LOS ANGELES — Ernest Borgnine, the beefy screen star known for blustery, often villainous roles, but who won the best-actor Oscar for playing against type as a lovesick butcher in “Marty” in 1955, died Sunday. He was 95.
His longtime spokesman, Harry Flynn, said that Borgnine died of renal failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with his wife and children at his side.
Borgnine, who endeared himself to a generation of Baby Boomers with the 1960s TV comedy “McHale’s Navy,” first attracted notice in the early 1950s in villain roles, notably as the vicious Fatso Judson, who beat Frank Sinatra to death in “From Here to Eternity.”
Then came “Marty,” a low-budget film based on a Paddy Chayefsky television play. Borgnine played a 34-year-old who fears he is so unattractive he will never find romance. Then, at a dance, he meets a girl with the same fear.
“Sooner or later, there comes a point in a man’s life when he’s gotta face some facts,” Marty tells his mother at one point in the film. “And one fact I gotta face is that, whatever it is that women like, I ain’t got it. I chased after enough girls in my life. I went to enough dances. I got hurt enough. I don’t wanna get hurt no more.”
The realism of Chayefsky’s prose and Delbert Mann’s sensitive direction astonished audiences. Borgnine won the Oscar and awards from the Cannes Film Festival, New York Critics and National Board of Review.
Mann and Chayefsky also won Oscars, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hailed the $360,000 “Marty” as best picture.
“The Oscar made me a star, and I’m grateful,” Borgnine said in 1966. “But I feel had I not won the Oscar, I wouldn’t have gotten into the messes I did in my personal life.”
Those messes included four failed marriages, including one in 1964 to singer Ethel Merman that lasted less than six weeks.
Borgnine’s fifth marriage, in 1973 to Norwegian-born Tova Traesnaes, endured and brought with it an interesting business partnership. She manufactured and sold beauty products and used her husband’s rejuvenated face in her ads.
In 2007, Borgnine expressed delight that their union had reached 34 years. “That’s longer than the total of my four other marriages,” he said, laughing.
More recently, Borgnine had a recurring role on the NBC sitcom “The Single Guy.” He had a small role in the 1997 movie version of “McHale’s Navy.” And he was the voice of Mermaid Man on “SpongeBob SquarePants.”
“I don’t care whether a role is 10 minutes long or two hours,” he said in 1973. “And I don’t care whether my name is up there on top, either. Matter of fact, I’d rather have someone else get top billing. Then if the picture bombs, he gets the blame, not me.”
Select filmography
Among the best-known Ernest Borgnine films:
• From Here to Eternity, 1953
• Johnny Guitar, 1954
• Vera Cruz, 1954
• Demetrius and the Gladiators, 1954
• Bad Day at Black Rock, 1955
• Marty, 1955
• The Catered Affair, 1956
• The Best Things in Life Are Free, 1956
• Barabbas, 1961
• McHale’s Navy, 1964
• The Dirty Dozen, 1967
• Ice Station Zebra, 1968
• The Wild Bunch, 1969
• The Adventurers, 1970
• Willard, 1971
• The Poseidon Adventure, 1972
• The Greatest, 1977
• Ravagers, 1979
• Escape From New York, 1981
• Moving Target, 1990
• Mistress, 1992
• McHale’s Navy, 1997
• Gattaca, 1997
