Look at him! Nobody, and I mean nobody, could have made a cooler Penguin than Burgess Meredith.
I won't bore you with a biography (see the links below if you want one), but I can give you a factoid or two regarding his role on Batman:
When he took up the role, Meredith was not a smoker. But, what would the Penguin be without his trademark cigarette holder? Meredith would have to smoke for the part, but the smoke naturally made him cough. He quickly discovered, though, that if he exaggerated the cough just so, it came out like a quack. The quack instantly became part of the Penguin's overall theme.
At this point in history, the comic book Penguin was a very rotund man. Meredith wasn't heavy himself, so padding would be needed. Show directors decided not to make him too big, but the padding around his middle made it very easy for Meredith to develop the characteristic waddling walk which we all know and love today.
How do you suppose Meredith managed to keep that monacle in place all the time, even when pretending to be punched in the face by Batman? Spirit gum! Well, I suppose you all figured that out on your own, but someone had to tell me.
This tidbit is from the very end of Adam West's autobatography, Back To the Batcave: West is contemplating where some of the show's major villains would be today, and he suggests that the Penguin might be broke, destitute, and homeless. And Batman and Robin would have to pick him up out of the gutter and nurse him back to health. When we all know that Pengers would rather retreat to the sewers and build giant evil rubber duckie boats! ;^)