Burgess Meredith | Biography, Movies, Plays, TV Shows, & Facts (2024)

Burgess Meredith (born November 16, 1907, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.—died September 9, 1997, Malibu, California) was an American actor and director who, in a career that spanned nearly seven decades, played a diverse range of characters on the stage, on television, and in film.

Meredith attended Amherst College but left before graduating. He subsequently held a variety of jobs—notably working as a reporter and a merchant seaman—before pursuing an acting career. In 1929 he became an unpaid apprentice with Eva Le Gallienne’s Civic Repertory Company in New York City. The following year he made his Broadway debut in Romeo and Juliet, and he achieved great success in 1935 as Mio in the Maxwell Anderson play Winterset. He reprised the role for the 1936 film version, which was his first credited screen appearance.

After notable stage performances in High Tor (1937) and Liliom (1940), he served as a captain in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. He returned to acting after the war, in plays that included The Playboy of the Western World (1946–47), Major Barbara (1956–57), and I Was Dancing (1964). Meredith also directed a number of Broadway productions, notably A Thurber Carnival (1960), for which he received a special Tony Award; James Baldwin’s Blues for Mister Charlie (1964); and Ulysses in Nighttown (1974), for which he earned a Tony Award nomination.

During this time Meredith made numerous film appearances. He had memorable roles as George Milton in Of Mice and Men (1939), an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic novella, and as Ernie Pyle in The Story of G.I. Joe (1945). Meredith also wrote and starred in Jean Renoir’s The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), a romantic drama that featured his third wife, Paulette Goddard. His film career stalled in the 1950s, however, when his liberal views drew the ire of U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. His blacklisting eased with his roles in several Otto Preminger films, including (1962).

In 1975 Meredith played a former vaudeville performer working as a door-to-door salesman in The Day of the Locust, for which he received his first Academy Award nomination. He garnered a second Oscar nod for his portrayal of a cantankerous boxing trainer in Rocky (1976). The film was a blockbuster, and Meredith appeared in several sequels. Later movies included Grumpy Old Men (1993) and Grumpier Old Men (1995). Meredith also directed the films The Man on the Eiffel Tower (1950) and The Yin and Yang of Mr. Go (1978), the latter of which he wrote.

In addition to his work on stage and screen, Meredith was a staple character actor in American television. He appeared in such series as Rawhide, Bonanza, and The Virginian, and he was cast in numerous TV movies, notably Tail Gunner Joe (1977). The latter was a biopic about McCarthy, and Meredith gave an Emmy Award-winning performance as army lawyer Joseph Welch, who famously asked the senator, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” However, Meredith was perhaps most widely known for his role as the villainous Penguin in the 1960s TV series Batman. The character brought him renewed popularity—as well as a younger fan base—and he reprised the role for the 1966 film version. In 1994 Meredith published his autobiography, So Far, So Good.