July 8, 2012

"I'm ugly! I'm ugly! I'm ugly!"


Ernest Borgnine, RIP. He was 95.

ADDED: The clip above is from the 1955 movie "Marty." He won an Oscar. I remember him much more from the 1960s TV show, "McHale's Navy":



Andy Griffith died on July 3rd, so this makes 2 great 60s TV stars who have died within the week. Both were really old. If deaths come in 3s, it's hard to think who's still around who could be in a triad with those 2, who gave us so many laughs and so much fun back in the 1960s.

74 comments:

Tregonsee said...

For some of us, he will always be Lt. Cmdr. Quinton McHale, USNR.

campy said...

In real life he served in the US Navy for 10 years, finally separating after WWII as a Gunner's Mate 1st Class.

In 2004, he was made an honorary Chief Petty Officer.

Bender said...

Maybe Borgnine is the third -- Richard Dawson died last month.

If not, you may have just painted a target on Larry Hagman or Dick Van Dyke. If not them, look out Beav.

Amexpat said...

Great guy with great screen presence.

Wonder if he ever was in the same room Anita Ekberg and Sophia Loren?

Bender said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
rcocean said...

Borgnine was not that ugly -just one of those guys that always looked older than he was. He played Kirk Douglas' Father in some movie and did so convincingly.

RIP

rcocean said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
rcocean said...

Borgnine was not that ugly -just one of those guys that always looked older than he was. He played Kirk Douglas' Father in some movie and did so convincingly.

RIP

Brian O'Connell said...

Don Rickles. He guested on both shows. I just watched this Don Rickles doc on Netflix so he's on my brain, and Ernest Borginine was one of the interviewees. Good show.

Ernest Borgnine was a great actor. That Performance in Marty was pretty deep, or at least I thought so when I saw it when I was 10 or 12. Also, Black Hole!

Bob_R said...

Both were really accomplished actors that were a little quirky. They got good quality roles when young, but never became "movie stars" in the way Hoffman and Nicholson did half a generation later. They opted for TV at about the time that those two guys were getting their first big breaks. I wonder what Griffith and Borgnine's careers would have been if they had come on a bit later with a different group of directors.

Anonymous said...

Zsa Gabor is 95, and Phyllis Diller will be in a couple of weeks.

Betty White is 90 but still working, so she could make it past 100.

Anonymous said...

...Ms. Gabor had to drop one of her Zsa's because in her advanced years she couldn't carry two of them around.

That's the ticket.

Sorun said...

He didn't look like a guy who'd make it to 95.

Wince said...

"Cabbie you slime!"

Incredibly lucid and with it right up until the end.

I shall spank the monkey in his honor.

YoungHegelian said...

Remember that Ernest was the man who taught the Fine & Gentle Art of Luv to Ethyl Merman.

Feelings,
Nothing more than Feelings....

The Drill SGT said...

McGehee said...
Zsa Gabor is 95, and Phyllis Diller will be in a couple of weeks.

Betty White is 90 but still working, so she could make it past 100.


Borgnine starred in a film not yet released. He was 94 during filming...

ndspinelli said...

I met Ernest Borgnine as he left a Brewers game. He was an affable, down to earth guy. Borgnine was in town to emcee the Great Circus Parade and decided to take in a Brewers game.

MadisonMan said...

you may have just painted a target on Larry Hagman or Dick Van Dyke

Bite your tongue!

I'm really enjoying JR on the Dallas reboot. Hagman certainly still has it.

Brian Brown said...

Mel Brooks is 86...

Eric Jablow said...

I'm afraid you just painted a target on Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner and the other remaining members of the cast of Your Show of Shows.

edutcher said...

He was also a very credible bad guy in his early career.

"Marty" was one of the first times TV made a new career for an actor.

Ann Althouse said...

Andy Griffith died on July 3rd, so this makes 2 great 60s TV stars who have died within the week. Both were really old. If deaths come in 3s, it's hard to think who's still around who could be in a triad with those 2

Sad to say, a lot of stars from old shows are in their 70s and early 80s.

Roman said...

I loved the charactor that was Ernest Borgnine. I remember from a few years ago, when asked the secret of longevity, he replied to the host's ear, but loud enough to be picked up microphone: "masturbation"

Anonymous said...

Do you think he thought of Sophia Loren during special moments? Didn't they have a fling?

David said...

Betty White=Cloris Leachman-Gavin McCloud-Ed Asner-Mary Tyler Moore.

415 years total for this slice of the MTM cast. Mary, as usual, is the young one. She's 75.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

We are all on the same train to the same destination. The end of the train ride just comes sooner for some and some of us got on the train earlier and get off before us.

Just enjoy the ride.

Synova said...

OMG, he did the voice of Mermaid Man on SpongeBob!

Somehow that makes me happy.

mesquito said...

"Marty" was a great movie, an attmpt to fill the screen with normal, average faces. It works wonderfully.

Unknown said...

Andy Willams is soon to be gone.

Craig said...

His knife fight with Montgomery Clift in From Here To Eternity elevated him from character actor to stardom.

Tim said...

"His knife fight with Montgomery Clift in From Here To Eternity elevated him from character actor to stardom."

Oh yes it did.

A small but critical and excellent performance.

And Deborah Kerr was about as hot as they come, in a clean, classy way.

Ron said...

Joan Fontaine and Oliva DeHavilland are still around at 94 and 96 and still carrying a grudge against each from 1940!

Eric Jablow said...

Jay,

I thought Mel was 2051 years old. “Over forty-two thousand children, and not one comes to visit me.”

Wally Kalbacken said...

Zsa Zsa is where the smart money is.

I liked Ernie Borgnine in a lot of films, but Emperor of the North, with Lee Marvin, that was some good stuff.

And he was married 5x. You gotta like that.

R.I.P.

Paul said...

Aw comeone guys... THE WILD BUNCH.

And he died with his boots on in that show.

kimsch said...

Don Grady from My Three Sons just died. He wasn't that old though, at 68. Also Nora Ephron just passed and Doris Singleton, 92 who play Lucy's neighbor on I Love Lucy (she was also on My Three Sons).

yashu said...

One of The Wild Bunch, one of the greats.

Joe Schmoe said...

As a Gen Xer I'm not familiar with much of his work. When I was a kid, I liked a TV show he was in, Airwolf.

One thing that kills me is how he used to subject one of his wives to the Dutch oven treatment.

Wince said...

A recent interview rebroadcast the other night, before his death.

Bill O'Reilly Interviews Ernest Borgnine

Mr. D said...

I have Sid Caesar in the dead pool. He'll be 90 in September.

Icepick said...

The third wasn't in TV. It was Norman Sas, inventor of electric football. He was 87.

virgil xenophon said...

Unlike today's stars Borgnine was a classic example of actors who served honorably in WWII. Don Adams (Get Smart, character actor Claude Akins and Eddie Albert (Green Acres) readily come to mind. They collectively earned over 300 decorations for valor, or meritorious service or citations (not sure if the standard theater campaign medals are incl in the count)

virgil xenophon said...

PS: Can't forget Lee Marvin who was a Marine PFC in the Pacific and won the Silver Star, iirc--he's buried in Arlington.

Curious George said...

If I was Dick van Dyke I would get my affairs in order...

Ralph L said...

I'd have sworn he'd died years ago, possibly because I associate him with WWII.

Titus said...

My father always has called women tomatoes.

My mother tells me he has always had an eye for a pretty women.

Even now, dealing with dementia, he flirts with the pretty girls at the restaurant, bank, casino and coffee shops.

And the man still looks pretty fucking good. He is fit, has his hair, it is dark and my mom says he has no problem with an erection. She told me his always trying to poke her vagine in the bead and that makes me so happy. I am proud of him.

My mom does say my dad and I are the same person...interesting.
tits.

bagoh20 said...

Does anyone know the address of this Starlight Ballroom? If Borgnine can get a tomato there, then there is hope. I ain't got no blue suit, but I got some nice shorts and clean wife beater. I've been practicing my best line:

"The first time I dance with you, I might scare you a little, because I'm a man, and I know how to do things.” Humita humita!

Chip Ahoy said...

Hello. I say hello to do a trick between Firefox and IE. I hope this trick works.

Seeing Red said...

R.I.P. Mermaid Man.

Seeing Red said...

ROBBIE DIED?

NOOOOOOOOO.

bagoh20 said...

It worked Chip. On my screen flashed an incredibly lifelike animation of Borgnine demonstrating his secret to long life. It's not the way I would do it, but he hung with that wild Hollywood set, so I get what you were going for. Awesome.

Guildofcannonballs said...

fox and friends had an view, intered, of which the only memorable quote was onanism intensive. 90+ years attritubeted to jerking off. I think it was steve ducey that said "if you don't know what youtube.com is now you will after that quote" or some such to E. Borgnine.

CachorroQuente said...

If you're looking for a third, I suggest Arthel "Doc" Watson

He has several things in common with Griffith. They were both from western North Carolina towns, were both musicians, and were both great entertainers noted for class and good nature. Watson was about a year older and died about a month earlier. I don't know that they ever met, but they should have and I like to imagine that they did.

CachorroQuente said...

Looking over things:
It seems there's a recording in several places which some people think is of Griffith and Watson performing together. People who actually own copies of the album in question say that Griffith is not one of the performers listed, so it's unlikely that they ever recorded together. Shame.

tiger said...

Never cared for 'McHale's Navy' - nothing but a poor version of 'Sgt Bilko' on land but what a career!!!

'From Here to Eternity'!
'Marty'!
'Bad Day at Black Rock'!
'The Wild Bunch'!
'Escape from New York'!
'The Black Hole'!
'Sponge Bob Square Pants'!

Plus he attributed his longevity to masturbation!

What a guy!

Guildofcannonballs said...

the wealth of his unspoken knowledge exceeded that of his spoken

Chip Ahoy said...

Hello. This is Chip. I'm time traveling again and ended up back here with Windows XP and IE 8 LOL

The problem is solved with cookies.

But this thing won't show wrong spelling, watch, dingelberries, see? no red line should be dingleberries LOL

Everybody says LOL a lot back here.

Guildofcannonballs said...

I must apologize for saying pat buchanan is an unBuckley antisemite.

I am sorry Mr. Buchanan.


the consequential actions of mister buchanan have helped me. do to my failures there is no corresponding consequenciatlism.

iqvoice said...

Doris Day did not make it on anyone's list.

Sexism!

tim in vermont said...

This is just charming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XpS-tUsdiE

tim in vermont said...

Oh Lord. I did a google search on "masturbation" to find that clip above, and you don't want to see the ads I am seeing now.

I am close to done with Google.

Sarah Rolph said...

I finally saw Marty a few years ago. My parents had always spoken very fondly of it. I thought it stood up very well. The message and the drama still work. At the same time, the movie reveals a lot about how society has changed. I felt like I learned quite a bit about the 1950s.

Sarah Rolph said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
KCFleming said...

The original Marty was a live TV play, starring Rod Steiger. It was better than the movie, a lot more emotional.

I'm surprised it hasn't been a play done by local theaters, as simple as it is to produce. I think it's because the people are supposed to be ugly; that just isn't done.

It does need updating. Steve Carell would do it justice. No one would want the female role. Nancy Marchand (Margaret Pynchon on Lou Grant) played opposite Rod Steiger, and she was very very plain, to be kind, unlike the movie actress.

Complete on YouTube, in 4 parts.

A similar theme was taken up in 1991's Dogfight ("18 year old Eddie and his friends are being shipped to Vietnam. They play a dirty game called 'Dogfight': all of them seek a woman for a party, and whoever finds the ugliest one wins a prize."), with River Phoenix as the young Marine, and Lili Taylor, who is not ugly.

X said...

one of my favorite actors and a great character actor. I'll watch any movie he was in. my favorites: Ragnar in The Vikings, Cabbie in Escape from New York, Lucius in Barrabas.

TCM needs to dedicate an entire week to his films.

KJE said...

Based ont he clip, I'm just ordered a copy of Marty and I'm going to watch it with my not relationship.

mgarbowski said...

The first two times I loaded the page, the clip was of Marty McFly from Back to the Future 2. It was very confusing for a few moments. I guess the innertubes got their Marty's mixed up for a while there.

Anonymous said...

Paul said...

Aw comeone guys... THE WILD BUNCH.

And he died with his boots on in that show.
________________________________

In "The Vikings" he died with his sword in hand. ODIN!!!!!!!!!!

tim in vermont said...

"In "The Vikings" he died with his sword in hand. ODIN!!!!!!!!!"


Don't you mean "ONAN!!!!!!!"

Sorry, last one.

Thorley Winston said...

I'm really enjoying JR on the Dallas reboot. Hagman certainly still has it.

Me, too although it’s technically not a reboot but a continuation of the original series.
“Dallas” has long been one of my guilty pleasures and Larry Hagman chews up every scene he’s in. That and “Leverage” (which returns next Sunday) are the only reasons that I’ve been watching anything on TNT.

Quaestor said...

Hail, Ragnar!

Goodbye, Ernie. Thanks for everything. (Except Airwolf -- yuck, what a gawd-awful mess that was.)

Quaestor said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Quaestor said...

Odin!

Known Unknown said...

OMG, he did the voice of Mermaid Man on SpongeBob!

And Tim Conway is Barnacle Boy.

Methadras said...

When my dad found out that Borgnine passed away, he belted out, "My Linda!!!"