Ernie: The Autobiography (8 page)

Throughout the war I found myself hopscotching up and down the East Coast from Rhode Island to Florida on a variety of assignments. One day I was sitting on the john—in my private john, naturally—and there was a knock on the door.

The seaman said, “Guess what?”

“What?” I asked, annoyed. Couldn’t this wait?

“They just dropped a bomb on Japan that was the equivalent to about twenty tons of TNT. It wiped out everything as far as the eye could see.”

I said to myself “What a stupid thing? How can one bomb possibly do all that?”

Well, we turned on the radio and there it was. The United States had dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan, on the city of Hiroshima. The writing was on the wall. We were all quite exuberant about it.

Three days later President Truman gave the order to drop a second bomb, this time on Nagasaki.

Those two bombs undoubtedly saved the lives of millions on both sides. The Japanese were not afraid. I mean, they were still fighting valiantly and we had barely scratched their homeland. And now it was over. No more of our boys, or theirs, no more mothers’ sons, had to die. That’s why I consider to this day that President Truman was one of the most wonderful presidents we’ve had since Lincoln.

Delighted as I was, I now had to face something I hadn’t had to deal with for nearly ten years:

“Okay, kid. You’re twenty-eight. What do you do with the rest of your life?”

Chapter 9

Postwar Blues

N
ow that the war was over and I was out of the navy, I went home again. I still didn’t know what to do. Once again, my mother made up my mind for me—sort of.

She said, “Well? Are you going to get a job or not?”

That may sound like an option, but it wasn’t.

So I went out looking for work. Not a job, not a career—just any kind of labor. That was pretty much all that was available, due to the slowdown of the war industries. Plus a lot of men—and women—had grabbed the available jobs in my absence. I’d pack a lunch and stand in front of one of the local factories and watch the folks walking into shops. After just a few days of this, with nothing to show but goose-bumps from an early fall, I decided this wasn’t what I wanted to do. Not after everything I’d seen and learned and experienced in the navy. After being on the sea or in big, open ports, going into a factory would be like going to jail.

Instead, I’d take my lunch and I’d go to a park or go to a movie. It was like
The Full Monty
, but without the nudity.

One day I came home and I guess I looked despondent. My mother asked me what was the matter.

I said, “Mom, for two cents I’d go back and join the navy again. At least I’d get a pension at the end of my twenty years.”

I wasn’t sure whether she’d approve or disapprove. All I know is I didn’t expect what she actually said to me.

“Son,” she said, “have you ever thought of becoming an actor?”

If I was, my reaction didn’t show it. Instead of being cool and thoughtful, I was openly, over-the-top flabbergasted. I made a few inarticulate sounds—“What? Huh?” that sort of thing—as she went on.

“You always like to make a damn fool of yourself, making people laugh. Why don’t you give it a try?”

I looked at her, still not sure what to say, and so help me I saw these doors open and a light shined down from the heavens. That smart, worldly, perceptive woman was right, even if she maybe could have couched it a little nicer. But then, that was my mother.

I said, “Mom, that’s what I’m going to be.”

Now that the Big Question had been decided, I had no idea where to go, what to do, who to see. Show business? What’s show business? We had a radio—TV was still three years off—and we’d listen to the fights or Jack Benny or Eddie Cantor. We knew that much about show business, but that was it.

Well, before it faded, that same golden light gave me an idea. Yale University was in New Haven, which was right next door. They had a world-famous drama department. I’d go there for advice.

The next day I hitchhiked over to see if I could get into the Yale School of Drama on the G.I. Bill. For those of you who don’t know, the G.I. Bill of Rights was passed in 1944 to finance the training and education of soldiers who had been out of the civilian job market during the war. It was a lifesaver for many veterans who, like myself, had skills that couldn’t be applied to nonmilitary occupations. There just wasn’t a lot of call for kids who could operate a 102-mm gun.

I went to see a Professor Cole, who was the head of the school. He looked at my marks from high school—and my decade-long service record—and said, “Yes, we’ll be able to admit you. But it will first require two years of undergraduate study.”

I said, “What will those studies consist of, sir?” thinking they’d be things like costume design and lighting and maybe photography.

He said, “Trigonometry, calculus, physics, chemistry.”

Good thing I was sitting. I felt my legs get wobbly, like the first time I’d set foot on the
Lamberton
. He had named everything that I hated in high school. The only reason they passed me was because I was a good kid.

I said, “Sir, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I don’t want to be a mathematician or a scientist. I want to be an actor.”

He said, “The university requires everyone to have a full and rounded education.”

I thanked him very much and left, dejected. Ever notice how learning something usually doesn’t give you the result you hoped for?

But I wasn’t about to give up. Asking around at other schools—those with a little less ivy—I finally found out about the Randall School up in Hartford, Connecticut. I took a bus from New Haven. They were glad to see me. They didn’t care what credentials I had. Thanks to my enthusiasm and the government funding, the head of the school interviewed me, then said, “I’ll sign you up right now.”

Because the semester had just started, I went to my first class right then and there. I was giddy with terror and excitement as he took me to the front of the class and introduced me. I felt like I was among kindred souls, yet not. I was twenty-eight years old and had just completed ten years in the navy. Everyone else was eighteen, or nineteen, and had just graduated from high school. Judging from their big eyes and fresh faces, most had never left the city, let alone the state. I later learned that some were here because they loved acting, some because they were lousy students at everything else, and some because they wanted to meet spouses.

For that day’s class they were all reading Thomas Wolfe’s
You Can’t Go Home Again.
The teacher handed me a copy, showed me to an empty seat, and after they’d read for a while, the teacher said, “Mr. Borgnine, would you mind reading the next few paragraphs?” Talk about stage fright! I’d never read in front of people before.

I started to read and I was doing pretty well. There was a description of America at night. I read, “And the stars were shining like diamonds.”

She stopped me and said, “Mr. Borgnine, how do you pronounce the word d-i-a-m-o-n-d-s?”

I looked at her, then at the book, and I said “Dimonds.”

She said, “No. The word is Di-a-monds.”

I looked at the word for a moment and said, “Oh, shit,” out loud.

It brought down the house. I’ll bet it was the first time some of those kids actually heard the word. You get some kind of education in the navy, let me tell you.

Cool as a radio operator, the teacher said, “No, the word is still ‘diamonds.’”

Everybody laughed harder.

It wasn’t a very orthodox introduction to the world of acting, but I knew at the time that was a good thing. I liked the challenge, having to regain my balance, and making people react to something I’d done.

Four months later I had the lead in an important play by Norman Corwin about VE Day. I got the first rave reviews given to an actor at this school in fourteen years. I was proud, but I was also restless. Despite the fun and the acclaim, I decided I didn’t want to be an actor. It was hurry up and wait. Wait for someone else’s scene to be rehearsed. Wait for the lights to be set. Wait for the scenery to be finished. Wait for the audience to find their seats. I’d had enough waiting in the navy. So I told the dean I was leaving. Much to my surprise the ordinarily sweet and supportive head of the school hit me on the hand with a ruler.

“How can you leave?” he said. “You have a God-given gift for the theater.”

“But I’m bored a lot of the time,” I replied. “I need to be doing things.”

Looking back, I can understand why Professor Cole had insisted I improve my mind at Yale. But back then, I only knew I was restless. I had that much of my father in me: he was a restless doer, too.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Instead of rushing to get home each day, take a later bus. Talk to some of the kids. See what they’re thinking, what they want to do.”

It proved to be good advice.

One of the kids I knew a little at the Randall School was Fred Dimek. When I told him how I was feeling, he said to me, “I feel the same.”

I said, “Huh?”

“Yeah,” he went on. “I want to get out there in the real world, where you’ve been. I want to see if I’ve got what it takes.”

He told me he’d been accepted as part of the repertory company by an organization called the Barter Theatre of Virginia.

“Why don’t you come down with me?” he suggested. “Stay a couple of days, see what it’s all about. If it’s any good, then, hey, who knows? Maybe they’ll take you, too.”

What he was really saying was,
“If you’re any good…”
But I didn’t mind. He was right. If I were any good, maybe they’d take me, too.

I said okay and, two days later we were on the overnight train to Abingdon, Virginia.

Chapter 10

All the World Really Is a Stage

W
e got off that old rattler feeling dirty, disheveled, and exhausted. There were numerous delays due to track problems and I felt like my butt had been permanently flattened from having sat in that thinly cushioned seat. In the cool early morning, we walked up a hill toward the Barter Inn, where my buddy had been told to go. We waited there for Mr. Robert Porterfield, the head of the theater.

Mr. Porterfield arrived late in the morning, looked at Fred, and said, “Well, you didn’t show up on time, so we filled your position.”

We were both too tired to react. When the words sunk in, I wanted to pop the guy.

But then he said, “If you want to work on costumes or something like that, you’re welcome to stay.”

To my surprise, Fred said, “No, no, thank you.”

I guess he never heard of the concept of getting your foot in the door.

Mr. Porterfield looked at me. “And what do you do?”

I said, “Well, ah—I’m an actor.”

“I’m up to here in actors,” he said, indicating the chin where I’d been thinking of hitting him. “But if you’re willing to work in the scene docks and things like that, we’ll put you to work. I’ll give you three squares a day and a place to sleep.”

That sounded okay to me—the navy without the water. I replied, “Well, that sounds pretty good.”

Fred went back to Hartford, dejected, and I found myself working in the scenery docks. I was put in the charge of an actor named George Burns—he later changed his name to Bart Burns because they already had a George Burns in show business. Burns had “Captain, U.S. Marine Corps” sewn on the sleeve of his jacket. When we were introduced, I said, “How’re you doing, sir?”

“Fine,” he said curtly—intrigued that I’d called him “sir” but suspicious, because marines tend to give the time of day only to marines.

“So, what the hell are we supposed to be doing here?”

“We’re washing the paint off these old flats so they can be used in new sets,” he said.

“Just like I used to on my destroyer,” I replied.

So now he knew I wasn’t USMC. I waited to see how he would react.

He just looked at me and grinned. “Welcome to showbiz, Borgnine.”

We became good friends.

I worked my fool head off. At night, after I had my dinner at the Barter Inn, I used to go over to the theater and watch them work. I’d sit in the balcony and I’d be a critic. I liked what this one did, I liked what that one did, maybe not so much with this one, and so on. I thought about how I would have played it, memorizing some of the lines and running the scene in my head. God, it felt good. The navy had become my home, but sitting up here the theater immediately felt like a new home. And no disrespect to Yale University or the Randall School, but
this
was how you trained and educated an aspiring actor. The old-fashioned way, by having him apprentice in a real-life setting to learn the trade. That’s something we’ve lost in our overeducated modern world.

Finally, after I’d been there a few months, Mr. Porterfield said to me, “Didn’t you tell me you were an actor?”

I blurted, “Yes! Yes!”

He said, “Well, now’s your chance to prove it.”

They needed somebody to play a union leader in
State of the Union.

“I accept!” I said. “Where are my sides?” (For all you nonactors, those are the pages of script that have your lines, your part on them.)

“There are no sides,” Mr. Porterfield told me. “All you do is cross from one side of the stage to the other and just look important as hell.”

I was a little disappointed, but I absolutely refused to show it. That’s acting, too. I said okay: it was a part.

I went to wardrobe and got myself a coat with a vest. I got a cigar and when they told me to walk I put the cigar in my mouth and I walked across the stage with my finger in my vest. Let me tell you something: I never felt as alive as I did when I walked from the wings and those bright lights hit me. Despite what they show you in the movies, you can’t see more than a row or two into a theater. But you can sure feel everyone out there. You can feel them watching you, and that magnifies every nerve in your body, every sense you have. You feel alive at a level that renews itself from second to second. It just doesn’t get better than that.