About Me
- A tribute to the great American character actor -
"The most astonishing thing about Burgess Meredith is not that he is such a great actor, but that he is an actor at all. He looks like the young man who brings in your groceries, or like the fellow behind the fountain who asks whether it’ll be chocolate or vanilla."
– Paul Harrison, 'The Frederick Post', 1936
Born on November 16, 1907 in Cleveland, Ohio, Oliver Burgess Meredith went on to become one of the most well-respected actors of the 20th century, with an ability to play both high and low brow parts.
Meredith's youth was melancholy and turbulent. He once reflected, "All my life, to this day, the memory of my childhood remains grim and incoherent. If I close my eyes and think back, I see little except violence and fear." His mother seemed in constant despair and his father, a failed doctor, drank heavily and fought with her frequently. The young Meredith's vocal ability was his ticket out of an unhappy home, and upon winning an audition, he became a soprano in the Saint John Choir of New York City. The church provided schooling and board. Meredith, then ten years old, would seldom return to his real home again, as what was left of his parent's unhappy marriage soon broke up and his older siblings were already living on their own. So through those formative years, through High School, and college, Meredith faced the grim fact that there was, for all intents and purposes, "no home to return to". He often stayed with the families of school friends, and it was seldom possible for him to visit his mother, who was living as best as she could, with a sister or other relatives back in Ohio. Meredith often sited his older sister, who lived in New York, as a source of care, comfort, and encouragement.
In the late 1920's, disillusioned by a brief stint at Amherst College, Meredith wandered to New York City, where he toiled away at odd jobs before finally falling in with Eva Le Gallienne's stage company. Starting out in the theatre, Burgess made his Broadway debut in 1932's "Alice In Wonderland". However, he received critical acclaim playing the lead role of Mio Romangna in Maxwell Anderson's "Winterset" on Broadway in 1935. He would go on to be in a few of Anderson's other plays, and Meredith also sited the writer as "the fatherly influence I had never known before". "Winterset" brought him more attention both from the press and from established actors of the time. Meredith once recalled, "After we opened, they put my name above the title - which meant I had formally become a star! Becoming a star was a significant matter in those days, so on my twenty-eighth birthday I borrowed a camera and took a picture of my name in lights."
He would continue to juggle both film and theatre roles throughout his career. Aside from the famous "Winterset", some of his other theatre projects of note include "Liliom", "The Playboy of the Western World", "Happy As Larry", "High Tor", "Little Ol' Boy", "The Five Kings", and "The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker". Making his Hollywood debut in 1936, in a film adaptation of "Winterset", his other famous movies include "Of Mice and Men" (1939), "Second Chorus" (1940), "The Story Of GI Joe" (1945), "Mine Own Exectioner" (1947), "The Man on the Eiffel Tower" (1950), "The Day of the Locust" (1975), "Rocky" (1976), "Grumpy Old Men" (1993), and "Grumpier Old Men" (1995). He will also be remembered fondly for his TV work in the 1966 "Batman" series, in which he played the dastardly Penguin, and for his multiple appearances on Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone".
Despite serving in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, reaching the rank of Captain, he was later named an unfriendly witness and blacklisted in the 1950's, during the McCarthy trials. This was due to nothing more than his very liberal political views and he would later be an opponent of the Vietnam War as well.
Married four times, bits of Burgess Meredith's life were rife with heartache and chaos. He would later admit to many years of his life being forlorn, and he would battle with bouts of depression. Stating that he was no exception to the rule that all broken marriages bring about a sense of failure, he sited the crumbling of his union with Paulette Goddard as something which left him in a particularly ragged emotional state in the late 1940's. However, 1950 would prove a busy year as he met and married his final wife, Kaja Sundsten, a Sweedish ballerina. The couple had two children; a son, Jonathon and a daughter, Tala. Meredith once reflected on the change parenthood brought to his life by saying, "The children brought me first an almost explosive happiness, and then a sudden emergence into some level of tranquility."
Aside from acting, he also directed, both films and on and off-Broadway productions. He directed 1950's "The Man On The Eiffel Tower", which featured many thrilling, dizzying, "vertigo-like" camera angles, as the main characters scaled the French landmark. He would go on to direct the premiere of James Baldwin's play "Blues for Mister Charlie" on Broadway. In 1960, he received a special Tony Award, along with James Thurber, for his direction of the Broadway revue, "A Thurber Carnival". Meredith was also nominated for a Tony Award in 1974, for best dramatic director, for the Broadway play, "Ulysses in Nighttown".
Interestingly enough, despite his status in the industry and a film career that spanned nearly seven decades, Burgess Meredith never won an Academy Award. However, he was nominated twice, once in 1975 for his role in "The Day of the Locust", and the following year for his performance as Mickey in "Rocky". His performance in "The Day of the Locust" also earned him a Golden Globe and BAFTA Film Award nomination.
However, Meredith would win an Emmy award for his performance in the 1977 TV movie, "Tail Gunner Joe". He was particularly proud of the win, as he played Joseph Welch, the attorney who finally stood up to senator Joe McCarthy. There was a certain gratification in that win, as Meredith reflected, "When I played Welch I was getting a splendid revenge. I had been placed on the 'Red Channels' list by the McCarthy gang and this was a fair response."
He wrote an autobiography, "So Far, So Good", which was released in 1994.
Meredith died at home in Malibu, California in September of 1997, due to complications from melanoma and Alzheimer's disease. However, he left behind a laundry list of memorable roles and performances, and enjoyed a consistency of career that most actors only dream about. His immense talents and willingness to create a variety of roles proved to overcome challenges like blacklisting, and allowed him to work steadily in an industry as ever-changing as they come. While he once played a bookish character whose very enemy was time, in reality, Meredith's career proved to be one that disregarded the hands of the clock. Evidently, his talents proved to be effective not for any specific time, but rather, for all time.
---Biography compiled by ANGELA COBB
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"…His clothes, especially his hats, have a crumpled, offhand air, and at the moment it has seemed to him suitable to let his ginger-colored hair grow long on top, so that in dimmer lights he looks rather like a chrysanthemum. His friends call him Buzz, or Bugs, and either of these in some vague way seems descriptive…In any case, Meredith’s extraordinary success on stage has practically nothing to do with what he looks like."
~ Wolcott Gibbs, 'The New Yorker'
"Meredith is slight of build, wears his clothes carelessly, and wastes little time combing his undistinguished hair. Conversationally, he seems a little shy, but expresses himself uncommonly well."
– Paul Harrison, 'The Frederick Post', 1936
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