On the air with Burgess Meredith

This week happens to be Celebrity Week over at Rich Siegel's Round Seventeen. Being a Hollywood kid I was thinking, "Hey, I've worked with celebrities. I can write about that too." I'm not the kind of person who steals ideas, and especially since he's my friend I don't like to steal them from Rich (except those ABC ads he did at Chiat - man, they look great in my book). But in this instance, I have his blessing. So here we go.

Burgess Meredith has always been one of my acting heroes. An actor's actor, he made his most lasting impact during the golden era of television, including several classic Twilight Zone episodes, and later in his career in movies - particularly the Rocky films.

Years ago when I was freelancing at BBDO, Coldwell Banker was going through different voice overs to see who they wanted to use in their national campaign. I wasn't on the business, but on the day they were going to record Burgess Meredith, the writer who was happened to be out sick. So I was asked to fill in for him.

That autograph on the picture above reads, "Good Luck! from Burgess Meredith" I was terrified. I was going to need it.

I drove out to L.A. Studios early, just to make sure I didn't get held up in traffic. Even though I didn't know him yet, I had the distinct impression Meredith didn't like to be kept waiting.

When he arrived, it was in a black town car. Out of the car first was his beautiful, young - really young - blonde companion. She helped him out of the car and brought him in the studio. Then she simply disappeared. Never saw her again inside or outside the studio.

When we were introduced, I told him I was a huge fan of his work, to which he replied, pointing at the booth, "You want me in there?"

Two memories come to mind. First is I'm sure the last thing Burgess Meredith was looking for at that point in his career was some lowly agency copywriter telling him how to read a line. But what I found out was he actually appreciated it. Throughout the session, he wanted to know if I was getting what I wanted and if I had any direction for him. I don't know whether he meant it or was just being nice. Either way, it put me more at ease and made me feel as if I had some modicum of control over the session.

The second thing I remember is he had a spittoon. Right there on the floor, next to the music stand holding the copy he was reading.

Here's how it went: read, spit. Read, spit. Read, work up a good one, work it a little more, then spit. Suffice it to say there was a lot of throat-clearing, followed by a lot of hocking up some extremely colorful juju into the spittoon. Since we were in a recording studio, and he was in front of a microphone, all of us in the booth heard every take-off and landing in crystal clear, stereophonic Dolby™ sound.

I'm sure the clean-up crew was grateful he was a good aim.

If you've never worked in a recording studio, the thing to know is the engineers are like traffic court judges. They've heard it all. And the one I was working with did a masterful job editing out Meredith's long breaths between lines, as well as, shall we say, the more, um, rattle-y parts of his read.

By the end of the session I was finally comfortable giving him direction, and we were actually talking about some of his work. I only got to spend a little over an hour listening to that voice, seeing him work and giving him direction. It's still one of the high points of my, for lack of a better word, career.

It didn't go nearly that well with Hector Elizondo. I pissed him off something fierce. Another time.