Chapter 32
Twice in a Lifetime
Television had changed in the five-plus years since we’d stopped doing McHale’s Navy. TV movies like Legend in Granite were quality productions and made the studios money through repeat viewings and being sold overseas for theatrical release. And, of course, TV series were making an absolute fortune in syndication—sold to local stations for rerun after their network runs had ended.
Newly married to my dear Tova, I was eager to stay home for a while. Over the years, every producer in town seemed determined to come up with a seagoing idea for me, something to rival the popularity of McHale’s Navy. One of these actually got made, but was never picked up for a series. It was called Twice in a Lifetime, and had me as a tugboat skipper with Della Reese as my partner. We also had Arte Johnson of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In fame, Slim Pickens, and what I thought was a really great script. Seemed like a natural, but it didn’t sell to the front office. To this day, I don’t know why.
Law and Disorder (1974)
Sounds like that hit series that’s on the air now, doesn’t it?
It wasn’t. This was one of those movies that came and went.
In late 1974 I went to New York City to make Law and Disorder, with Carroll O’Connor, who was as hot as a pistol from playing Archie Bunker on the groundbreaking sitcom All in the Family. Carroll played a cabbie and I was his best friend, who owned a beauty salon. We lived in a rough area of New York where the crime was out of control, so we formed an auxiliary police force. Not a bad premise, and not a bad movie. Sometimes, though, things just don’t click.
My most vivid recollection of this one was our director, Ivan Passer, having a terrible time trying to keep everything together. Shooting on location can be a bear, and this was an important film for Carroll, who was trying to make it back to the big screen after his success on television. Most people don’t remember that he had been in movies like Lonely Are the Brave and Cleopatra before settling in that easy chair as Archie Bunker. Carroll was a little anxious, and a little controlling as a result. Whenever anything went wrong, Ivan would come to me and say, “What should I do, Ernest?”
I always tried to smooth things out by staying cool
I remember one day he came to me, really upset. “Ernest,” he said, “you know how this scene calls for just you and Carroll?”
I said, “Yes, that’s right.”
He said, “Well, Carroll wants his son and his wife in the scene, and they don’t belong.”
I said, “Well, couldn’t they make a pass in the background?”
Ivan said, “No, no, he wants them to have lines.”
His reason might have been more than just trying to get them exposure. When you talk on camera, you make more money.
Well, what do you do? Carroll and I talked and we ran the scene—once with and once without his family. He then saw the difficulty of giving them dialogue. He agreed that his wife and son couldn’t be worked in.
I don’t know where Ivan used them, but if you look really close you’ll see Carroll’s wife and son in there someplace.
Other than that, my most vivid recollection of this film was bloody knees. There was one scene where I was supposed to jump on the bed with actress Anita Dangler, who played my wife. Doing take after take with bare knees rubbed them raw and the next morning it was all I could do to wear pants. It was worth it, though—the scene played beautifully.
Yeah, I know. Poor me, having to jump into bed over and over with a beautiful lady!
Little House on the Prairie (1974)
In 1974 I was approached by Michael Landon’s casting director, Susan Sukman McCray, to do an episode of Little House on the Prairie. I read the script and said, “This is too sappy.” Shows you what I know! I didn’t want to do it at first, but they talked me into it. I’m glad they did, because it was one of the greatest experiences in my life. It was nice being back on the Universal back lot—boy, it had grown since the days of McHale’s Navy, and the tour was now organized with military precision and was real big business! After being over at Fox, which had shrunk, this was a real shocker. Plus, I loved working with Mike Landon, who was one of the nicest and most generous men I’ve met in this business. What a loss when he died so young.
The episode was entitled “Old Man of the Mountain.” On the show, Michael’s daughter, played by Melissa Gilbert, had run away. She made her way to a mountain and met up with a mountain man—who was me. Her family was going crazy because they didn’t know where she went and Michael started following a stream to see if he could find her. In the meantime, I taught her how to take care of a wounded dove and how to make a little cross and all kinds of stuff to survive in the wilderness.
The cross accidentally—or maybe on purpose—fell into the water and went down the river. Sure enough, Michael saw it and followed the stream and found his daughter. As he looked around, she said, “Dad, the man who helped me was here.” But no one was there.
Who could it have been?
The Devil’s Rain (1975)
What I was saying before about the Hollywood attitude of if-it-works-do-it-again certainly applies here.
The Exorcist was one of the biggest box-office smashes of all time and with its success came a lot of imitations. The Devil’s Rain was one of them. Not that it was a cheap rip-off like some of the others. It had solid production values and a decent script. Producer Sandy Howard, for whom I did The Neptune Factor, assembled an amazing cast: William Shatner, Ida Lupino, Tom Skerritt, Eddie Albert, Keenan Wynn, and an unknown Italian kid from New Jersey making his film debut, John Travolta, who played my son.
The story started three centuries ago, when my character, Jonathan Corbis, led a coven of witches. Ancestors of the Preston family had betrayed Corbis and his Satanists by concealing their sacred book. For hundreds of years, the Prestons have been able to keep the book, without which Corbis is unable to deliver the souls to Satan. The title refers to the inundation which the witches use to melt people. In the end, it causes me to go the way of the Wicked Witch of the West.
The thing I remember the most is putting on the devil makeup for the climactic scenes. It took about four-and-a-half hours to make me up. A little Mexican boy in the film took a liking to me. He thought I was the greatest, like his favorite uncle or something. I told him the first day that we were going to put on this makeup and I couldn’t be distracted, so I said, “Now you come back in about four hours, okay?”
So he came back and I turned around. You know, in my own head I’m still Ernie Borgnine. Well, he looked at me, let out one scream, and went running. And he never came back to see me.
I’ll never forget that makeup, because I didn’t have a lot of mobility. While it was on, I could only fork in a little rice and peas and beans, stuff like that, for lunch. Even so, food would drop into one of the nooks and crevices without my knowing it. So I’d be shooting a scene and doing dialogue and there would be a rice grain or two that would come flying out.
Bill Shatner was a hoot. He has a kind of florid style, as do I, and he’s just so entertaining to watch on the set and on the screen. At the time, he was trying to slip out from under the shadow of the character he played on Star Trek, Captain Kirk, and not having a lot of success. The show was a huge hit in syndication and that was how he was known. Guys like him and Adam West, who was Batman, became icons who were hired because they reminded audiences of beloved characters and personalities.
John Travolta had a relatively small part, but he had star quality. Six-foot-two with boyish good looks and a great smile, he was pretty shy, but that’s okay—a lot of actors are. But when the camera was on, he just lit up. I’m so glad for his success, and I appreciate the fact that unlike some stars who make it big, he doesn’t go around bad-mouthing the kind of odd movies they often make when they’re starting out (like me as a Chinese man). He’s a class act all around.
Shoot (1976)
We went up to Canada to make this film about a National Guard group who go hunting together and have a beer fest. While they’re out there, they encounter another band of hunters. One thing leads to another and the groups end up at war.
It was a mess from the word go. The picture was never shown in this country. According to the producer, the National Rifle Association paid the distributor not to release it. Who knows? Not me. I was just a hired gun, so to speak.
Cliff Robertson was my costar, and we had fun talking about his passion, which was flying. Cliff was another guy who started out in TV and made it big and we bonded over that. We had something else in common: he’d won the Best Actor Oscar in 1968 for Charly, and it hadn’t done him a lot of good, either. Here we were, in the boonies, making this silly thing. But I’m not complaining. We cashed the checks and did our best. Cliff’s still at it, too; he played Uncle Ben in the Spider-Man movie. I like Cliff.
I’ll never forget one of the funny things that happened.
Some manufacturer had come out with a series of stones that had sayings on them. You were supposed to carry them around or put them in your pocket and remind yourself how lucky you were, or not to miss an opportunity, or some such.
I happened to be walking to the set one day out in the wilderness and I saw this perfectly round stone. I picked it up and decided to introduce it as my personal advisor, Harry.
They looked at it and then at me like I flipped. But pretty soon, everyone was coming over and asking Harry for advice on how to play this scene or that, or where to invest their money. And they’d listen and pretend he was answering.
I was carrying Harry in my pocket in a scene where we were supposed to investigate a shed of some kind. But we were afraid there was a minefield, so we had to trip the explosives.
The director was trying to figure out the perfect thing to use, and I said, “I’ve got it! Harry.”
He said, “Who’s Harry?”
I said, “Him”—and pulled out the stone.
In the picture you will actually see the stone being thrown, which is Harry. Goofy? Hell, yeah. Goofy is what movies are sometimes all about!