to do." Referring to the job he was doing that day, he said, "I didn't spend all those years studying with Eva Le Gallienne so I could introduce clips of chipmunks farting."
Later, he said, "I enjoyed doing Batman. It's rare that an actor gets a role where it's acceptable to devour so much of the scenery. But I could do without the people who think that's the length and breadth of what I do." He asked me what I thought of the Batman show and I told him a little of what I said in yesterday's post and added, "I think you were the second-best thing about it."
He asked me what was in first place. I said, "Julie Newmar and Yvonne Craig in skintight outfits." He chuckled just like The Penguin and said, "You're so very right, my boy. So very right."
I asked him if he'd ever read a Batman comic book and he said "No." Or maybe he said, "God, no." That was the attitude. He said, "Every now and then, they thrust one into my hands for some publicity picture but no. Nothing against them but I don't think they had much to do with what I was doing." He said he didn't like the make-up they slapped on him, nose extension and all, and as the series progressed, he got them to put less and less on him. He also didn't like sitting around while stunt people brawled, which sometimes took a very long time, forcing the director to rush his scenes.
For the most part, he enjoyed the show but said with a note of regret, "When I die, that will be the headline — 'Penguin Actor Croaks.'" Turned out, he was wrong. When he died in 1997, his Batman credit was usually at least secondary in the obits to his role in the Rocky movies. His importance to that series is perhaps best indicated by the fact that his character died in Rocky III but still managed to turn up briefly in Rocky IV and Rocky V.
And that's about all I remember. Nice man except for the occasionally-cranky moments. Great actor…and boy, did he work a lot. When I think back on the Batman series, he's one of the main things I liked about it…though of course, not as much as I liked Julie and Yvonne.