Ernie: The Autobiography (2 page)

37. Going Home to TV

38. And Now for Some Things Completely Different

39. More Special Folk

40. Dedicated to the Ones I Love

41. Odds and the End

Acknowledgments

Foreword

E
rnest Borgnine is one of the Great Treasures of the entertainment world. He has done it all: Broadway, movies, television, stock. The whole works. And you can throw in an Academy Award! But I know him on a different level. A pal you can hang out with, play golf, go eat with, whatever. A best friend! A man who is passionate about life and is interested in just about everything you can think of and more than likely knows a lot about it. And when it comes to acting, well, you can forget that, he is the best.

He has done me a lot of favors and the most precious one is his friendship. He has sent me strange gifts and I in return to him. I have been trying to outgift him forever, but it is great to have a buddy that kinda thinks like you do.

But enough of this palaver. I could go on forever with all the things he has done for me, you, and just about everybody, but if I can steal a line from the movie, “What are you going to do tonight, Marty?” I’m going to read a great book. It’s called
Ernie
.

—George Lindsey

Preface

I
t’s Sunday night, January 13, 2008. Much to my delight, I’ve been nominated for a Golden Globe Award for my work in the Hallmark TV movie
A Grandpa for Christmas
.

I always get a little dreamy and reflective during awards ceremonies. Nominees always say, “Winning is nice, but it’s a thrill just to be nominated.” And outsiders think,
Yeah, yeah, sure. But you really want to win
.

Of course we do. However, it really
is
a thrill just to be nominated. Especially when you’re my age (ninety-one). And to be acting, still, after nearly sixty years—that’s a rare privilege.

So I’m sitting in my Beverly Hills home, the one I bought in 1965, watching the Golden Globes, looking at all the fresh young faces (to my eyes, sixty is fresh and young!), and thinking,
If I were starting out today, what kind of parts would I be playing?

Given my size—five-foot-nine and hefty—chances are good I’d be offered roles like that big guy, the Thing, Michael Chiklis played in
Fantastic Four
. Or maybe that part John Travolta had in
Hairspray
. It’s been a long time since I played a role in a dress or a toga. Not that anyone has a webpage calling for more of Ernie Borgnine’s legs.

That’s what’s going through my mind as I’m tuned in to the Golden Globes. At the time—January 2008—the writer’s strike was on and, as a result, the Golden Globe Awards ceremony has been stripped down to an hour-long special where the winners are simply announced and clips are shown from all the nominated movies and shows. However, I look at the bright side—it saved me the trouble of having to dry-clean my tux.

The presenters applaud as winners are announced, and my mind continues to drift. Please don’t think I’m rude; I have to admit I don’t know a lot of the winners or the shows and movies for which they’re nominated. It’s tough to keep up with all the channels, movies, and DVDs that are out there. When I started out there were three TV networks, no such thing as home video, and just a few studios making far fewer movies.

A reporter asked me earlier in the day, “Mr. Borgnine, do you have any plans to retire?”

I answered, “Retire to what? To work in the garden? Drive my beloved wife Tova crazy? (Or should that be ‘crazier’?) Heck, no!”

A lot of what keeps me going is that old-fashioned work ethic I had pounded into me by my first-generation immigrant parents, bless them, when I was growing up in Connecticut.

Besides, I am an actor by profession and I love what I do.

Which brings me to this memoir. For years people have been telling me I should write my life story. I always respond, “I’m just a working stiff—who’d want to read about me?” That was my attitude for years.

When I became the oldest living actor to be nominated for a Golden Globe (not to mention being the oldest living actor to have won an Oscar), I had a change of heart. All modesty aside, why
shouldn’t
I write my life story?

I’ve had quite a run. And since I can still remember most of it, I want to share some of my favorite stories and memories, and maybe give some tips to actors who are just starting out. See, I’ve made some great pictures, some good pictures, some not-so-good pictures, and a few out-and-out stinkers. (I have the distinction of appearing in more of the 100 Most Enjoyably Awful Movies of All Time as listed in Razzie Award–founder John Wilson’s book
The Official Razzie Movie Guide
than any other actor—
The Adventurers
(1970),
The Legend of Lylah Clare
(1968), and
The Oscar
(1966), among them.

Well, they can’t all be gems. But what fun they all were, and every one of them was a learning experience.

I’ve died onscreen almost thirty times. I’ve 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 I perished from thirst in the Sahara Desert. I bounced around a capsized ocean liner, beat Frank Sinatra to death, impaled Lee Marvin with a pitchfork, and had my way with Raquel Welch.

Any one of those would’ve been worth the journey.

I’ve acted in westerns, comedies, war pictures, crime dramas, horror, science fiction, disaster films, and Biblical epics. I once played the head of a Viking clan. I’ve been bad guys, good guys, cops, crooks, murderers, mob bosses, western villains, and an Amish farmer. I’ve portrayed Asians, Jews, Italians (not much of a stretch), Irishmen, Swedes, and Mexicans.

Hell, I even played Satan once, in
The Devil’s Rain
. It wasn’t hard—I just channeled some of the agents I’ve had over the years.

I’ve sustained countless injuries over the years and even survived a plane crash. I’ve traveled all over the world for my work; stayed in five-star hotels in Europe and in bug-infested huts in South America. I’ve been blessed to have worked with some of the greatest writers and directors in film history and almost four generations of stars from Clark Gable and Joan Crawford and Bette Davis to Bart Simpson and SpongeBob SquarePants. I’ve seen this business change technologically from the fuzzy photography of live TV to entire movies produced on computers.

I remember when a corned-beef sandwich at Nate ’n Al Delicatessen in Beverly Hills cost 85 cents. (I don’t know how much they are now—corned beef is on my look-but-don’t-touch list.) When I first came out here in 1952, a house in Beverly Hills went for $30,000; today that same house would go for $5 million. Movie admission was 35 cents; today it’s $10 or even $11; a bag of popcorn was a dime. Today it’s $5. Once the town made westerns like
Shane
and
The Searchers
and
The Magnificent Seven
and had larger-than-life leading men like Gable and Cooper, Bogart and Cagney, and the tall cowboy everyone called the Duke. Today, I see our so-called movie stars in
People
magazine and most of them look like they belong on the FBI’s Most Wanted List wall at the post office, all tattoos and body piercings.

I started working at a time when a movie cost less than half a million dollars to produce. Now a movie that costs $50 million is considered low budget.

In these pages I’ll show you what Hollywood was like more than half a century ago and how it’s changed, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

So
grazie infinite
for stopping by.
Divertiti
.

ERNIE

Chapter 1

In the Beginning…

O
ne day in October 1950, while going from audition to audition, trying unsuccessfully to find a job, I was walking along Tenth Avenue grumbling to myself, “Dummy, why did you ever get into this business? You only work once a month, at best, because according to agents, ‘People don’t want to see your particular mug too much.’”

Well, I did not believe that. Movies were more than just pretty boys and leading men. Jimmy Cagney was not pretty. Neither was Eddie Robinson.

But I had a family and I needed work badly. If I couldn’t find it in movies or on the stage, I’d have to find it somewhere else. As the horns of boats on the Hudson River reached my ears, I imagined myself working on a tug or loading cargo or just fishing for our dinner.

Suddenly I smelled hot chestnuts. Some vendor on the corner was selling them. It reminded me of my mother. When I was a youngster, she’d cut chestnuts, put them in a pan on top of the stove, and let them roast. The whole house would become permeated with that smell. It was wonderful. So I walked a little closer, not to buy any, because I didn’t have any money, but just to smell.

Well, as fate would have it—and trust me, luck plays a big part in the life of any successful person—I saw a sign on that vendor’s cart that became my philosophy. The sign read, “I don’t want to set the world on fire, I just want to keep my nuts warm.”

In other words, don’t plan big. Go from step to step to step—forward. If you’ve got talent and perseverance, and fate is willing to lend an occasional hand, the rest will take care of itself.

Chapter 2

Welcome to America

M
y father was born Camillo Borgnino, in a little town called Ottiglio in northern Italy. Ottiglio is located above Toreno and is surrounded by mountains. Years later, when I first visited my ancestral home, I wondered why anyone would leave such a paradise.

America. It was the land of sky’s-the-limit opportunity, and the Borgninos wanted to see how high they could reach. At that time, the family had enough money to send one member over. They decided to send the mother first, by steamer, to find a place to live and a job in the United States, where the others would ultimately follow. Can you imagine a woman in her twenties, leaving her kids and husband behind, heading to a new country where she didn’t know the language (but learned it fast) ? However, she was resourceful, thrifty, and young and the men decided to stay behind to keep working and saving money. It was the right choice. She headed to New Haven, the town where many Italians went.

Within a few months, her husband—my grandfather—came over on a freighter with their three sons: Joe, my dad, and Freddy.

My grandfather started working in the brickyard and so did the boys. Not after school, but instead of school. They had to in order to make enough money. My grandfather worked there until his death. He was a hardworking, very quiet man. He always sat at the head of the table. Even though it was round, everybody knew he was at the head. I think I subconsciously channeled him when I played Ragnar, the Viking leader, a man of few words and a big, scary sword.

Each night, at dinner, my grandfather doled out a glass of wine to each of his children and to his wife and drank the rest of the jug himself. He listened while the rest of the family discussed things, offering guidance when he thought it was necessary. The family grew by two in America: my Aunt Lenna, and my Aunt Louise. After graduating from school, Lenna became a successful stock and bond broker and Louise went to work as a Realtor for a company called Clark, Hall, and Peck

At some point, my aunts—who had their eye on high society—felt they were being looked down upon because they were Italian. So they changed their name to Borgnine. After that, everyone took us for French people who happened to eat a lot of pasta and garlic bread.

My grandparents made themselves a nice little home where I used to spend my summer vacations as a boy. They had a great big garden in the back where they grew all their own vegetables. Grandma used to put away all kinds of goodies for the winter and made her own bread, spaghetti, and macaroni. They lived quite nicely. They even made their own wine, just like in Ottiglio. Back then, there weren’t any laws against it.

My dad, though—he was a restless one. He decided one day in the middle 1910s that he’d had enough of the brickyard and wanted to make his way to New York City and see what a big metropolis had to offer. He figured that, at the very least, it would offer bricklaying at a better hourly wage.

But dad didn’t end up building walls. He found himself at the Waldorf-Astoria working as a waiter for the famous Oscar of the Waldorf. It wasn’t until years later that he found out that Oscar had a last name and it was Tschirky. Obviously, it didn’t hurt his career not having a French-sounding name!

Oscar took a liking to my father and he said, “You stick with me, kid, I’ll make you a multimillionaire.” My father laughed. He was a very good waiter and he might have made manager one day, but in the meantime, New York was a pretty expensive place even then, in the 1920s, and he couldn’t support himself on seventy cents an hour plus tips. So like any young man in a hurry, he gave it up. Oscar was sorry to see him go. I think he was interested in having my father make some of the foods he had known in the Old Country.

Anyway, my father moved back to Connecticut and went back into making bricks. From there he matriculated to working on the railroad.

While the Borgninos were busy becoming Americans, my mother made a similar journey. She came from a little town called Carpi, just outside of Modena, Italy, with her sister. They came to a place called Centerville, which—as the name suggests—is the “center,” in this case of a little town called Hamden, Connecticut. They didn’t have very many motion pictures in those days, but they had dances. Everyone went, and that’s where my father met my mother. They married a few months later and he moved in with her in Hamden.