Meredith's best-known movies from that period include Of Mice and Men, Castle on the Hudson, The Story of G.I. Joe and The Man on the Eiffel Tower (which he also directed). His career suffered during the McCarthy era of the 1950s and didn't flourish again until the '60s, beginning with Advise and Consent (1962).
Baby boomers know Meredith as the Penguin on TV's "Batman" and as Mickey the trainer in Rocky (1976), for which he earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He was also nominated for The Day of the Locust (1975). Meredith was last seen as Jack Lemmon's dad in Grumpier Old Men (1995); he died Sept. 9, 1997.
Of Mice and MenAll that George (Burgess Meredith) and Lennie (Lon Chaney Jr.) want is a home of their own, where they can work for themselves and keep a pen of rabbits. But for the unlikely roommates, reality is to live a vagabond life, swinging from job to job and boss to boss. Just when it seems their dreams... Read More
The HindenburgMade at the apex of disaster movies' popularity, director Robert Wise's thriller fictionalizes the events leading up to the fiery 1937 zeppelin crash. When German intelligence officer Col. Franz Ritter (George C. Scott) boards the doomed blimp to foil a conspiracy to blow it up, he has a long list... Read More
The Man on the Eiffel TowerBill Kirby (Robert Hutton) desperately wants his wealthy aunt dead, so he hires Johann Radek (Franchot Tone) to kill her. When the victim's body turns up, French police inspector Jules Maigret (Charles Laughton) suspects Radek is guilty, but he needs some way to prove it. Burgess Meredith directs... Read More
On Our Merry WayClassified-ad clerk Oliver Pease (Burgess Meredith), short on cash, moonlights as a "man on the street" newspaper reporter. But the simple question he asks draws three entirely different answers from two laconic jazz musicians (Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart), a movie star (Dorothy Lamour) and an... Read More
Great Bank Hoax / Great Bank RobberyA banking clerk works his connections from the inside and ends up with more corruption than he bargained for in The Great Bank Hoax (1978), while three different plans to rob the same Texas bank collide in The Great Bank Robbery (1969). Burgess Meredith, Ned Beatty, Zero Mostel and Kim Novak co-star... Read More
