Ernie: The Autobiography (3 page)

A little over a year later, on January 24, 1917, I was born. I know I made two people happy. One was my sainted mother who, of course, didn’t have to carry me anymore. I was a pretty big boy—no surprise there, about nine pounds. Even when I was on the outside of my mother, the poor lady had a rough time carrying me around. I don’t think it would’ve helped if they had those slings that moms have today. I’d have tipped her over like a bear cub stuck in a tree.

My father was happy, too, of course, though he was torn: my arrival kept him from enlisting to fight in World War I. But he had a new family to support and that’s what mattered to him most. I was touched and surprised when, years later, he confided to me, that not being able to serve is one of his few regrets.

“I wish to goodness I’d gone just to be able to know what it was all about.”

Dad was like that. Patriotic to the bone over his new homeland, and able to embrace and grow from all experiences, even negative ones. That outlook also kept me going during the lean years.

Unfortunately, Dad was also the kind of a person who was easily enticed to roll the dice with the men and have a drink or two. Two years after I was born my mother got tired of not having enough money due to his drinking and gambling, so she packed me up and we took a train ride to Chicago. We didn’t have the money for a Pullman sleeper, so we sat—and slept—in our seats for nearly two days.

The choice of Chicago was not as random as it seemed. First, it was far from the wagging tongues of Connecticut. Divorce was frowned on, and my mother didn’t want to hear any of that. Second, I was suffering from mastoiditis, an inflammation of the ears that caused me a lot of pain and kept filling with—and leaking—fluids that made it tough for me to hear. She knew someone who knew someone who knew a doctor who was a specialist.

This doctor told her to immerse me in a bathtub filled with water as cold as she could make it, which meant a layer of ice cubes. Then she was supposed to drain the tub and put me in very hot water. So with pans and kettles whistling, I’d be frozen, then boiled. It didn’t drain my ears, but it did crack the tub. I had the illness until I was about eighteen. To this day, I can’t bear to be in water that is anything other than “warm.” On the other hand, I had a lot of “damn cold” memories to draw on when I made
Ice Station Zebra
.

After a few months in Chicago, my mother took me to Italy to live. Her father was the well-to-do Count Boselli, who used to be the financial adviser to Victor Emmanuel, the King of Italy. I remember my grandfather’s farm. He had a big baronial estate. It even had its own church. I loved working on the farm with the farmers and riding the oxen they called “Bo.”

In the fall they slaughtered the pigs, which consisted of hitting them on the head and cutting their throats. It was actually quite merciful. They’d always take the bladder of one, blow it up, and make a kind of football out of it. We played some bruising games with those bladders, enjoying the kind of camaraderie you just don’t find outside a rustic village. Today, people have much less interaction. It’s a shame. I learned a lot about life from those farmers, especially the idea that if you work together, without ego—whatever you’re doing—the end result is a lot richer. Not surprisingly, the movies I made that turned out best had that kind of mutual support on the set.

It was enchanting in Italy except for going to religious schools. Nuns can be awfully nice people, but they’re not all Julie Andrews. They’re strict. Some of them were just plain mean. I sure caught my share of their discipline. I used to go home with my hands swollen from being beaten. My mother would ask me, “Why are you such a bad boy?”

I’d say, “I’m not bad. But if I ask a question too loud or at the wrong time or drop a book, they come along and swat me.”

“Just remember,” she said, not wanting to criticize the nuns, “God knows the truth.”

I was okay with that. When I face Saint Peter, I’m betting he’ll wink and let me pass.

Naturally, we went to our little church on the estate every Sunday. With my mother there, I felt safe from the nuns. After Mass, while we were waiting for Sunday dinner to be prepared, my uncle used to take me on the barge that went across the river. Despite my fear of the cold water, I enjoyed those trips. It’s funny, now, to think about how I had ridden almost all the forms of transportation known to man at the time. I’d been on a boat, a train, an early motorcar, a horse, and an ox. All I was missing was a trip on a biplane, which would occasionally pass overhead to our great excitement. Back then, you could actually get your arms around much of what the world had to offer.

Talking about change, I went back there recently and saw the river I used to cross. They have a bridge there now. You can cross quickly and easily by foot or car. It’s faster, but not necessarily better.

I loved watching my grandfather go to work in the morning. He had his own carriage and horse and he was driven by a coachman. He would sit in the backseat with his long cutaway coat, his top hat, cane, and even spats. Everybody bowed to him as he passed, and he bowed back

“Buon giorno, buon giorno
, how are you, how are you?” he would reply with a gracious wave of his hand.

My grandfather died before Mussolini took over and the king became nothing but a figurehead. The new regime’s changes trickled down to our family as well. Except for the farmhands, all the people that used to respect him, and us, were now rude and impatient whenever we went to town.

“Come on, get out of the way, you’re bothering us,” they’d say as they tried to ride their horses or carts past our carriage. And the indignities didn’t stop there. The local government took my family’s land and most of their possessions. My mother and grandmother ended up in the little town of Carpi. My mother had a little coffee shop and sold drinks on the side to customers who had hangovers.

To me, though, the move was a new adventure. I missed the farm and the farmhands, but now I had all of Carpi as my backyard along with kids my own age. I remember as a boy I used to go to the coffee shop and stuff candy in my clothes. Then I would hide underneath my grandmother’s big bed. Looking out, I’d see my mother and my grandmother walk into the room. Knowing exactly where I was, they’d say to each other, “I wonder where that little bad boy went,” and there I’d be eating candy and thinking I’d fooled them—again and again. I’d finally pop out from underneath. My grandmother always laughed and hugged me. You would never guess, from her quick smile and gentle eyes, how much she had lost to the new regime.

She died when I was about six years old. She had a huge funeral. People didn’t come to the funeral because she was nobility and they felt obligated. They came because she was a great lady who had earned the love and respect of her community.

Chapter 3

Back Home

A
ll the time we were in Italy my father had been writing to my mother. “Please come home, please come home,” he’d write at least once a week. He even sent a record for the Victrola with lyrics that went, “My son, my son, my boy, my boy.”

My dad was persistent.

After a few years my mother broke down. They did love each other, and my father said he had settled down and gotten a good job and they’d live nicely. Also, once again, my poor health contributed to a move. I’d managed to come down with malaria, which was almost epidemic in coastal regions of Italy in the early 1920s. The doctors told my mother that the moist climate wasn’t good for me and I should be taken somewhere else. Connecticut seemed a good bet.

In 1923, we came back on a ship called the
Dante Alighieri
, which was named after the famed Italian poet, of course. Dante wrote about hell. During my passage to America, I got a taste of what that was like. The very first morning at sea my mother dressed me up in these Lord Fauntleroy clothes with a little flowing tie and a knickers suit, all hand knitted. She told me where to wait for her in the dining room and she’d be right there. I got strange looks from some of the more rough-and-tumble kids who were traveling third class, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

When I walked up this passageway I suddenly felt the ungodliest thing in my life: my stomach seemed to be knocking up against my tongue. I was immensely seasick, so I just dashed into the first room I could find. I lay on my back and in the dim light I looked up and saw this man’s face in the bunk above. He looked like Lon Chaney in makeup. And I’d woken him. I was frightened, but I was just too sick to move.

In the meantime, my mother went to the dining room expecting to see me.

“Where’s my boy, where’s my boy?” she said with increasing alarm. She began to shout that I had gone overboard.

Well, that mean-looking man had heard the commotion and, slipping from his bunk, he scooped me in his arms and took me into the bright daylight. He followed the shouting and reunited me with my mother.

My mother was so glad to see me she hugged me and hit me at the same time. I was still sick and finally threw up. My mother didn’t care. She was actually on the way back to the cabin where she had a pistol and was intending to shoot herself, convinced she had lost me.

My second punishment during the passage came when we were coming into New York Harbor. Everyone was gathered at the railing, watching as we passed the Statue of Liberty. Except me. There was a sandbox on deck, and I noticed that there was no one in it. So I went over and started to play. No sooner had I picked up a little wooden shovel than my mother grabbed my ear—so hard, in fact, that we could have skipped the hot-cold treatments to drain my ears and just had her yank them. She dragged me to the bow, put me at attention, and slapped me on the backside.

“When you see that lady, you stand at attention,” she commanded.

I’ve been standing at attention for this country ever since, believe me.

Chapter 4

Connecticut Memories

I
t’s a weird thing to look at your father and see a stranger. He seemed vaguely familiar and yet he wasn’t familiar at all. And it wasn’t as if I could see my features in his. I was only seven and my face was that of a boy. This was a man with a hint of red hair and a stern look about him. He obviously recognized me, though, because he came over and hugged me with the big hull of the ship behind me. The smell of brick dust on him kicked the smell of the sea out of my nose. We claimed our big trunk and made our way crosstown to Grand Central Station. The noise and smoke and crowds of the city were startling after years spent on the farm and then on Carpi. But it was also energizing and my eyes darted everywhere, taking it all in. Especially Times Square, which we passed through on the way to the train station. The marquees of the theaters, the bulbs and neon of the signs, the big billboards advertising more movies than I’d seen in my entire life, were hypnotic. That wasn’t when the acting bug bit me, but I sure felt the beating of its little wings.

Except for the clothes on my back and the memories in my head, I hadn’t brought anything of the old country with me. But that was okay. My mother said that this was going to be a new start.

“Another one,” she added wistfully.

We returned to North Haven, where my Dad was true to his word. He had settled down and my parents were very happy together. A year after our return my mother had a daughter, Evelyn June Borgnine, born on April 25th. It was quite an exciting event for me not because I had a sister—that hadn’t hit me yet—but because I had the chance to place telephone calls to my aunts and my grandmother, who lived nearby, to tell them the news. Even the operator sensed the excitement in my voice and wanted to know what was up. I told her. She didn’t know me from General Pershing, but she congratulated me just the same.

My baby sister and I became great friends. She trusted me to look out for her, in the school yard, at picnics, at the movies, wherever we went. And I did. Except for once, which I’ll get to in a bit.

Everything was fine for a while. In fact, the only problem was school. When we first got back, my mother sent me to classes with those Lord Fauntleroy clothes. I walked onto the school grounds and saw these kids rolling down a hill inside a tire hoop and went over to see if I could play, too. They looked at me and, like they had a single brain thinking the same thought, one of the kids said, “Would you like to roll down the hill?”

The other boys all nodded.

I said, “Yes, yes,
mio amico
, I’d like to go, sure.” I snuggled into the narrow rubber ring, but instead of rolling me the way they had gone, they turned me around and shoved me over the other side. Not only was it a rockier road, which knocked my insides around, but when I reached the bottom the tire fell to its side and I landed in the biggest puddle you ever saw. I never went to school that first day. I went home, filthy and soaked, and my mother let me have three swats across the backside for being such a sap.

The next day I went back to school and acted like nothing happened. Actually, I’m not sure the kids even recognized me. My poufy outfit was all dirty, so I wore overalls and a button-down shirt.

I wouldn’t say I was the best student in the world. Mathematics eluded me. I did not like the regimentation of it, I think. A plus B equals C. There was no room for the imagination. I guess that was why I liked history and geography. I liked thinking about different times and places and picturing myself in them. Not quite the acting bug yet, but another glimpse of those wings batting by! I also liked English, especially spelling. I liked comparing those words to the Italian words I knew. They made me feel richer, somehow.

I had only been in that school two semesters when the Depression hit and we had to move. We relocated to rooms in Hamden where there was more work, and then to New Haven when a house became available for rent. It was located on Cherry Ann Street and was owned by the City or the bank, possibly a foreclosure. All I know is that we paid $15.00 a month for it. Can you imagine: an entire house for the cost of a movie ticket nowadays. Talk about change!