To help with the inspiration while I write this, I've put on The Wild Bunch, Sam Peckinpah's epic western starring Bill Holden and Ernie, this post's namesake. The disc is very old, uses both sides, and is covered in blue-plastic dust, meaning I haven't opened it since we moved from San Luis to New York. Weird.
The earliest memory I have of Ernest Borgnine is of the movie Poseidon Adventure, starring Gene Hackman, Borgnine, Shelly Winters, Grandpa Joe, and Roddy McDowell, as they try to survive a luxury liner capsizing. Borginine's character is a former cop, and in the beginning, he's trying to convince his new bride that nobody will recognize her. See, she's a former working-girl who he busted many a time, until he fell for her. While on the surface, Borginine's gruff and blustery cop is really a romantic, who, showing his true colors, tells his wife that who cares if someone recognizes you, I love you and you're with me.
He's one of the few survivors. His battles with Gene Hackman paint him as the tough-guy cynic, but in the end, after Hackman sacrifices himself, he becomes the believing leader.
I'm pretty sure the next thing I saw with Ernest Borgnine was his guest spot on The Simpsons, when he plays a guest dad for the father-son Jr. Campers rafting excursion. His first appearance comes as he's leaving a bathroom, introducing himself like Troy McClure saying, "You kids may remember me as Sgt. Fatso Judson in From Here to Eternity." During his reading, he stopped and told the producers who were there with him that he didn't think the kids would know about the 1953 film. The producer kinda laughed, and told him that was kind of the joke.
During high school, when I started going out and renting all of the "classics" from the '60s and '70s, Taxi Driver, Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, and, of course, The Wild Bunch. The honor between thieves as they struggle to fit in to a modernizing world is captured well, and the final scene is the controversial but cathartic bloodbath. You can feel it coming on--these cowboys just can't coexist, and Angel's desecration and eventual death gives them their reason.
Besides his stint on Jonathan Silverman's The Single Guy as the doorman, my only real television memories of Borgnine was his voice acting as Mermaid Man in Spongebob Squarepants, in which his animated character bears a striking resemblance to his actual visage:
The patron saint of big, funny looking guys, he'll be missed.
And as I finish this post I looked towards my television:
He will be missed....
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