Ernie: The Autobiography (27 page)

Chapter 35

A Couple of Good Friends

O
ne fine day I was approached by a gentleman who said, “How’d you like to do theater in the round?”

I said, “No, thanks. I gave up theater a long time ago.”

He said, “But you’d be doing it with Don Rickles in Neil Simon’s
The Odd Couple
.”

I said what any half-crazy actor would say upon hearing such news: “Okay. Let me think about it.”

I’ve known Don Rickles ever since he first started out at the Slate Brothers nightclub here in Los Angeles. Don even worked me into his act. He was onstage and, as always, he’d pick out people in the audience and say something sassy. In this case, it was some random woman. Don said, “There she is, ladies and gentlemen, the first runner-up in the Ernest Borgnine look-alike contest.” I thought he was so funny that after the show I went backstage, where his mother gave me soup.

Etta Rickles would say, “Stand behind my Don, because he’s a good boy.”

He is, too. As cutting as he can be onstage, he’s warm and loving in private.

I decided to take the job. I’d be playing the slob Oscar Madison, and he’d be the prissy Felix Unger. Perfect. And I figured, what the hell? Don had done a lot of acting, in TV shows like
F-Troop
and
Get Smart
and films like
Kelly’s Heroes
. If nothing else, it would be a howl.

We started rehearsing in a room at my house littered with my kids’ toys. The first day he didn’t know the script at all.

I said, “Listen, you’ve gotta study these lines.”

He said, “What do you mean study? I don’t study.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

He told me he “kind of” learned lines for movies but did a lot of improvisation. He only had to learn a few lines for any given scene, then go onto the next one. I pointed out the obvious: the stage isn’t like that. You need to know the whole play.

I said, “You go home and you learn these lines.”

I gave him two pages to rehearse and to come up the next day to do it. He couldn’t get it in his head.

I said, “Listen, you’ve gotta work on these things. It’s a show. You’re going to perform it in front of people.”

He said, “But I don’t talk this way.”

“You’ve got to do it the way the author put it down on the page.”

He thought about it a little and said, “Okay, I’m going to go home, but I don’t think I’m going to last. I don’t want to do this.”

I said, “Do it or I’ll flatten you.”

So he went home and started rehearsing. The next day he showed up and we started doing the play. After a couple of weeks we had it down pretty pat.

We went up to San Francisco, where we were set to open. The very first thing he did as he came onstage to check it out was ask, “Where’s all the toys?” It knocked me for a loop.

On opening night, everything was moving along nicely. The show opens with us playing poker. Felix wasn’t there yet and we were waiting for Don to make his entrance. I know he’s going to call me a liar, but this is the truth. He walked onstage like a zombie.

He didn’t know where the hell he was going or what he was doing. He started coming straight across that round stage, instead of coming to the table. I thought, “Oh God, I know it’s wrong.”

I tried to cover for him by going over and saying, “Hey, what’s the matter, Felix?”

It was like the bell sounding for a fighter. He was suddenly back in the game, and he gave the goddamndest performance that I’ve ever seen in my life. He just came across like a million bucks.

Bob Aldrich came to see the show and said, “Jesus, I fell down on both knees. You are the funniest guys I’ve ever seen in my life!”

But we didn’t play it for fun. I have since seen it with so-called comics that tried and fell flat on their faces because the show wasn’t written that way. The comedy comes from the characterizations and the situation—you have to play it as seriously as you would Shakespeare. Otherwise, it just doesn’t work.

Neil Simon went in to see Don Rickles after he saw the play. He didn’t come in to see me because I was busy with something or other, but I wish he had. I sure would have liked to talk to him. Anyway, he said to Don, “If you ever repeat what I’m about to tell you, I’ll deny it. But you two are the first guys that ever did this show the way I had it written.”

I’ll never forget the comment that Don Rickles made about me when he was interviewed later in his room. Asked if I were good to work with, he answered: “Yes, and if anybody ever says a bad word about that Guinea bastard, I’ll kill ’em.”

Every time that I have appeared somewhere with him or at his shows he has never spoken my name except with grace and gratitude. He’s just one of the most marvelous guys I’ve ever known in my life. I appreciate it. I want Don to know it, too. So Don, if you’re out there reading this, I love you.

Another friend who is really one of the good guys is Mel Larson. How I met Mel was just one of those things. A friend of ours by the name of C. V. Wood was married to Joanne Dru, who starred in
She
Wore a Yellow Ribbon
and many other pictures. They were a great couple. I made a terrible picture with Joanne in 1980, something called
Super Fuzz
, about a cop who gets superpowers after being exposed to radiation. I played his police mentor and Joanne was the wicked Rosy Labouche. It was yesterday’s soup warmed over, and not very good soup to start.

Anyway, C.V. came up to me one day and said, “We’d like to have you come up as a judge in a chili contest.”

I said, “What the hell is that?”

“Well, you’re a good cook. You just come up to where we’re having this thing and judge the chili.”

I said, “Okay, fine.”

He said, “I’ll have you picked up at the airport and fly you out.”

I went to the airport and in comes this helicopter. Mel Larson is the pilot.

“Hello, how are you?” he asked. “Would you like to sit up front with me?”

I said, “Sure.”

The first thing you know we’re going along, talking away, getting to know each other. After the chili contest, he brought us back.

That was it until one day a few weeks later, my old buddy George Lindsey—Goober on
The Andy Griffith Show
—said, “Listen, you remember that pilot who flew you to the chili cook-off?”

I said, “Yeah, nice guy. What about him?”

He said, “He’s having a birthday and he’d like us to come to Vegas to help celebrate.”

That sounded like fun, so off we went.

I had only met Mel that one day, but I discovered that in addition to being a pilot he was one of the executive heads of the Las Vegas casino Circus Circus. We went to Vegas and met him, all togged out in a pink tuxedo. We thought that was a little nutty, but it turned out to be a lot of fun.

Mel and I became good friends from that, which was why he called me up one day and said, “Hey, how’d you like to go cross-country with me, take a helicopter all the way from here to Abingdon, Virginia?”

I said, “I’ll go with you on one condition.”

He said, “Name it.”

I said, “That we buzz the Barter Theatre.”

He said, “You got it.”

We left and, once airborne, we found Superhighway 40 and simply followed it clean across the country. We landed in all kinds of places. We were going to go down through to New Orleans to visit a friend of his. But it was rainy and foggy and we didn’t get too far. By Tennessee he decided, “We better put down.” So—I kid you not—we landed by one of those $6.00-a-day motels.

Everybody came running out because they’d never seen a helicopter up close before. Mel checked the weather forecast and it didn’t look good, so we stayed there till it lifted, our chopper parked in the lot. Not too many helicopters landed here, evidently. It was like people from outer space had arrived. And when they saw me, people said, “Oh my God, it’s Ernest Borgnine!”

The manager was from India. He said to me, “You are a most valued person in India. We love your work, we’ve loved you for many years. You have a great name over there.”

That made me feel pretty good. I could only guess at what Ethel Merman would have done had she heard that.

He gave us two rooms, one for Mel and one for me and we promptly fell asleep. After you’ve been riding in a helicopter, the silence of even a cheap hotel room is intoxicating. Also, we had imbibed a little bit the night before and we really needed to sleep.

When we woke up it was still miserable out. We weren’t going anywhere. The staff took us to lunch and then lent us an automobile so I could buy dry shoes. My feet were getting soaked from the rain. We went into a Wal-Mart. It was close to Christmastime and there was a Santa Claus there. I said to Mel, “Watch this. I’ll go sit on Santa’s knee.” I went over and sat down. He couldn’t see my face clearly because of the whiskers and the fact that I leaned pretty close so none of the kids could hear. I said, “Listen, Santa, I’d like to have a blonde.”

He said, without missing a beat, “So would I.”

I cracked up. Still laughing, I got myself a pair of shoes and off we went.

After we got home, I went with Mel Larson to his Circus Circus office on Christmas morning. He had to check some work. The telephone rang and it was this man who had been Santa Claus in Tennessee. He had gotten the number from the people at the motel.

He said, “I’ve got to speak to Ernest Borgnine. I’m the guy that played Santa Claus.”

Mel said, “Oh, yes. As a matter of fact he’s standing right here.”

He gave me the telephone and the guy said, “Do you remember sitting on my lap when I was playing Santa Claus?”

I said, “Uh-huh.”

He said “Well, I’ve got a question to ask you.”

“Go ahead and ask.”

He said, “I didn’t know who you were when you were here. Would you mind very much if they take my picture while I’m talking to you on the phone?”

Oh yeah. Before coming home, we did buzz the Barter Theatre—not during a show, of course—and everybody came out to look. Once we landed, I introduced Mel to the company. I’ve got to say, I felt like someone had stripped away thirty-plus years. As I looked at the place I remembered what it felt like to be a kid again, scared and a little lost and wondering how the hell things were going to work out.

They turned out okay.

Jimmy Durante and his wife, Marge, were great friends of mine. We used to celebrate New Year’s Eve together, and he’d play the piano for us.

As Jimmy got on in years, he pretty much stayed away from the piano. In fact, he’d just sit and not say too much at all. One day, I was looking at the Sunday paper and it showed a marching band in the valley that went around playing for different events. I said, “What a great thing it would be to have a band come over and serenade Jimmy Durante on his birthday.”

I called up the band and the leader naturally answered, “Yes, who’s calling?”

I said, “This is Ernest Borgnine calling. I’d like to arrange for the band to play.”

“Oh, come on, this isn’t Ernest Borgnine.”

I said, “I’m not kidding.”

He said, “Give me your number and I’ll call you back.” So I gave him the number and he called me back. “Is this really Ernest Borgnine?”

I said, “Yes. Next week is Jimmy Durante’s birthday party. I’d like for you and your band to come marching in and really give him a surprise.”

On his birthday, two big buses rolled into Beverly Hills to Jimmy’s house. Immediately the police were all up in arms saying, “What’s going on here?” They thought it was going to be a protest.

I arrived at just about the same time as the Beverly Hills P.D. and said, “It’s Jimmy Durante’s birthday and this band is going to serenade him.”

Talk about an attitude change. The cops couldn’t do enough for us. We went marching through Beverly Hills to his home, then surrounded the home and played a serenade for Jimmy. He got so excited that he threw open the door, went over to the piano, and started playing “Inka Dinka Do.” He came out of his slump and, for that short hour or two, he was the happiest man in the world. I don’t have to tell you how happy it made me to see how much he was enjoying it.

When he passed away in January of 1980, and they were lowering the casket into the ground, I said to Marge, “Would you mind very much if I say something?”

She said, “No, not at all.”

I said, through tears, my voice choking, “All right, folks. Let’s hear it one more time for Jimmy Durante.”

Everybody started to applaud.

Chapter 36

Back to Work

When Time Ran Out
(1980)

I
t did, sort of, for Irwin Allen

In 1980, following the failure of a couple of big films—
The Swarm
and
Beyond the Poseidon Adventure
—Irwin tried for the gold once again with another huge disaster epic about a volcano. He had Paul Newman in the lead, with Jacqueline Bisset, William Holden, Red Buttons, and a bunch of others, including me. My character is a cop out to nab Red Buttons, who’s a crook.

Paul Newman, as I understand, did not want to make this movie. He was still under contract to Irwin Allen since costarring in
The Towering Inferno
, so he had to make it, but he wasn’t very amiable. Irwin’s plan had been to do a sequel to
The Towering Inferno
with Paul as the star, but it never came about after the sequel to
The Poseidon Adventure
flopped. In the few times I saw him after we made the picture, Paul was never one of the more outgoing guys you’d want to meet. He’s another of the shy ones I was talking about.

Part of the problem with this picture was that Irwin didn’t have enough money to make it. We were on location in Hawaii, which was nice but very costly. The stars were expensive. That meant cutting corners on the sets and the all-important special effects, which were downright cheesy.

The film was a failure and was Irwin’s last theatrical picture. He made a handful of TV movies after that, but he never recaptured that two-picture moment of glory he enjoyed in the early 1970s, or on TV in the 1960s. He died in 1991 at the age of seventy-five of a heart attack. I was sad, but not surprised.