THE IMPORTANCE OF SEEING ERNEST.

A Rollicking Good Time with Marty, Fatso, Coley, Dutch and McHale.

By Hal Drucker

To Ernie Borgnine, even Jack the Ripper must have been a “wonderful person.” 

Photo: Hal Drucker.

He has died on screen 29 times; been shot, stabbed, kicked, punched through barroom doors by Spencer Tracy and Gary Cooper; pushed in front of moving subway trains, devoured by rats and a giant mutated fish; blown up in spaceships, melted down into a Technicolor puddle, jumped into a snake pit, and perished from thirst in the Sahara Desert. He bounced around a capsized ocean liner, beat Frank Sinatra to death, impaled Lee Marvin with a pitchfork, and had his way with Raquel Welch.”

Tim Conway as Ensign Charles Parker, Borgnine as Lt. Comdr. Quinton McHale and Joe Flynn as Wallace ” Leadbottom” Binghamton. Courtesy: ABC Network.

I was primed to interview Ernest Borgnine five years ago when I profiled Tim Conway, who for six seasons was Borgnine’s inept second-in-command on ABC’s McHale's Navy. “I run into Ernie fairly frequently,” Conway told me at the time. “He has a great feeling for seeing and being with people. He travels around the country in a trailer, stops at little towns, jumps in, speaks to people, and moves on. He loves to do that kind of thing. “

Henny Youngman once asked me, how much I would pay him for the interview I requested of him. He was serious.

How much will you pay me for the privilege of being interviewed by me?  I was not serious.

When I met Youngman in front of New York’s Friar’s Club, he gave me my comeuppance, sized me up and asked. “Was that suit made to order?" Before I could reply, he said, “Too bad you weren’t there.”

If Ernest Borgnine billed me for his 60 minutes of time, I would   almost -  but not quite -  have been  tempted to send him a check.   Spending one hour with the Oscar-winning actor (and his affable press agent Harry Flynn) at Manhattan’s San Carlos Hotel, as I did last August 13, was a tonic for the soul. Borgnine was so effusive in his praise for every person we mentioned at our meeting, I have little doubt he would have regarded Attila the Hun as “a wonderful person.”

I know what you’re going to say next, dear senior reader: “I didn’t know Ernest Borgnine was still alive.”

 Well, at 91, he is not only alive and kicking, he’s kickin’ a_ _.

“How old are you?” he asked me.

I’ll be 77 next week.

“Oh to be 77 again. I’d be a bat out of hell at 77.”

“You definitely look 20 years younger,” I said to him. “How come you look so damn good?” 

“I try not to stop. I just finished a picture, Another Harvest Moon with Piper Laurie and Anne Meara, last month. And despite my age, I feel like a young buck. But,what the hell.  That’s what life is all about. If you stop and disintegrate in a chair, you might just as well quit.   So you keep going, your mind is going and [he knocked wood) you’re all set.  Say, I’ve got a lot to look forward to.  I want to live until I’m 113, [citing the Guinness Book record for longevity]  but I definitely do no want to live one day longer. 

“My first wife Rhoda and I once drove George Burns home and he invited us in for a nip. I said, ‘Mr. Burns,’ I always called him Mr. Burns because he was older than I, ‘What is it that keeps you going like this?’ He said, ‘I get up early every morning. Never stay in bed. You stay in bed, you die. You get up every morning and you GO. If you do that, you’ll be all right.’ I never forgot that.” 

Are you following Mr. Burns' rules to this day?

“Well, I got up this morning,” he said cheerily.

On Broadway in 1952 with Helen Hayes and Brandon De Wilde in Mary Chase’s Mrs. McThing, which featured Ernie’s pal Jules Munshin. Chase also wrote Harvey. Tovern Productions.

For the next 45 minutes, I had a howling good time – and I mean that –literally- exchanging stories and pleasantries about people we knew in common or admired from afar. From Jules Munshin, who danced with Gene Kelly and Sinatra in On the Town and appeared with Borgnine and Helen Hayes in Mrs. McThing on Broadway, to stand up comic and malapropist Norm Crosby. He was delighted to learn that Munshin and Crosby – two of his best friends were - tummlers in the Borscht Belt. (Tummler is a Yiddish word for an entertainer, who keeps the hotel guests busy with bingo, trivia games and Simon Sez). 

Among Borgnine’s almost 200 movie appearances, let me cite five roles that – as a critic I believe place him in the forefront of serious moving-image performances of the past half century and more. Whether or not you’ve seen them in their first incarnation, pick up a DVD of one or more and see if you agree:

As Sgt. James R. (“Fatso”) Judson.  Tovern Productions.

1) From Here to Eternity (1953)

Though Frank Sinatra, was much better-known than Borgnine, his singing career was so close to hitting rock bottom that he imposed himself – for very little money - on the producers to play the wisecracking Maggio, so indelible a character in the pages of  James Jones’s acclaimed novel that takes place at Schofield Army Barracks in Honolulu before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Each man hit pay dirt, Sinatra getting an Oscar as Maggio, Borgnine raising the consciousness of the public as the malevolent stockade sergeant Fatso Judson who harassed Maggio. Add to the mix, Montgomery Clift as the base bugler Prewitt, a loner who lives by his own code of ethics and Donna Reed as the dance hall hostess.  The most enduring image of the film is  Burt Lancaster as Sergeant Milt Warden and Deborah Kerr as the Commanding Officer’s wife, Karen, their bodies entwining as the waves crash over them on the beach.   

What did you think of Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca’s take-off on the beach scene in their skit, “From Here to Obscurity?”

“I loved it. It’s hard to describe the hilarious antics those two were capable of. “

Because it may indeed defy description, here’s the routine, with thanks to You Tube.

Click here: YouTube - From Here To Obscurity Part 2

Or Copy and paste

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DMOiaunXEU&feature=related

The Academy Awards, March 21, 1956. Jack Lemmon, Jo Van Fleet, presenter Grace Kelly and the Awardee for Best Actor.  Tovern Productions.

2) Marty (1955)  

Angie: What do you feel like doing tonight?
Marty: I don't know, Ange. What do you feel like doing?

It was among the most notable, quotable lines in cinema history. My pals and I would summon them up just about every Saturday afternoon. Borgnine portrayed a lonely butcher who felt that whatever women wanted in a man, "I ain't got it."  It was one of the biggest “sleepers” in filmdom, having come from the independent production company of Hecht-Hill-Lancaster (Lancaster being actor Burt.)

Quoting from his autobiography, Ernie, Borgnine recalled, “Burt was a New York kid and he felt that the part of a New York butcher had to be played by someone who lived there.  He also knew that casting against type was bound to get publicity, which it did.“ A modest, black and white film in an era of wide-screen color epics, the critical acclaim and box-office success were phenomenal - its $340,000 production budget yielded over $5 million in gross proceeds.

Marty was nominated for eight Academy Awards - and accumulated Oscars  for Best Picture, Best Actor (Ernest Borgnine in a role markedly different from the menacing  villains he portrayed in From Here to Eternity  and Bad Day at Black Rock),  Best Director (Delbert Mann for his debut film), and Best Screenplay (Paddy Chayefsky).  Betsy Blair as Clara, the plain-Jane schoolteacher, married to Gene Kelly at the time, was “blacklisted” despite obtaining an Academy Award nomination. Her name appeared in the infamous Red Channels which I remember all too well from my early advertising agency days, when potential performers for TV commercials dried up when their names were listed in this terrifying McCarthy-era publication.   Reportedly, the only reason Betsy obtained the female lead was because her husband Gene Kelly, active in progressive causes, threatened to stop shooting at MGM if they didn't let her work in the film.  Like such actors as Larry Parks and his wife Betty Garrett and Sam Wanamaker, Blair moved to England after her divorce from Kelly. I had seen the original Marty, in an unforgettable live teleplay by Chayevsky and directed by Mann on the Philco Television Playhouse. It aired in 1953 with Rod Steiger in the title role.

3) Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

In addition to Marty, Black Rock was among five Borgnine films that were released in 1955. Ernie and his real life pal Lee Marvin are mean-spirited thugs Coley Trimble and Hector David in this superb drama that tackles racial prejudice. Spencer Tracy is John J. MacReedy, a one-armed man who comes to the tiny village of Black Rock in the southwest to give a Japanese farmer named Komoko his dead son’s WW II medal.   MacReedy’s inquiries about  Komoko, meet with open hostility, threats and harassment, and ultimately, with abject violence. Town boss Reno Smith (Robert Ryan), who had Komoko killed because of his hatred of the Japanese, has also marked MacReedy for death. MacReedy must battle Black Rock thugs Trimble and David, a treacherous local woman (Anne Francis), and of course Smith himself to stay alive.  

“We were supposed to do a scene where Spence and I had it out,” Borgnine says in his book.  “I said to the director, John Sturges, ‘You got a guy with one arm. How is he supposed to fight a big strapping guy like me?’ He said, ‘I was thinking about that myself. What would you suggest?’ I said, ‘what about Judo? They taught us that in the Navy.’ He said, ‘work it out with the stunt guys.’  When we had something that looked like it could work, Sturges said, ‘okay let’s shoot it.’ I stepped back so the stunt guys could fight. He said, ‘No, no, you’re in the shot. So we started this fight scene. I had this sponge full of stage blood hidden in my hand. I went down, then got back up squeezing the sponge. I heard Spence, say, ‘Jesus Christ they killed him. ‘ Everyone who has worked with Spencer Tracy has only nice things to say about him. He was a giving actor, an unassuming star and a real gentleman. As with Coop [Gary Cooper] you had to be at the top of your game working with him.” 

Click here: YouTube - bad day at black rock-ernest borgnine

 “What a sweetheart Coop was. He was a gentleman of the first order. When we were shooting Vera Cruz together, I got to ride with him in his limo one morning and I was going to sit up front. ‘No, come on back here with me.’

“‘Yes sir.’  So I sat in the back seat. Then he turned to me and said, ‘You know I sure wish I could act like you.’”

“‘What do you mean? You’ve got two Oscars.’”

‘I got them for saying “yup.”‘

What a guy and what an actor. You watch him on Turner Classics Movies, you can still learn an awful lot. He’s not just spouting lines, he’s giving a persuasive response to your line.” 

I said to Borgnine, I thought it ironic, that Robert Ryan, a vocal supporter of the blacklisted Hollywood 10 played a virulent anti-Semite in Crossfire with Sam Levene, and a xenophobic in Bad Day at Black Rock.

“What a wonderful guy,”said Borgnine. He seemed genuinely surprised and pleased to learn that I had seen Ryan the title role of  Shakespeare’s Corialanus in New York in the 1950s.

“I played Guildenstern in Hamlet,” he told me.   “The best Hamlet I ever saw was Hume Cronyn. We were on the road with it. You’ve never seen anything like him. I used to stand in the wings. What a great, great delivery of the soliloquy.”

That’s funny I said, I saw Cronyn do Polonious to Richard Burton’s Hamlet in 1964.   

“One night we played a college. Suddenly the lights went out. Nobody said a word. And when the lights came back, Cronyn said, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, we will continue.’ He did it with such nicety and such authority in his voice, everybody exhaled. I loved him as an actor.” 

You know Mr. Borgnine, I said, I can see you, even today, as the Grave Digger, in the scene in which Hamlet, holds the skull of the court jester and says to Horatio, ‘Alas poor Yorick, I knew him Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.’ Can you do a cockney accent? (thinking of Stanley Holloway’s interpretation in Olivier’s Hamlet.)

“Oh Sure.” 

Then, there’s still time for you to do that part.

“There’s still time, hah hah hah.” Borgnine and Flynn laughed until there were tears in their eyes.

Tell me about the play “Harvey”, which you describe in your book. I’ll never forget seeing Frank Fay as Elwood P. Dowd in the original staging on Broadway.

 “A very funny thing happened with Harvey. I did it with Joe E. Brown when he played Dowd.  I was doing the show in Virginia, when the producer Brock Pemberton asked me to take over for Jesse White as Wilson (who later became the Maytag repairman in those commercials).  “Well sir, can I possibly let you know tomorrow morning?  The next morning the man came and said ‘well we’re ready to take you up to NY.’   ‘Sir, I can’t.’  

‘How much are you making here, $35 a week? We’re going to give you $150. Come on up.’

“I can’t.”  ‘Why?' he asked.’ ‘Because in my mind, I’m not ready for New York yet.’  Well, when I finally decided I was ready, I had to fly up to New York to do the Labor Day Show with Joe E. Brown. I walked on the stage and there was Mr. Brown and all the rest of the cast. He didn’t know me from Adam, but other than the fact I stepped on some lines, I sat down after the show and said to myself, ‘Borgnine, you did it, you sonofagun. And on Broadway.’ Suddenly a woman walked by and said aloud, ‘Oh yeah, there’s that jerk who was talking through the laughs.’ Well, I stayed with Harvey long enough to get to know Mr. Brown. Wonderful guy, but he was a bit of a drill sergeant: ‘do this, do that, do it right Mister.’  Okay, fine. Well, one day it was World Series time, and I said to him, ‘Sir, do you remember Elmer the Great?’  ‘‘I played him,’ he replied.  ‘I know - you used to do a routine with a baseball in that movie that was astounding. Can you do it after tonight’s show, because it’s baseball time.’ ‘I’ll think about it.’ Well, he went on and he did the bit with the baseball from Elmer the Great and brought down the entire house. And it became a routine for him.”   

4) The Wild Bunch (1969)

 Beginning and ending with two of the bloodiest battles in screen history, Sam Peckinpah's revisionist Western polarized critics and audiences over its bloodshed.  After a failed payroll robbery, the outlaw Bunch, led by Pike Bishop (William Holden) and including Dutch (Ernest Borgnine), Angel (Jaime Sanchez), and Lyle and Tector Gorch (Warren Oates and Ben Johnson), heads for Mexico pursued by the gang of Pike's friend-turned-nemesis Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan). Ultimately caught between the corruption of railroad fat cat Harrigan (Albert Dekker) and federale general Mapache (Emilio Fernandez), the Bunch opts for a final Pyrrhic victory, striding purposefully to confront Mapache and avenge their friend Angel. The DVD version of The Wild Bunch, restored to its original running time of 144 minutes, includes several scenes not widely seen since the movie had its world premiere in 1969

5) All Quiet On The Western Front – TV  (1979).  I was perplexed   when I learned that Erich Maria Remarque’s daunting novel about WWI trench warfare, was going to be remade for TV. Why mess with director Lewis Milestone’s 1930 classic in which Lew Ayres plays 16-year-old Paul Baumer, one of a roomful of idealist classroom chums led by a jingoistic professor who lectures them on the virtues of war for the greater glory of the Fatherland?   Once reaching the front, they are quickly disillusioned by the hellishness of the trenches, pitched bayonet battles, constant shellfire and random death. Fortunately for them, they come under the wing of battle-hardened father figure Sergeant Katczinsky, portrayed memorably by Louis Wolheim. Astonishingly,  I was blown away by the Made-for –TV (And in Color)  version directed by Delbert Mann of Marty fame and starring Richard Thomas as Paul and, yes, Ernest Borgnine as Sergeant (Kat) Katczinsky,  each of whom gave extraordinary  textbook performances. Very few of Paul’s old comrades remain – the company is staffed primarily by raw, 16 year-old recruits and his old mentor Kat is mortally wounded by an aerial bomb. Thomas hoists the rotund NCO on his back, only to discover his lifelessness after disencumbering himself. “Wasn’t Ernie great in it,” said Thomas, to me effusively when I interviewed him several years ago. “I think it was one of the best of all TV movies. Delbert Mann was a disciple of Lewis Milestone, and acknowledged the great debt he owed him. Milestone said our picture was more faithful to the Erich Maria Remarque book than the original.”

Ermes Effron at six months. Tovern Productions.

He was 18 when he joined the Navy in 1935 and spent the next 10 years there.
Tovern Productions.

Ermes Effron Borgnino was born in Hamden, Connecticut, the son of Anna (née Boselli) who immigrated to the U.S. from Carpi, Italy and Charles B. Borgnino, who immigrated to the U.S. from Ottiglio, Italy.   His parents divorced when he was two years old and he and his mother went to live in Italy,  but five years later they returned to Hamden, where he attended public schools.

What was the first movie you saw as a kid?

[Deep breath]. “My God. Oh yeah, it was a silent.  Valentino was the guy. “

Did you ever meet Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.?

“Junior, yes, Senior, no.  Really a wonderful man. Never rested on his laurels.   No way. He went out and did it on his own. “

Fairbanks, Jr.  was in Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar with Edward G. Robinson, I reminded him.  

“I wanted to work so badly with Edward G. Robinson who played Rico, [Mother of God, is this the end of Rico?]  However, I did work with Jimmy Cagney. We did a western together, believe it or not. Run for Cover in 1955, and what a treasure of a man.  A. C. Lyle was the producer – he’s been with Paramount for more than 81 years. We broke out early in the morning to work. In the afternoon we quit early and we had these tiny little places where we stayed. Jimmy would go in, pull out this wooden platform and he would tap dance on it.

What were your favorite radio shows?

“We used to listen to Jack Benny, Fred Allen and Milton Cross doing the commentary on Texaco’s Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, Saturday afternoons. We had an Atwater Kent. We didn’t turn it on that often because it cost money using up those dry cell batteries.  We listened to FDR’s Fireside Chats and Gabriel Heatter. ‘Ah, there’s good news tonight.’"

  To a new generation of fans, Ernie is the voice of Mermaid Man (L) on SpongeBob SquarePants   while his McHale’s Navy pal Tim Conway does Barnacle Boy.
Courtesy MTVN.com

Ernie Borgnine has one daughter, Nancee, born in 1953,  with his first wife Rhoda Kemins, whom he met while serving in the Navy. He has a son Christopher and daughter Sharon by way of his fourth marriage to Donna Rancourt. His second wife was the Mexican screen actress Katy Jurado, whose most famous movie was High Noon. His  third marriage, with Ethel Merman lasted barely over a month.

“My wife Tova  [Traesnaes] –  we’re married 35 years - and I see each other once every two months, maybe less. She works for QVC and she had to stay at the hotels over there. Somebody said, listen, if you stay here and work for QVC you might as well buy a house. She said yeah, that’s a good idea so she went out and bought a lovely home on a golf course in Malvern, Pennsylvania. To make a long story short, we commute. I go there, she goes to Beverly Hills, back and forth.

“Like a cartoon I once saw, we’re two people who’ve lived together for 35 years and live so wonderfully.

How do you do it?  I asked in my best Henny Youngman imitation. Separate checkbooks?

“No, Separate Houses. “   

I could still hear Borgnine guffawing over this curtain line, in the San Carlos hallway after I reluctantly took leave of him and Harry Flynn.

Ernie and Harry

Ernest Borgnine’s fascinating, enormously amusing and often moving autobiography (First printing, August 2008) is at book stores everywhere, Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com