Thursday Minute
No. 175 | October 7, 2010

Roaring Nineties

Our theme this week
Actors in their 90s, still going strong

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   Eli Wallach
Tuesday         —   Norman Lloyd
Wednesday    —   Michael Gough

Ernest Borgnine

Born January 24, 1917
Age 93

Another day, another character actor.  I’d say we have a trend.

Ernest Borgnine is a first-generation American, born in Connecticut to Italian immigrants.  He served in the Navy for ten years, until the end of World War II.  At his mother’s suggestion he sought a career on stage, and he found theater work in Virginia and on Broadway.  He moved to Los Angeles in the early 1950s, and he got his first big break with From Here to Eternity in 1953, playing the staff sergeant known as Fatso who pulls a switchblade on Maggio (Frank Sinatra) during a bar fight.    He continued playing the heavy the next couple of years, in the westerns Johnny Guitar and Vera Cruz, both 1954, and in John Sturges’s classic Bad Day at Black Rock, in 1955.

Borgnine’s stout build and round face had him pegged for character parts, but in Marty he was perfectly cast as the lead.  Marty is a butcher in the Bronx living with his mother, destined to be a lifelong bachelor.  “Sooner or later,” he says, “there comes a point in a man’s life when he’s gotta face some facts, and one fact I gotta face is that, whatever it is that women like, I ain’t got it.”  Then one night he meets a schoolteacher name Clara.  Things change.  It’s a touching story about an everyman, and it’s a gem of a movie.  To the surprise of some, this small film, adapted from television, won great acclaim and was a hit at the box office.  It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and four Academy Awards, including Best Picture of 1955.  Against stiff competition—Spencer Tracy, Frank Sinatra, James Dean, and James Cagney—Borgnine took home the Best Actor statuette.

Borgnine continued in starring roles for a few more years:  The Catered Affair (1956), The Best Things in Life Are Free (1956), The Vikings (1958), and Man on a String (1960).  For four years during the 1960s, he starred as Lt. Commander Quinton McHale on the popular sitcom McHale’s Navy.  Some of his films of the time were Barabbas (1961), The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), The Dirty Dozen (1967), Ice Station Zebra (1968), The Wild Bunch (1969), Willard (1971), and The Poseidon Adventure (1972).

Borgnine’s days as a movie star were short-lived, and he reverted to character roles and TV parts in later decades.  He costarred on Airwolf in the ’80s and had a recurring role on The Single Guy in the ’90s.  He is the voice of Mermaid Man on SpongeBob SquarePants.  At age 92, he earned his third Emmy nomination, for a guest appearance on ER in 2009.

Borgnine shows no signs of slowing down.  His next film, Red, is due out this month, on the 15th.  (This past weekend, he appeared with Red costar Morgan Freeman in an inexplicable skit on the often inexplicable Saturday Night Live.)  Borgnine has four more movies in the pipeline.

Borgnine has had five wives (one of them Ethel Merman, for a month).  He and his current wife, Tova, have been married since 1973.

Borgnine will be honored by the Screen Actors Guild with a Life Achievement Award to be presented in January.  (SAG’s choice of Borgnine drew some criticism because of the actor’s conservative politics.  He’s had a penchant for making inflamatory comments at times.)  In announcing the award, SAG president Ken Howard had this to say about Borgnine’s legacy:

Whether portraying brutish villains, sympathetic everymen, complex leaders or hapless heroes, Ernest Borgnine has brought a boundless energy which, at 93, is still a hallmark of his remarkably busy life and career.  It is with that same joyous spirit that we salute his impressive body of work and his steadfast generosity.

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Marty (1955)
Delbert Mann, director
Paddy Chayefsky, writer
Joseph LaShelle, cinematographer
Ernest Borgnine, Esther Minciotti

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Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
John Sturges, director
Millard Kaufman, Don McGuire, Howard Breslin, writers
William C. Mellor, cinematograher
Ernest Borgnine, Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan

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Quote of note
Angie:  What do you wanna do tonight?
Marty:  I dunno, Angie.  What do you wanna do?
—Angie (Joe Mantell), Marty Pilletti (Ernest Borgnine), Marty (1955)

…58…59…60.