Ernest Borgnine's Top Nine

Sorry, Ernie, I just could not resist that title.

Ernest Borgnine has always been one of my favourite actors. He's one of my few faves who have stood the both the test of time of my learning something about the craft of acting.

Above all, the man had presence.  He also had an amazing ability to make just about any line of dialogue his own, no matter how badly written it may have been. It's no surprise that Borgnine had a 61 year career in which he racked up -get this- 203 IMDB screen credits.

He didn't even appear in his first film until he was 34 years old. In fact, he didn't even take up acting until after leaving the US Navy at the end of World War II.

Mr. Borgnine kept working right up till the end. He was nominated for an Emmy at the age of 92 for his performance in the final episode of ER. He's still got one more movie,  The Man Who Shook the Hand of Vicente Fernandez, coming out later this year. 

On top of that, how many actors do you know of whose obituaries read "Star of From Here to Eternity and SpongeBob SquarePants Dies"?

These are nine of my Ernest Borgnine faves.


9. The Devil's Rain (1975)

Ernest Borgnine is The Devil.

Okay, I'm going to admit to a bit of bias here.Any movie that's got Borgnine and William Shatner  in it can't be all bad, right?

Um, well, not so much.

This is where that part about Borgnine being able to own even badly written dialogue comes in. More than anything else, though, I just love the idea of Borgnine as The Devil.

I know. I know. Typecasting, right?

Well, in fact, Borgnine plays more of a centuries old warlock who leads this coven of witches. The Devil thing comes later. Oh, and along the way, he transforms Shatner into an unwilling servant of Satan.

In his 2008 autobiography, Ernie, Borgnine talks about working with Shatner: "Bill Shatner is a hoot. He has a kind of florid style, as do I, and he's just so entertaining to watch on the set and on the screen."





8. McHale's Navy (1962-66)

There are not a lot of actors who could pull off the kind of career move Ernest Borgnine made with McHale's Navy. He had a successful career as an Oscar winning dramatic actor but Borgnine basically set all that aside for four years. From 1962-66, he starred in McHale's Navy, a half hour TV comedy series about a wacky US Navy PT boat during World War II.


The show contained some pretty over-the-top and dated comedy. Borgnine starred alongside future Carol Burnett Show and Dorf star, Tim Conway. 


Such a move may well have killed the careers of many actors (especially back in the days when there was little or no star crossover from TV to movies),  but not Borgnine. Once the series was cancelled, he managed to pick up his dramatic career once again with roles in big movies like The Dirty Dozen and Ice Station Zebra. 






7.Willard (1971)

Borgnine was often typecast in the likable sidekick role. Every once in a while, though, he'd get to play the heavy (no pun intended, seriously). 


In Willard, Borgnine plays the boss of the titular character. It seems this boss is attempting to take control of Willard's deceased father's company and squeeze Willard out of the business completely. Complicating things is the fact that Willard is an oddball social misfit whose only friends in life are rats. 


Willard trains his rats to become lean mean killing machine rodents. Borgnine is so perfectly unlikable in the role that (SPOILER ALERT) the audience is not really all that broken up to see him get eaten alive by a pack of viscous attack rats while falling out a window. 

In those pre-CGI days, you just know that at some point Ernie had to deal with real rats crawling all over him during shooting.





Remade in 2003 with Crispin Glover as Willard and R. Lee Ermey in Borgnine's role.






6. SpongeBob SquarePants (1999-2011)

Around the mid 90's, when Ernie was still a spritely young man in his late 70's, he began doing animation voice-over work. In his book, Borgnine describes voice work as "almost like stealing money, to put it bluntly." He's right. It can pay very well sometimes; better than TV or movie roles, in some cases, and under decidedly less demanding circumstances.


Aside from the allegedly easy cash, Borgnine suddenly found a whole new audience in animation. There is a whole generation who only know him as the voice of the superhero Mermaid Man from extremely popular animated series SpongeBob SquarePants.  Borgnine voices the aged version of Mermaid Man, a character that is clearly a satirical take on the DC comics superhero, Aquaman (and 1960's TV series of the same name). Mermaid Man's sidekick, Barnacle Boy, is voiced by Borgnine's old co-star from McHale's Navy, Tim Conway.




5. The Dirty Dozen(1967)

The Dirty Dozen is something of a legend in the category of classic "guy" movies. It also boasts quite the impressive cast: Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, John Cassevetes, Donald Sutherland, Telly Savalas, George Kennedy and, of course, Ernie.

His role is not really that big. He plays General Worden, the man who concocts a plan to recruit a team of military prisoners for a suicide mission in Nazi occupied Europe during WWII. The General then hands it all over to a reluctant Lee Marvin. Borgnine doesn't get to do any running around or fighting in this one but, nonetheless, he is very effective in the part of the seemingly blundering General. And, man, he certainly holds his own in those scenes with Lee Marvin.

A made-for-TV sequel, The Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission, was made in 1986. Borgnine reprized his role as General Worden. The events of that movie take place shortly after the end of the original Dirty Dozen. One thing that I could not get over while watching the sequel was how the poor General seemed to have aged almost 20 years in just a matter of weeks.


 




4.From Here to Eternity (1953)

By the time From Here to Eternity made it to the screen, James Jones' hard hitting novel about US military life just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was pretty watered down. Much of the sex, violence and the existential lack of morality that made the book memorable was either toned way down or cut out altogether.

In the "toned way down" department, that included the character of the violently abusive Sgt "Fatso" Judson. Nonetheless, Borgnine's performance as "Fatso" did put him on the map in Hollywood. From Here to Eternity was his first real outing into the "big leagues", as he called it. He co-starred with Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift and Frank Sinatra. Borgnine's character was, well, was not so nice to the latter.  


Ernie was apparently complimented by James Jones himself during a visit to the set. Jones felt that Borgnine was, despite the script adjustments, very authentic to the spirit of the original character in his book.

3. The Wild Bunch (1969)

The Wild Bunch is a lot of things. In its day, it was one of the most violent movies ever released. Today, it is still considered one of the greatest Westerns ever made (and, really, kinda tame in the violence department by today's standards). The Wild Bunch is also seen as part of the beginning of the end of the genre of the Western.

Even in 1969, Borgnine was considered one of the older guys in these ensemble pieces.  In The Wild Bunch, he fit in a bit better age wise. He plays Dutch Engstrom, one of a group of aging outlaws that also consists of William Holden and Robert Ryan. He was 51 at the time and it was his most physically demanding role to date. In Borgnine's words, "it was not much fun to make." 


I bet. That final 12 minute gun battle is grueling just watching it. I can't even imagine what it woulda been like shooting that sucker.









2. The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

Speaking of movies that "weren't much fun to make", Borgnine speaks similarly of The Poseidon Adventure. "Fourteen weeks of backbreaking work", he called it. The result, though, turned out to be Borgnine's biggest box office success. Once again, he was part of an ensemble cast including Gene Hackman, Red Buttons, Shelley Winters, Roddy McDowell, and starring as Borgnine's wife, Stella Stevens. 


The Poseidon Adventure is one my personal faves of the 70's disaster movies. It's a pretty simple plot, really. Right at midnight on New Year's Eve, a tidal wave hits a big luxury ocean liner and turns it upside down. A group of surviving passengers try and find their way to the top/bottom of the ship before it sinks. 


Borgnine is great in this movie. He's saddled with some really cheesy dialogue in places but, boy, he nails that shit anyway. I just remember the way he stares down Gene Hackman (playing a Reverend who is attempting to lead the rescue effort) with the line "And who the hell are you? God?!".

Another favourite scene of mine is where Borgnine's wife has lost a good part of her evening gown so Borgnine takes off his shirt so she can cover herself. Clearly, this was a cheap exploitative ploy on the part of producer Irwin Allen to gratuitously make Ernie to spend the bulk of the film in his undershirt.





1. Marty (1955)

Marty is a film based on the teleplay of the same name by Paddy Chayefsky and it's the movie that Ernest Borgnine won his Best Actor Oscar for.

And it is quite a performance too. As the 34 year old socially awkward unmarried man still living with his mother, Ernie maintains an understated charm and grace. Back in 1955, apparently, a single man in his 30's' only option was, of course, to continue living with his mom.

In addition to the Oscar for Best Actor, the movie also won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. The Academy tends to swing three ways for Best Picture: epics, small character driven films and films that deal with social/political issues that may or may not fit into the first two categories. Marty is part of that small character driven films category. That's why Borgnine is crucial to its success.

Up against James Cagney, James Dean, Spencer Tracy and Frank Sinatra, Borgnine did not expect to win the Oscar. He was so sure of it, in fact, that at the time his name was announced during the Academy Awards, he had fallen asleep in his chair.


Fair enough. The Oscar ceremony can get seriously dull sometimes.

 


Thanks for all the fun, Ernie!

Ernest Borgnine 1917-2012

RIP

Disaster Movies of Titanic Proportions

From The Onion's Our Dumb Century

The sinking of the RMS Titanic was a story so big and so tragic in its day that even one hundred years plus four days later, people lime me are still blogging about it.  The demise of the White Star Line's flagship on its maiden voyage in 1912 went on to become story that even influenced our very culture. I first heard about The Titanic when I was 5 or 6. The disaster was sounded so culturally archetypal (that's the exact wording I used at 6 years old) that, for the longest time, I thought it was a story from the Bible. No doubt the "God Himself couldn't sink her" line has something to do with that . After all, the good book is full of people challenging God's power and living to regret it big time, usually via some form of flood, plague or other Act of God (which, BTW, has always sounded like the kind of thing that goes down in an abusive relationship, but that's a whole other blog post).

Of course, there are the movies that are based on the event itself, like A Night to Remember and that one there that's one of James Cameron's early low budget art house movies from his pre-Avatar period.  More than that, though, the sinking of the Titanic has influenced movies in terms of both theme and narrative. Particularly prevalent are movies from the pinnacle of the 70's disaster movie craze that are filled with themes of decadence combined with human technological hubris. Like, you know, the hubris of, say, building ridiculously large ships that don't have even enough lifeboats on board because, after all, "God Himself couldn't sink her" and then decadently partying it up on said ship till an iceberg comes along and sets things straight.

These themes are, of course, most often seen in disaster movies, most especially one made sure the height of the genre's popularity in the 1970's.

Here's three for instances...

The Poseidon Adventure

Many of the 70's disaster movies are essentially the Titanic in a different context. Case in point, The Poseidon Adventure.

Producer Irwin Allen's  spectacular 1972  disaster movie even keeps the passenger liner setting of its inspiration. The ship in question is the mythologically monikered SS Poseidon. While on a New York to Athens cruise, The Poseidon gets hit by one of the biggest tidal waves ever recorded. Of course, the wave doesn't just chose to hit the boat at any old time. No, the great waters of the world decide to flex their aquatic muscles just moments after midnight on New Year's Eve. In a heavily ramped-up sequence of stunts and screaming, many people are brutally killed on what some might call the Worst New Year's Eve Ever. The survivors must find their way to the "bottom" of the ship, which, of course in now the "top" of the ship before the whole kit and caboodle (oh, yes, the caboodle too) sinks. And all the while, everyone is in their nice fancy-pantsed tuxedos and hoity-toity evening gowns. It all makes for a very Titanic paradigm. That, and the whole movie is a blatantly flimsy excuse to show Ernest Borgnine running around in his undershirt for two hours.

Not to be confused with its two 2005 remakes.

The Towering Inferno

Irwin Allen is at it again. And this time it's 1974.

This disaster of Titanic proportion gets out of the water and into the world's tallest building. Set in San Francisco, The Towering Inferno features a 138 story marvel of modern architecture that was at the time the world's tallest fictional skyscraper. A second tower, not quite as tall, stands next to it. The "twin towers" of the film are a fairly obvious allegory to then just opened World Trade Center in NYC; a veiled comment on how buildings as tall as those of the World Trade Center towers were, ultimately, doomed to disaster.

No comment.

Due to some shoddy wiring by a crooked contractor, a small electrical fire breaks out on the 79th floor. Only it doesn't stay small for long. This, of course, happens on the opening night (ie: maiden voyage) of the skyscraper . The top floor of the, as it is refereed to in the film, Glass Tower is filled with San Francisco's decadent social elite. Everyone is all feted up in their decadent evening gowns and tuxedos, 70's style (and, oh yeah, there's some kitschily hideous clothes on display in this movie).

Of course, the building is too tall for any of the fire engine ladders to reach high enough to rescue anyone. So that leaves us with a lot of people running around on fire and some spectacular failed rescue attempts in the form of fiery helicopter crashes.

The Towering Inferno features one of the most impressive casts that big Hollywood money can buy: Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, William Holden, Robert Wagner and, filling out the historical irony department, O.J. Simpson.

Speaking of the historical irony department, the 70's disaster movie genre may have, from a 21st century stand point, gotten very disturbing. The Airport series of movies, which depicted many innovative airborne disasters, were also very popular at the time (though, thematically speaking, not quite Titanic enough for this post). At one point, the series producer's idea for next film in the Airport franchise would have involved a 747 passenger jet crashing into -wait for it- the world's tallest skyscraper. The Airport producers ditched the idea when they heard that The Towering Inferno was in the works.

Good thing. That movie woulda been a bit too creepily prescient all around. And just imagine what those video rental figures would have been like on September 12, 2001.

Raise The Titanic

Raise The Titanic is a disaster of a different sort; a disaster at the box office, involving both hubris and decadence.

This 1980 film was based on the bestselling novel of the same name by author Clive Cussler. After Raise The Titanic, Cussler did not allow another one of his books to be adapted to the big screen ever again. The only exception being Sahara in 2005, and even then Cussler sued over it.

As the title suggests, the film is about an attempt to raise the Titanic from its watery grave (nobody tell James Cameron about that idea). Through a convoluted series of plot thickening events, it is discovered that not only is there this rare fictional mineral that's really important to American national defence tech but that the only known samples of this mineral were on board the RMS Titanic when that iceberg went and sunk it. Suddenly, the Americans and Russians are in a race to find the Titanic and raise it from the bottom of the ocean. The Americans, led by badass Logan's Run Sandman Richard Jordan and a slumming Jason Robards, find the Titanic first.

They finally (SPOILER ALERT) succeed in raising the ship. However, when doing so, they conveniently skip over the fact the Titanic's hull was split in two when it sunk. That plot point might be a passable bit of artistic license were it not for the fact that there is a scene where they actually show footage taken from a submarine that shows the Titanic in two pieces on the ocean floor.

The critical and financial success of Raise The Titanic, or lack thereof,  is where the hubris and decadence bit comes in. In 1980, the movie cost an estimated $40 million to make. To date, the film has only made back $13 million worth of that initial investment. Those numbers include the era of Beta, VHS, laser discs, DVD, Blu-ray, cable movie channels, Netflix, digital downloads and the financial bump of just about any movie with the word "Titanic" in the title that came in the wake of Cameron's 1997 blockbuster. The almost total failure of Raise The Titanic drove both Cussler and veteran British film producer Lord Grade out of the movie business entirely.

Raise The Titanic is also historically significant in another way. It was nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Screenplay and Worst Supporting Actor at the 1st Annual Golden Raspberry Awards.




I'd only seen bits and pieces of Raise The Titanic on TV once or twice so I decided it was only fair to seek  it out and watch it. As is often the case with bad movie hype, it really wasn't THAT bad. Not the greatest movie I've ever seen but certainly no insert your favourite go-to big budget movie that bombed here either.

I'll be back with some more Disaster Movies of Titanic Proportions for the 200th Anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic...