Oliver Burgess Meredith (November 16, 1907 – September 9, 1997) was an American actor and filmmaker whose career encompassed radio, theater, film, and television.
Active for more than six decades, Meredith has been called "a virtuosic actor" and "one of the most accomplished actors of the [20th] century". A lifetime member of the Actors Studio, he won a Primetime Emmy Award, was the first male actor to win the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor twice, and was nominated for two Academy Awards.
Meredith established himself as a leading man in Hollywood with critically acclaimed performances as Mio Romagna in Winterset (1936), George Milton in Of Mice and Men (1939), and Ernie Pyle in The Story of G.I. Joe (1945).
Meredith was known later in his career for his appearances on The Twilight Zone and for portraying The Penguin in the 1960s TV series Batman and boxing trainer Mickey Goldmill in the Rocky film series. For his performances in The Day of the Locust (1975) and Rocky (1976), he received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He later appeared in the comedy Foul Play (1978) and the fantasy film Clash of the Titans (1981). Meredith also narrated numerous films and documentaries during his long career.
"Although those performances renewed his popularity," observed Mel Gussow in The New York Times (referring to the Penguin and Mickey Goldmill roles), "they represented only a small part of a richly varied career in which he played many of the more demanding roles in classical and contemporary theater—in plays by Shakespeare, O'Neill, Beckett and others."
Meredith was born in 1907 in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Ida Beth (née Burgess; 1861–1933) and William George Meredith (1861–1938), a Canadian-born physician of English descent. His mother came from a long line of Methodist revivalists, a religion to which he adhered throughout his lifetime.
Known informally to his friends as "Buzz", Burgess Meredith graduated from Hoosac School in 1926 and then attended Amherst College (class of 1931). He left Amherst and became a reporter for the Stamford Advocate.
In 1929, he became a member of Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre company in New York City. Although best known to the larger world audience for his film and television work, Meredith was an influential actor and director for the stage. He made his Broadway debut as Peter in Le Gallienne's production of Romeo and Juliet (1930) and became a star in Maxwell Anderson's Winterset (1935), which became his film debut the following year. His early life and theater work were the subject of a New Yorker profile. In 1935, he starred along with Hugh Williams at the Martin Beck Theatre in John Van Druten's Flowers of the Forest.
Meredith's performance in the 1935 Broadway revival of The Barretts of Wimpole Street starring Katharine Cornell generated enthusiastic positive reviews from a number of critics. Cornell subsequently cast him in several of her later productions. Some of Meredith's other Broadway roles included Van van Dorn in High Tor (1937), Liliom in Liliom (1940), Christy Mahon in The Playboy of the Western World (1946), and Adolphus Cusins in Major Barbara (1956). He created the role of Erie Smith in the English-language premiere of Eugene O'Neill's Hughie at the Theatre Royal in Bath, England in 1963. He played Hamlet in avant garde theatrical and radio productions of the play.
A distinguished theater director, Meredith earned a Tony Award nomination for his 1974 Broadway staging of Ulysses in Nighttown, a theatrical adaptation of the "Nighttown" section of James Joyce's Ulysses. Meredith also shared a Special Tony Award with James Thurber for their collaboration on A Thurber Carnival (1960). In the late 1970s, he directed Fionnula Flanagan's one-woman multi-role play James Joyce's Women, which toured for several years.
Burgess Meredith's stage performances attracted the attention of several Hollywood film producers. Unlike most other movie actors, Meredith never signed a long-term contract with a single studio, preferring to work on individual film projects. Also, unlike some other former stage actors, Meredith successfully adjusted his performances to the film medium. Instead of playing to the audience in the balcony, Meredith now played to the camera, with his performances more controlled and intimate. This gave his screen characters great sensitivity, as he demonstrated in three bravura performances: as Mio Romagna in Winterset (1936), as George Milton in Of Mice and Men (1939), and as Ernie Pyle in The Story of G.I. Joe (1945). He starred only occasionally in pictures, as in San Francisco Docks (1940, as a longshoreman accused of murder) and Street of Chance (1942, as an amnesiac who may have been a killer). Meredith was featured in many 1940s films, including three co-starring his then-wife Paulette Goddard: Second Chorus (1940), Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), and On Our Merry Way (1948).
In 1950, Meredith was among the 151 entertainment professionals and journalists accused of communist sympathies in Red Channels. As evidence, the anti-communist pamphlet cited Meredith's support for Spanish pro-democracy groups and a humanitarian relief effort in Yugoslavia, as well as his participation in anti-censorship protests against the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Meredith was subsequently placed on the Hollywood blacklist and was largely absent from film for the next decade, though he remained involved in stage plays and radio during this time.
Meredith was a favorite of director Otto Preminger, who cast him in Advise and Consent (1962), The Cardinal (1963), In Harm's Way (1965), Hurry Sundown (1967), Skidoo (1968), and Such Good Friends (1971). He was in Madame X (with Lana Turner, 1966) and Stay Away Joe (1968), appearing as the father of Elvis Presley's character. He was acclaimed by critics for his performance as Harry Greener in The Day of the Locust (1975) and received nominations for the BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Academy Award for best supporting actor. Meredith then played Rocky Balboa's trainer Mickey Goldmill in the first three Rocky films (1976, 1979, and 1982). Though his character died in the third Rocky film, Meredith returned briefly in a flashback in the fifth film, Rocky V (1990). His portrayal in the first film earned him his second consecutive nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Meredith had a role in Foul Play (1978) with Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn. He played an old Korean War veteran Captain J. G. Williams in The Last Chase (1981) with Lee Majors. He appeared in Ray Harryhausen's last stop-motion feature Clash of the Titans (also 1981) in a supporting role. Meredith appeared in Santa Claus: The Movie (1985) and was the voice of Golobulus in G.I. Joe: The Movie (1987). In his last years, he played Jack Lemmon's character's sex-crazed 95-year-old father in Grumpy Old Men (1993) and its sequel, Grumpier Old Men (1995).
Meredith directed the movie The Man on the Eiffel Tower (1949) starring Charles Laughton, which was produced by Irving Allen. Meredith also was billed in a supporting role in this film. In 1970, he directed, co-wrote, and played a supporting role in) The Yin and the Yang of Mr. Go, an espionage caper starring James Mason and Jeff Bridges.
Meredith appeared in four episodes of the anthology TV series The Twilight Zone, tying him with Jack Klugman for the most appearances on the show in a starring role.
In his first appearance in 1959 in "Time Enough at Last", Meredith portrayed a henpecked bookworm who finds himself the sole survivor of an unspecified apocalypse that leads him to contemplate suicide until he discovers the ruins of the library. In 1961's "Mr. Dingle, the Strong", Meredith played the title character, a timid weakling who receives superhuman strength from an extraterrestrial experiment in human nature. Also that year in "The Obsolete Man", Meredith portrayed a librarian sentenced to death in a dystopic totalitarian society. Lastly, in 1963's "Printer's Devil", Meredith portrayed the Devil himself. Meredith later played two additional roles in Rod Serling's other anthology series, Night Gallery. Meredith was the narrator for Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1983.