May 1966: The Master of Fowl Play

Batman and the Penguin were longtime mirror antagonists — the flying mammal versus the flightless, rather comical bird.

But the Penguin benefited from being incarnated on screen by one of America’s most celebrated actors, Burgess Meredith, who played the part with a lusty twinkle in the eye, anserous verbal tics and a general air of evil glee.

TV’s Batman villains of the mid-1960s were terrific — zany, manic anarchists who were almost understandably ready to rain knockout gas and colorful chaos on the ridiculously strait-laced citizens of Gotham City. 

Like the Riddler, the Penguin was a 1940s villain who hadn’t been seen much in the late 1950s and early 1960s, But TV put him on the map, and even gave him his own Signet paperback book.

The Penguin’s appeal was a double-edged thing to Meredith.

“Ah, yes, the villainous Penguin. It pursues me,” the celebrated actor reported in his 1994 autobiography So Far, So Good. “It was a deliberately overblown approach. It may have done me more harm than good, but it made an impact. I thought it had a Dickensian quality — or a spoof of one. It was fun to act. I was only one of many villains, as you know. I had an elaborate makeup — a huge nose and a great, extended stomach. It was as complete a disguise as you could get, but people recognized me in it. The interesting thing about the Penguin was that I made only a few episodes, maybe nine or 10. And one feature film.”

The young Jeff Bridges, thrilled to work with Meredith on a 1970 film, recalled seeing the actor paste something up on his hotel room wall.

“I said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ And (Meredith) said, ‘Look at this!’” It was an article from a Hong Kong newspaper about a man who had been raping people while impersonating the Penguin.” 

Reality reportedly intruded when he leaped off a building, opened his umbrella and went splat.