Ernie:. Ernest Borgnine
New Haven.
And, yes. That was where the idea of being an actor—for real—first occurred to me. It was my first time doing something in front of people. In fact, I enjoyed it so much it helped me pick up my school grades. See, my teachers told me that if I raised my marks and proved I could handle some extracurricular activities, they would let me act in the class play at the end of the school year. I studied hard, joined the debating club, and landed a role in the play.
I honestly don’t remember the name of the play. All I remember is that I was given the part of a Chinese kid. I went out on my own and found these little braids that looked like the ones worn by Chinese people I’d seen in a picture book, then I found a hat and everything else. I used a singsong voice onstage. It brought down the house. Afterward, a teacher came to me and said, “You are so good! You should become an actor.”
I remember thinking, “Are you crazy? That’s no way to make a living.”
I guess I wasn’t as smart as I thought.
Chapter 6
Borgnine’s Navy
When I graduated from high school my mother, bless her, wanted me to be a barber. She felt it would provide me with steady work. I didn’t care for the idea myself, but that didn’t matter.
“You’re going to barber school,” she insisted.
It wasn’t a school, as such: it was just a barbershop and all I did for about four or five days was clean up hair around the barber’s chair. On the sixth day, I decided to hand in my broom. My mother wasn’t happy. My Dad came to my rescue. He knew someone—his name was Sal. I never got to know his last name. He owned a vegetable truck. He figured it would be steady since lots of people had farms in the area and lots of people in nearby communities needed produce.
I wasn’t too crazy about that idea, either, but my father made the deal.
Dad said, “He’ll give you $3.00 a week and all the bananas and apples you can eat.”
At 3:30 in the morning we’d make the rounds collecting produce, then go up and down streets for fourteen or fifteen hours, hawking radishes and bananas and everything else you could think of. Evidently, Sal knew quite a few housewives along the way because there were times he’d just spend hours in their homes. I’d be sitting there in the truck. People would come up and want to buy something.
The net result of these two jobs was that I didn’t want to become a barber or drive a truck. But the vegetable business did point me in my next direction. One day while I was working on the vegetable truck I noticed a sign that said JOIN THE NAVY, SEE THE WORLD. Remembering what my Dad had said about feeling he had missed something by not being in the service, I went to the navy recruiting office to investigate.
The recruiter said, “Did you pass high school?”
“Yes, sir.”
He said, “You look in good shape. We’ll give you a physical and be in touch.”
The next day I got a call.
“Okay, kid,” the caller said, “you passed.”
“I passed—what?” I asked.
He said, “You’re gonna be in the navy, son.”
I figured I’d better talk to my folks before I was sworn in. I don’t think they could have changed my mind, but I did want their blessings.
My heart was drumming like Mr. Farnham’s rock crusher. I said, “Mom, guess what? I’m going to start working tomorrow for the government.”
She said, “What government?”
I said, “Uncle Sam’s. I just became a sailor.”
Her face fell. She had such ambitions for this boy of hers, and now he was going to be a sailor, which meant that I was to go away and God alone knew what would happen to me. She had all the natural trepidations of a mother. My father’s reaction was very different.
He said, “Son, you’re not going to be tied to your mother’s apron strings anymore and you’re going to find out what this world is all about. I envy you this adventure you’re about to have.”
He talked to my mother and calmed her fears. The next morning he and I kissed each other and off he went to work. I kissed my Mom and off I went to the navy.
It was 1935 and I took a bus, along with other guys, to the Newport Training Station in Newport, Rhode Island. I was promptly given a haircut, uniforms, and a lesson: fall asleep hard and sleep deep when you can. Otherwise, your butt will drag.
We slept in hammocks in those days. They were tough to get used to, but even tougher was learning just to get into a hammock. You were up a good four feet and you had to learn how to dip it with your butt and kind of hurl yourself in sideways, up and over. And once in it, you had to learn how to balance yourself. Every now and then you could hear somebody fall out with a great thud. You could hurt yourself badly that way. Some guys ended up with broken arms. And there was nothing quite like being rocked to sleep in a pitching sea. You didn’t only go from side to side but back to front and sometimes in little circles.
My hammock skills were pretty solid from the get-go, and my hammock-tying skills were even better. A superior officer was watching one day as I tied the lines after the hammocks were washed. He said, “What are you, a Boy Scout or something?”
I said, “Yes, sir.” For me, it was just another reminder of lessons you learned one place being applied someplace else.
I was homesick at first, but that was soon taken out of me by the press of duties and things I had to learn. I don’t know why, but 5:30 was the time they woke us all up. You had to dress, scrub your teeth, make up your hammock, then get to the real work. You had to learn the arms manuals and the right way to present arms and parade. You also had to learn how to use a bucket of water very sparingly. In boot camp, you had all the water you needed. When you got aboard ship, it would be an altogether different matter.
I spent all my free time studying and learning my blue jackets’ manual. You learned a lot of things that I’d already picked up as a kid, like discipline. You had to have discipline in order to make things run right. It was wonderful to feel myself growing up.
After about two or three weeks of boot camp, they allowed the parents to visit. I was washing clothes and hanging them with these little ribbon-like ties when my Mom and Dad arrived.
A fellow recruit ran up. “Borgnine, your folks are here. Report front and center.”
My mother and father had brought my two aunts and my sister Evelyn to see me. God, it was good to see them all and their big smiles—the biggest I’d ever seen—told me they felt the same. We spent a couple of hours together. I showed them around and they were very impressed. My mother saw the change in me and said so. My dad just smiled proudly, especially after I showed him how I handled a rifle.
That evening, I was on guard in front of B Barracks. I was walking along thinking how nice it had been for everyone to visit. I guess I was a little distracted. Suddenly, I saw somebody coming down the hill from the War College. I said to myself, “I’ll say, halt, who goes there?” And as I was thinking that, I heard a voice say, “Come on, son. Say, ‘Halt, who goes there?’”
I said stupidly, “Come on son, say halt who goes there?”
The response shivered my timbers from toe to chin. He said, “The captain of the base.”
I didn’t know whether to present arms or salute, throw the rifle around ceremoniously or throw it away.
I did none of those things. I just stood there, attentive as a sentry should be. The captain eyed me up and down and, apparently satisfied that I was sober and alert, he strode away.
I was lucky, that time. I never let myself daydream again while I was on duty.
I tried to be a good sailor, and evidently I did all right. They