TV URBAN LEGEND: Burgess Meredith came up with his iconic quacking noise as the Penguin on the Batman TV series to cover up coughs from the cigarettes the show made him smoke as the character.
One of the interesting things that have changed dramatically over the years when it comes to the production of television series is that the actors are generally treated MUCH better in terms of the sorts of cosmetic changes that they are expected to make to their bodies. For instance, a very common occurrence in the 1950s was for actors to be forced to bleach their hair when the show wanted them to be blondes. Jay North did this every two weeks for years to look like the comic strip version of Dennis the Menace. Dwayne Hickman had to do it to his hair early in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis not even to match a specific character look, but rather to differentiate from Hickman’s popular character on the earlier TV series, The Bob Cummings Show, where Hickman played the nephew of the lead character. Hickman eventually convinced them to stop the practice after the bleaching started to cause his hair to fall out.
With that in mind, it is no surprise to learn that when characters would smoke on the TV shows of the past, they would REALLY be smoking. There weren’t fake herbal cigarettes or anything like that. Now, don’t get me wrong, smoking was also so prevalent at the time that it wasn’t really considered much of an ask to have actors do that, but it is still interesting to see actors be forced to smoke, whether they smoked or not. The Batman TV series expecting that of Burgess Meredith is the origin of the Penguin’s iconic quack!
BATMAN’S CREATOR WANTED THE CHARACTERS TO LOOK AS AUTHENTIC AS POSSIBLE
The vision that William Dozier, the creator of the Batman TV series, had for the show was “I had just the simple idea of overdoing it, of making it so square and so serious that adults would find it amusing [and] kids would go for…the adventure.” Dozier hated the term “camp,” but that was basically what he was going for, over-the-top everything but done seriously, so that the little kids who didn’t know better would think that this was a straight adventure like the comics (the early episodes of the series directly adapted Batman comic books from 1965, with an issue of Batman fighting the Riddler that Dozier had purchased and read on an airplane to familiarize him with the concept becoming the plot of the first episode of the series.
Therefore, Dozier’s vision for a “taken seriously, but not really” approach to Batman meant that the costumes and the designs to the characters had to be spot on. Sure, Cesar Romero was allowed to keep his mustache to play the Joker, but it was covered up well by his makeup, so Romero still looked like the typical Sheldon Moldoff-era look of the Clown Prince of Crime (which was based heavily on Dick Sprang’s design of the villain).
Here, then, is Penguin from 1965’s Batman #169 (drawn by Sheldon Moldoff and Joe Giella)…
and here is Burgess Meredith as the Penguin with the other three main Batman villains from the series in the 1966 Batman movie (Romero as Joker, Frank Gorshin as the Riddler and Lee Meriwether filling in for Julie Newmar as Catwoman).
See how well the show replicated the comic book look of the Penguin, including using a fat suit for Meredith? However, the fancy cigarette that the Penguin smoked was what caused an issue.
HOW BURGESS MEREDITH CREATED THE PENGUIN’S “QUACK”
One of the best things about playing the villains on Batman is how much freedom the actors had to just sort of “find” their characters. The freedom was much appreciated by the actors. Julie Newmar has spoken about how joyous it was to be able to cut loose with her seduction of Batman, as again, the show wanted its actors to go as far over the top as they wanted.
Meredith enjoyed that freedom, as well. He explained to James H. Burns (and was then reprinted in Joel Eisner’s iconic book about the Batman series, The Official Batman Batbook):
“It was a riotous experience. Everyone had a good time working together. We got to do an awful lot of ad-libbing. Mine usually came when the Penguin would insult Batman by calling him ‘Batboob’ or Bat-this’ or ‘Bat-that,’ which made acting in the show additionally enjoyable. One funny item involved the fact that during the middle sixties I had already given up smoking for twenty to twenty-five years – but I had to smoke all the time as the Penguin. The smoke would get caught in my throat. Since I didn’t want to constantly ruin takes by coughing out loud – which the smoke forced me to do – I developed the Penguin’s ‘quack, quack’ to cover it. Actually, it was a pretty unlikely noise for the Penguin to make. I sounded more like a duck! The quack got so famous, though, that whenever the writers couldn’t think of anything funny to put in the scripts, they’d write a ‘quack, quack’ for me. I also developed that little Penguin walk.”
The Penguin walk was likely motivated by the fat suit that Meredith had to wear as the Penguin. Whatever the reason, Meredith’s work helped define the Penguin for generations to come with his acting decisions, even if one of them was just Meredith being pragmatic about his coughing fits!
The legend is…
STATUS: True
Be sure to check out my archive of TV Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of TV. Click here for more legends specifically about Batman!
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