ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 30, 1995 TAG: 9601030016
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-19 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
SOURCE: BOB THOMAS ASSOCIATED PRESS
A year ago Ernest Borgnine figured he'd had his fill of the acting life. Pushing into his late 70s and well-fixed, he would putter around the house or take to the road in his 40-foot motorhome.
He was sitting in his easy chair one day, he says, when his wife, the beauty products guru Tova, and his secretary told him: ``Why don't you get the hell out of here and find yourself a job? You're under everybody's feet. Get out of here!''
Borgnine dutifully obeyed. He acquired an agent who took him to Castle Rock Entertainment, which was preparing a series for NBC, ``The Single Guy.'' The half-hour sitcom would star Jonathan Silverman as a bachelor surrounded by married friends.
Borgnine was offered the role of a talkative doorman at Silverman's apartment building. No reading (auditioning) for the role.
``I haven't read since I worked with Spencer Tracy in `Bad Day at Black Rock' [in 1955],'' Borgnine remarked. ``I was going to read for the part in `Marty,' and he [Tracy] told me I should never read to get a part.
``Next day he asked me, `Did you get it?' I said yes, and he said, `Attaboy!' The next year I beat him out for the Academy Award,'' Borgnine said, letting loose his trademark laugh that can rattle the windows of his baronial house off Mulholland Drive above Beverly Hills.
Borgnine assumed the ``Single Guy'' pilot would be among the many that disappear in a black hole of TV's wannabes. He was touring in his bus when his wife called to tell him NBC had bought the show. What's more, it was scheduled in the Thursday dream slot (at 8:30 p.m. on WSLS-Channel 10) between ``Friends'' and ``Seinfeld.''
So now he finds himself working five days a week and shooting before a live audience on Fridays. He likes the job and has high praise for Silverman. Borgnine's only complaint: the last-minute dialogue changes that are endemic to television.
He's no stranger to TV. He had a four-year run in the boisterous ``McHale's Navy'' in the 1960s. Two seasons in ``Airwolf'' with Jan-Michael Vincent followed. More recently he appeared on ``The Commish'' and had an introduction to live taping with a ``Home Improvement'' segment.
Despite his threatened retirement, Borgnine, 78, has never been adverse to work. ``I don't care whether a role is 10 minutes long or two hours,'' he said once. And so over the years he has varied from lead roles to bit parts. No actor's ego for him.
``My mother always said, `If you can make one person laugh in the length of a day, you've accomplished a great deal,''' he commented. ``Maybe through my pictures and television shows I've made somebody laugh and feel good for a half hour or so.
``That's what I like about the whole deal. When I go out with my bus and people say, `Thank you for the pictures and the television shows,' it makes my heart feel good. There's another satisfied customer.''
Although he's probably been acting all his life, Borgnine never got paid for it until he was in his 30s.
``I went in the Navy in 1935,'' he recalled. ``It was either that or walk the streets. I had a job for $3 a week and all I could eat on a vegetable truck. One day I was passing a post office, and I saw this poster with ships going up and down in the water. I said, `Yeah, I always did like the water.'''
He enlisted without his parents' knowledge. He broke the news to his mother: ``I'm a G-man, I got a job with the government.'' She was overjoyed until he informed her what part of the government. ``Oh, the moaning, the wailing!'' he remembered with another burst of laughter.
His enlistment weight: 134 pounds. He left the Navy 10 years later and 100 pounds heavier. Right now his weight is classified information, but he brags about losing 30 pounds and hopes to reach his fighting weight of 220.
He worked for an air conditioning company after the war, then his mother convinced him to enroll in a drama school in Hartford, Conn. He stayed four months, then became an apprentice at the Barter Theatre in Virginia.
After minor roles in plays, TV and movies, he landed the part of Fatso Judson, the brutal sergeant who kills Frank Sinatra in ``From Here to Eternity.'' Just when he seemed stuck forever in villain roles, along came ``Marty.''
LENGTH: Medium: 80 linesby CNB