Burgess Meredith

From the New York stage to Hollywood

Oliver Burgess Meredith was born on 16 November 1907 in Cleveland, Ohio. He left Amherst College to work as a reporter for the Stamford Advocate, then joined Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre in New York in 1929. He made his Broadway debut in 1930 in Romeo and Juliet. Maxwell Anderson's Winterset made him a stage star in 1935, and he repeated the role of Mio Romagna in the 1936 film version, his screen debut.

In 1939 he was George Milton in Lewis Milestone's Of Mice and Men. He never signed a long-term studio contract and picked his projects one at a time. He enlisted in the Army Air Forces in 1942, made training films for the Office of War Information and played war correspondent Ernie Pyle in The Story of G.I. Joe (1945). After the war he co-produced Jean Renoir's The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946) and directed The Man on the Eiffel Tower (1949), with Charles Laughton.

Blacklist, The Twilight Zone and the Penguin

In 1950 his name appeared in the pamphlet Red Channels. Blacklisted, he was largely absent from film for about ten years and lived off stage and radio work. Television brought him back: four Twilight Zone episodes between 1959 and 1963, including "Time Enough at Last", then the Penguin in the Batman series (21 episodes from 1966 to 1968) and in the 1966 film. Otto Preminger gave him supporting parts in Advise & Consent (1962), The Cardinal (1963) and In Harm's Way (1965).

He directed again with The Yin and the Yang of Mr. Go (1970) and appeared in Golden Needles (1974), an action film by Enter the Dragon director Robert Clouse, alongside Jim Kelly. The Day of the Locust (1975) brought his first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Mickey Goldmill, Rocky's trainer

For Rocky (1976) the producers first wanted Lee Strasberg, who asked for too much money, then Lee J. Cobb, who refused to read. Meredith read the scene in which Mickey takes Rocky's locker away and improvised a line that stayed in the film. The character is a former bantamweight who runs a Philadelphia gym, Mighty Mick's. He first has no time for a fighter who collects debts for a loan shark, then turns up at Rocky's door to get him ready for Apollo Creed. Gravelly voice, wool cap and blunt lines such as "Women weaken legs!": in a handful of scenes Meredith set the template for the gruff old trainer. Shot for about one million dollars, the film grossed 225 million worldwide and won the Oscar for Best Picture. Meredith earned his second consecutive Best Supporting Actor nomination, as did Burt Young; Jason Robards took the award.

In Rocky II (1979) Mickey has Rocky chase a chicken and switches him from southpaw to orthodox. In Rocky III (1982), shoved by Clubber Lang before the fight, he suffers a cardiac arrest, refuses to go to hospital until the bout is over and dies after Rocky tells him he won; his last words are "I love you, kid". He returns in a flashback in Rocky V (1990), handing Rocky a cufflink that belonged to Rocky Marciano, and in archive footage in Rocky Balboa (2006). The character is sometimes linked to Charley Goldman, the small Jewish trainer, himself a former bantamweight, who took Marciano to the world title.

Legacy

After Rocky, Meredith won the 1977 Emmy for supporting actor for the TV film Tail Gunner Joe and two Saturn Awards, for Magic (1978) and Clash of the Titans (1981). He narrated Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) and closed his career as the father of Jack Lemmon's character in Grumpy Old Men (1993) and Grumpier Old Men (1995), his last role. He died in Malibu on 9 September 1997, aged 89.

Mickey Goldmill remains his most quoted part. His voice and one-liners were parodied for decades, and the series kept his model alive: in Creed (2015) Rocky Balboa himself takes the old trainer's place in the corner.