Ernest Borgnine Dies at 95
The world won't have a Grandpa for Christmas this year: actor Ernest Borgnine, who won an Academy Award for his title role in Marty, died Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 95.
Borgnine had an over-six decade career in Hollywood, beginning in 1951 with the unlikely role of a Chinese shopkeeper (they were different times, man) and working steadily up until his death. In 1955, he won a Best Actor Oscar in the role of a good-natured, perpetually-single butcher in Delbert Mann's Marty, a film that also won an Academy Award for Best Picture of that year. The actor from there went on to roles in tough-guy films like The Wild Bunch and The Dirty Dozen, but will likely be better remembered for the television roles that dotted his résumé and placed his gap-toothed grin in the homes of several generations of viewers. Starting with the central role of McHale in McHale's Navy in the '60s, Borgnine continued to make his mark on TV with parts in Future Cop in the '70s (it was sort of RoboCop, but with Ernest Borgnine, and extremely unpopular), amidst the helicopter drama of Airwolf in the '80s, in The Single Guy in the '90s, and, most recently, in Spongebob Squarepants, where his voice projected that Borgnine charm even through the starfish spread across Mermaidman's face.
Rest well, Ernest Borgnine, and may your affable doorman part on Jonathan Silverman's NBC sitcom be cited as a key inspiration for Saint Peter's similar work. More complete obituary available at The New York Times.
