If you start wandering through the hall of fame of butlers, there’s one that always comes to mind: Alfred Thaddeus Crane Pennyworth. You might have a hard time to remember who this is just by hearing his full name, but what about if we throw some “Batman” into the picture? Yes, we are talking about the butler and guardian of the millionaire Bruce Wayne, a.k.a. Batman. To his master, Alfred is not just the usual butler; he is a friend and a confidant. Well, maybe that’s not enough: he has sometimes been called “the Batman’s Batman”. While he has amazing skills, Alfred’s origins have been usually wrapped in mystery and people don’t know a lot about his life before he started serving the rich Wayne family. However,
Alfred Pennyworth was a secret agent and even a military surgeon, experiences that provided him amazing skills when it comes to help his master. Besides taking care of the house and attending to his boss’s needs, Alfred even taught the little Bruce Wayne to modify his voice by mimicking the voices of others, a useful skill when he turns into Batman.Maybe Alfred doesn’t get the total score in our Battle of the Butlers because not even Bruce Wayne completely knows his past. The servant’s words are often subliminal suggestions that help Batman. Some stories even suggest that Alfred could, indeed, be Wayne’s father, but that was never proven.
What we know for sure is that he is a hell of a butler, always there to help his master in everything. That is why he’s probably one of the best qualified butlers in our infographic, among famous characters like Winston Smith, Lara Croft’s helper, or Cecil Gaines, the butler that worked for dozens of years in the White House, serving five different United States presidents.
