Burgess Meredith Anecdote

[epaddon]

Came across an item that reveals how Burgess Meredith had his limits on how much praise he'd take regarding the Penguin role. A book about the history of the old "Sports Phone" hotline for getting scores from the 70s to 90s and the recollections of people who worked there has a brief item from one person who had been sent to interview Meredith at the time "Rocky" came out to get some clips to use in the "Sports Phone" package of news and info that would be mixed in with the scores. The guy mentions meeting Meredith turning on his recorder and mentioning at the top how glad he was to meet him and how he thought his best performance was as the Penguin on "Batman."

Whereupon Meredith looked at him and immediately said, "Turn off that tape recorder and get the fxxx out of here."

I suspect the choice of words "best performance" was what likely rubbed him the wrong way.

[Bryan Grantham]

I can understand that. While not having seen everything Burgess Meredith acted in, I enjoyed the World War II training film he did for how to behave yourself in a foreign country (A Welcome To Britain), his performance in "Of Mice and Men" alongside Lon Chaney, Jr., his turns on The Twilight Zone, and of course his very worthy performance in the Rocky films. He could probably tell that the interviewer was not at all familiar with the wide diversity of roles in his career.

[BATWINGED HORNET]

I find it quite understandable that Meredith would be incensed by anyone thinking the Penguin was his best performance. That would be such an insult to his long history of truly great performances, all to focus on a comic book show's villain.

[Pengy]

Given his decades of work and many notable serious roles, its understandable he would get irked by a campy TV role being called his best work. Not something an old school actor would probably want to hear.

If the interviewer had said favorite role instead of best, then it probably wouldn't have bothered him.

[epaddon]

Exactly. Or if he'd said, "I first learned about you because of Batman and that helped me connect with your other work," he might have appreciated that, but the idea of being best remembered for that clearly didn't sit well with him. Here's a 1985 interview and when "Batman" comes up he calls it "depressing that you work all your life and get asked to autograph a picture of a penguin."