James L. Brooks once won an argument about who was the better actor between Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman by pointing out that Nicholson could have played both halves of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, while Hoffman only would have excelled at playing persnickety fusspot Felix Unger. There may be some holes in the logic, but if it’s good enough for the man who created both As Good as it Gets and The Simpsons, it will be good enough for me. So I want to note that Burgess Meredith was one of the greatest and most overlooked American actors of the 20^th century, because he could have played the hell out of both Felix and dumpster-dwelling Oscar Madison.

On stage, he played Prince Hal to Orson Welles’ Falstaff and starred in two of the earliest Critic’s Circle Award winners. In film, he acted for the grand old man of French cinema, Jean Renoir, as well as the infant terrible of the New Wave, Jean-luc Godard. Early on, leading American directors like Lewis Milestone and William Wellman made use of his world-weary rugged heart, while in later life, the legendary Otto Preminger seemed to view Meredith as a security blanket in his 1960’s epics. And he was a constant presence on television, from the medium’s infancy through to his most popular successes in the 1960s. That doesn’t even begin to consider the numerous radio programs and commercials, where that distinct voice leant whatever tone was required to the material, be it somber or silly.

As I sat down to write a brief retrospective, I quickly discovered that I was unable to find an obvious organizing principal. Meredith seemed to bounce around quite a bit. He would disappear for periods of time and resurface in the most unexpected ways. Perhaps that is key, for much of what Meredith did throughout his career was indeed unexpected. Unexpectedly delightful much of the time. And so I embark on this journey with no promises, no grand scheme. Only a treasure trove of American theatrics.

The Boyish Years

Burgess Meredith (right) in Of Mice and Men

Meredith found success early on Broadway, and would remain a fixture on the NY stage for several decades. Stage success provided the entre into films. Meredith recreated notable stage performances in Winterset and Of Mice and Men on film and became recognized as one of the best young actors of his generation.  But New York Herald Tribune drama critic Richard Watts, Jr. took issue with labeling young Burgess the best young actor on the American stage. “There isn’t a better American actor of any age,” Watts wrote.

Given his youthful buoyancy and sly sense of humor, the young Meredith was perfect for lightweight screwball, but at barely 5’5”, and without the smoldering appeal of Alan Ladd, he was never destined to get the girl. And so his early Hollywood career is filled with third wheel roles like Hank in Second Chorus (opposite Fred Astaire and Paulette Goddard) and the tempestuous musician Alexander in That Uncertain Feeling (opposite Melvyn Douglas and Merle Oberon). But his working class charm did end up prevailing with Ginger Rogers, winning her heart away from George Murphy and Alan Marshal in Tom, Dick, and Harry. (And, not for nothing, though Astaire may have won out on screen, Burgess would marry Paulette Goddard in real life several years down the road.)

In looking back at those pre-war years, his George in Of Mice and Men clearly stands out. It is one of the definitive tough little guy roles in American drama. James Cagney may have achieved greater success with this archetype, but Meredith offers a more nuanced version. Whereas Cagney would occasionally explode, Meredith had the rare ability to keep the kettle just at the verge of boiling over, without ever resorting to overt theatrics. It’s likely that no one, Meredith included, could have matched Cagney’s orgasmic suicide at the end of White Heat. But it’s equally likely that Cagney could not have equaled Burgess’ tragic resignation at the end of Of Mice and Men.  Watching those early performances – from the intense melodrama of Winterset to the absurd comic bravura of That Uncertain Feeling – offers one key to understanding the brilliance of Meredith. Vibrant wit peeked through even the heaviest of roles, while the hint of danger was never banished from his comic turns.  Madness lurked just behind his everyday realism, and even his most surreal character moments were always grounded in reality. Meredith always encompassed both sides of his character. Directors would make use of that throughout his entire career.

Post-War

Burgess Meredith in The Story of GI Joe

Burgess entered the United States Armed Forces in 1942, and served until 1945, achieving the rank of Captain. When he came out, the boyish quality remained, but it was now tempered. There was a weight that informed many of his post-war roles. It was immediately evident in The Story of G.I. Joe, Wellman’s outstanding war film, in which Meredith played real life war correspondent Ernie Pyle, essentially guiding us through an ensemble portrait of men in war. It is easy to undervalue Burgess in the shadow of the intensely dramatic episodes lived by the likes of Robert Mitchum and Freddie Steele. Ernie Pyle is merely an observer, a surrogate audience. But it is largely thanks to Burgess’ utterly naturalistic embodiment of that observer that the movie becomes so immersive. He allows the tough-guy reporter to become absorbed in the overwhelming tragedy and muted triumph of the war, and we become absorbed along with him. This provided another key to understanding his greatness. Meredith could play the most low-key of roles and still keep the character intriguing. That ironic voice, that cocked eyebrow. The bounce in the step or the slump of the back. He was always interesting to observe.

The five years after the war provided some of the most fertile ground an American actor has ever tilled. While still keeping a foot on the stage (he did Playboy of the Western World on stage immediately after G.I. Joe) and maintaining his presence on radio, Meredith was also involved in a series of fascinating film projects. Perhaps the most significant of these projects was the collaboration with Jean Renoir, and wife Paulette Goddard, on the first talking screen adaptation of Octave Mirbeau’s The Diary of a Chambermaid in 1946. Meredith had befriended the eminent French filmmaker during his sojourn to America and worked closely with him on the entire production. Meredith took one of the lead roles, a quirkily conceived Captain Mauger, as much wide-eyed child as amorous adult, but his greater contributions came off-screen. He was credited as both producer and screenwriter on the film, roles he would almost never assume on any other film project during his career. I remain too much of a cynic to argue that Renoir’s version of the story is the equal of Bunuel’s, some 18 years later. But it is fine work nonetheless, one of Renoir’s most successful American movies, and it appears that working with Meredith provided Renoir with a comfort level he rarely found in Hollywood.

The remainder of the decade revealed two more aspects of Meredith’s craft. He was as good as he had ever been in Anthony Kimmins’ Mine Own Executioner, playing Felix Milne, a sympathetic and egotistical therapist who gets caught up in the treatment of a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress. Meredith transforms what may have been over-the-top melodrama into an utterly involving psychological thriller. Milne runs the gamut of emotions from common sense humanity to brash self-righteousness, from lust to shame to despair to resolve, and never once sounds a false note. Then, just two years later, Meredith seems to positively revel in the false-note absurdity of The Man on the Eiffel Tower, his directorial debut (and allowing for a better-forgotten Chinese production in the 1970s, his only feature as director.) Burgess took a small role in the suspense cat & mouse game between anti-social criminal Franchot Tone and gruff police inspector Charles Laughton. Tone and Laughton were his friends, and in scenes where Burgess had to be on screen, one of the others would sit in the director’s chair. The story spins wildly out of control, with Tone exploding into a mess of egotistical exaggeration, and Laughton snidely going along for the ride. Everybody appears to be having a grand old time. Despite its obvious flaws, it is indeed hard to resist the infectious madness. Which brings us to another of the truly wondrous aspects of Meredith’s career. Though fully capable of absolute realism (as witnessed in G. I. Joe), he never seemed far removed from theatrical experimentation. He was comfortable in the absurd and the camp, something the world would come to understand more fully in later years.

Politics and Preminger

Meredith was a devout liberal throughout his entire life, and Hollywood was not hospitable to outspoken liberals in the 1950s. He found a home early in the decade on television, acting in many of the anthology programs that were popular in the medium’s infancy. Appearances on Ford Theater, The Silver Theater, The Billy Rose Show, and Light’s Out kept him very busy as the American century crossed its midpoint. He hosted the first two episodes of the original Your Show of Shows and starred in Edison the Man for G.E. Theater on the small screen. He also returned to the stage, co-starring with Laughton in a 1956 production of Major Barbara. But film roles in the ‘50s were scarce.

Cinematic resurgence would have to wait until the ‘60s, and it came from an Austrian with an oversized reputation who was embarking on the final chapter of his storied career. Otto Preminger, the master showman, had moved from small, tight thrillers and issue pictures to grandiose examinations of a nation in turmoil. Throughout the 1960s, he built massive, star-studded melodramas around war, politics, religion, sex – anything that was central in the nation’s psyche. And since the central ingredient in a star-studded vehicle is the star, he was on the lookout for top tier actors. Meredith re-entered mainstream Hollywood as an ensemble player in no less than six of Preminger’s movies between 1962 and 1971. He was never a lead, but he often stood out. Some of the movies were very good – Advise and Consent (1962) and The Cardinal (1963). Some were positively not – Hurry Sundown (1967) and Such Good Friends (1971). But it was certainly nice to see Burgess back on the big screen.

Television Breakout

Burgess Meredith in The Twilight Zone episode “Time Enough at Last”

But it was on the small screen where the real comeback began. In truth, Burgess never left television. He continued to be a constant presence in anthology programs throughout the 1960s, and occasionally would do a recurring role on shows like 77 Sunset Strip and Rawhide (as he was equally adept at playing modern hip or classic western). He had a brief run on the high school drama Mr. Novak, with James Franciscus and played somewhat of the Bosley role in Search (which was somewhat of a Charlie’s Angels forerunner itself). You can look up the rest. The list goes on and on. Throw is the voice-over work he did for both series and commercials and it was almost impossible to escape Mr. Meredith.

But the two things that he would become most known for – indeed, the two things that made him a bigger star than he had ever been in his younger days – were his appearances on The Twilight Zone at the beginning of the decade, and his appearances on Batman in the middle.

The Twilight Zone was Rod Serling’s ambitious sci-fi/fantasy anthology which produced more than 150 original 30 and 60 minutes short films between 1959 and 1964. With so much content, there were bound to be lows. But the highs were as good as television had ever achieved, and there were plenty of them. Meredith took the lead in four of these shorts (tying him with Jack Klugman for the most lead appearances), and two of them are firmly within that “high” category. In the second season finale “The Obsolete Man,” Meredith plays a quiet, peaceful librarian who is judged to be obsolete when society bans all books. This is essentially a two-person drama in which the small, mild-mannered Meredith plays opposite the strong and handsome Fritz Weaver, the representative of some unidentified totalitarian state. Their final scene together is a master-class of performance with the tables slowly turning as Meredith’s dignified humanity and compassion win out over Weaver’s blustery weakness. The story’s theme no doubt fit in very well with Meredith’s well-known political beliefs.

The other performance comes in one the program’s most memorable episodes, “Time Enough at Last.” One of Serling’s best teleplays (from a story by Lynn Venable) features Burgess as a gentle soul who only wants a bit of time to absorb himself in his beloved literature. But his boss and his wife, and the world at large, all seem intent on stopping his reading. The finale of the episode, in which the bookworm survives a nuclear holocaust and finds he now has all the time and all the books he ever wanted, is among the most remembered scenes in all of television from the 1960s. His glasses break, preventing him from enjoying his Eden. The sad lament “It isn’t fair” still echoes for anyone who has ever seen this episode.

Ralph Senensky, who directed Burgess in his final Twiling Zone – “Printer’s Devil” – marveled at the actor’s method when he came in for a wardrobe fitting. Meredith would be playing a modern-day devil, and Senensky remembers how “he stood in front of the mirror and put on all the possibilities and he just changed.” The episode itself, one of the hour-long shows from season four, was nothing special, but as always, Burgess Meredith was.

Burgess Meredith as The Penguin in Batman

And then there was Batman. William Dozier, who produced the show, wanted it to be high camp, and he knew that high camp required great actors to keep it from slipping into utter nonsense. He drew an impressive array of performers to play his rogue’s gallery of villains, and Burgess Meredith was the best. There have been a number of Jokers and Catwomen. Batman himself has been played by so many actors that it became a gag on The Big Bang Theory. But – all apologies to Danny DeVito – there really was only one Penguin. Once again, Meredith was out on the edge, playing madness and humor with just enough menace to frighten the kids. He appeared in about a dozen different storylines throughout the show, occasionally teaming up with other villains, but usually running his own con. Season One’s “The Penguin Goes Straight” is a fan favorite, as the arch criminal presents himself as a reformed man, ready to take on the corrupt city establishment, represented by the Caped Crusaders. Meredith is a joy to behold, though until recently, his obvious lunacy made this episode the stuff of fantasy. In the current political climate, it seems far more cautionary than the creators could have ever considered.

Recognition

With his popularity on the rise well into his 60s, Meredith finally began to receive the recognition he had been denied throughout most of his career. Back to back Oscar nominations for supporting actor in The Day of the Locust (1975) and Rocky (1976) were followed by his first and only Emmy Award for Tail Gunner Joe in 1977. As one of the fundamental building blocks of the entire medium, Burgess should have been recognized by television long before this, but it must have been especially sweet, finally winning for playing Joseph Welch, the man who ultimately brought down Joseph McCarthy in front of the senate and the world in 1954. Once again, Meredith’s passionate humanity and quiet resolve fit his character to perfection.

Sylvester Stallone and Burgess Meredith in Rocky

All this would help launch a major late-life resurgence for the diminutive actor who never lost his youthful buoyancy. A wide range of projects, from the pop comedy of Foul Play ((1978) to the pop horror of Magic (1978), from Godard’s experimental King Lear (1987) to a stint as Jack Lemmon’s father in Grumpy Old Men (1993) and Grumpier Old Men (1995), released just two years before his death. Of course, he resurrected the tough guy trainer Mickey in multiple Rocky sequels. In his eighth and ninth decades, he seemed to be working more than ever, taking parts both large and small whenever the mood struck him. His NY Times obituary included this enlightening quote about the way his viewed his career. “If I spent all my time in Shakespearean companies and only did art movies like Olivier, my position would be more dignified and more serious. I might even be a better actor. But this is America, and I’m a man moved by the rhythms of his time, so I’ll just take amusement at being a paradox.”

With the benefit of hindsight, the paradox may not be quite as difficult to unravel. Was he greater than Olivier? Maybe not. Then again, he was capable of doing an acclaimed Hamlet, as was Sir Laurence. But could Olivier have tackled the Penguin? I suppose in the end, we will have to content ourselves with simply enjoying the wealth of performance he left behind, and acknowledging that Burgess Meredith was among the greatest American actors of the 20^th century.