Ernest Borgnine RIP

[Vigo]

How is that possible that you are a movie buff and never heard of Ernest Borgnine? 

I think it is appropriate that I quote Ernie for this: "You kids with your loud music, and your Dan Fogelberg, your Zima, hula hoops and pac-man video games!" 

[shmokes]

Because his resume consists almost exclusively of things like bit parts in Touched By an Angel? We can do this all day. 

Also, who is Don Fogelberg?

[Vigo]

Well, then quit looking at the tv guest appearances of a 95 year old actor. You can find twice the number of crappy tv guest spots looking at tim curry's imdb.

 Have you not seen the Dirty Dozen or Flight of the Phoenix. How about McHale's Navy?

[shmokes]

No, Yes, No.

It's not just a 95 year old actor. It's like the last 40 straight years of his career (aka longer than I've been alive). Anyway, I simply don't know the name of every single actor (no matter how small the role) in every single thing I've ever seen. Especially for a movie I saw almost a decade ago that was a piece of garbage . . . wait, lol, I saw the crappy remake of Flight of the Phoenix, not the original. But, christ, even looking at the original, Borgnine didn't even star in that film. He just had a supporting role as "Trucker Cobb". How am I even supposed to take you people seriously with examples like that? I'm supposed to know the name of an actor because he had a supporting role in a 45 year old movie! I think y'all doth protest too much. 

[Mysterioii]

We all knew his name...  Despite your assertion that nobody would.     Do you know who Mickey Rooney is?  Not Andy Rooney, the other Rooney.

IMO Borgnine was famous BECAUSE he was a supporting guy, B-movie type for most of his career.  Trust me, none of us went out of our way to learn who he was, we just knew... because for our whole frickin' lives the guy's been popping up all over the dang place...   

[saint]

Well, I don't have strong feelings on Ernest dying, I just found your perspective odd. It's the equivalent of not knowing who Kevin Bacon is. If you're not a media consumer, sure - but you are a media consumer, just one with odd foibles.

No, Yes, No.

It's not just a 95 year old actor. It's like the last 40 straight years of his career (aka longer than I've been alive). Anyway, I simply don't know the name of every single actor (no matter how small the role) in every single thing I've ever seen. Especially for a movie I saw almost a decade ago that was a piece of garbage . . . wait, lol, I saw the crappy remake of Flight of the Phoenix, not the original. But, christ, even looking at the original, Borgnine didn't even star in that film. He just had a supporting role as "Trucker Cobb". How am I even supposed to take you people seriously with examples like that? I'm supposed to know the name of an actor because he had a supporting role in a 45 year old movie! I think y'all doth protest too much. 

[Vigo]

Yeah, there are a lot of supporting guys who do excellent work. I would hold Martin Landau in the same regard as Ernest Borgnine, although he is much more a drama actor and not a comedian. He has had a career of similar caliber, done equal amounts voice over and guest appearance in his late career, and I can't think of a single major lead role he has held. (Which reminds me, I was much more upset when Peter Graves died, and he was much less of a household name actor.)

It just is a shame when a well known guy you knew from years of TV and movies dies.

Oh, and go see The Dirty Dozen, its an excellent film and required viewing if you like war movies, especially if you like ones off the rail like Inglorious ---daisies--- or Kelly's Heroes.

[Drnick]

Wow Shmokes, a little touchy.  As for me, I knew who Ernest was, But only because of The Dirty Dozen, The poseidon adventure, Escape from New York The Wild Bunch,  Mostly he will always be that guy from Airwolf for me :-)  and I will never forget this verse from "Your Horoscope for today" Weird al yankovic.

SAGITTARIUS! All your friends are laughing behind your back... kill them.  Take down all those naked pictures of Ernest Borgnine you've got hanging in your den.

[saint]

Wasn't he the lead in Space 1999?

Yeah, there are a lot of supporting guys who do excellent work. I would hold Martin Landau in the same regard as Ernest Borgnine, although he is much more a drama actor and not a comedian. He has had a career of similar caliber, done equal amounts voice over and guest appearance in his late career, and I can't think of a single major lead role he has held. (Which reminds me, I was much more upset when Peter Graves died, and he was much less of a household name actor.)

It just is a shame when a well known guy you knew from years of TV and movies dies.

Oh, and go see The Dirty Dozen, its an excellent film and required viewing if you like war movies, especially if you like ones off the rail like Inglorious ---daisies--- or Kelly's Heroes.

[saint]

Wasn't he the lead in Space 1999?

Yeah, there are a lot of supporting guys who do excellent work. I would hold Martin Landau in the same regard as Ernest Borgnine, although he is much more a drama actor and not a comedian. He has had a career of similar caliber, done equal amounts voice over and guest appearance in his late career, and I can't think of a single major lead role he has held. (Which reminds me, I was much more upset when Peter Graves died, and he was much less of a household name actor.)

It just is a shame when a well known guy you knew from years of TV and movies dies.

Oh, and go see The Dirty Dozen, its an excellent film and required viewing if you like war movies, especially if you like ones off the rail like Inglorious ---daisies--- or Kelly's Heroes.

Yep, he was! Used to love that show when I was a kid. Think I heard somewhere that it's getting a reboot.

[ChadTower]

I don't at all dislike him. I didn't say unknown; I recognized him instantly. I said none of us knew his name. Which I think is almost certainly true, or at least almost none of us knew his name.

OK, I'll rephrase - *I* knew his name

+1

He was far more famous than shmokes wants to admit.

I softly agree that we don't need a thread when a celebrity passes away of old age.  It's a morbid thing to have a mini wake every time someone that we only knew from TV/movies passes away.  I generally ignore them but figured I'd post here to mention that I knew his name too.

Maybe we should sticky an RIP <old entertainer> thread and bump it when someone dies.   

[shmokes]

Apparently more famous than I was aware. I'm skeptical, sure, primarily because I do tend to have a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of Hollywood. But plenty slips through the cracks. It really has little to do with not wanting to admit it. I just find the claims incompatible with the evidence and my own experiences.

As for Kevin Bacon, Saint, you can't be serious. He was played the villain in the X-men summer blockbuster just last summer! He's one of the most well-known memes in history: six degrees of Kevin Bacon. I'll freely grant that I may have projected and underestimated the number of people who knew Ernest Borgnine by name (I still have difficulty believing it or understanding why so many people would know his name), but EVERY American adult knows who Kevin Bacon is.

[ChadTower]

You're all about titles, accolades, and "letting the community collectively decide what is good" in Hollywood.  You know, the Rotten Tomatoes thing.

So, let's consider this guy's resume:

• Academy Award:  Best Actor
• Golden Globe:  Best Actor
• Emmys in three different decades
• SAG:  Lifetime Achievement Award

He was in the main cast of two successful network television shows and a whole lot of very well known movie classics.  More of either than Kevin Bacon.

[Vigo]

No joke, just yesterday I was talking to coworkers about Kevin bacon during lunch. Two of them didn't even know who Kevin Bacon was. Yeah, they were the young'uns. 21ish. I was the only one there under 30 who knew what 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon meant.

I guess the Baconator is not so popular these days.  

[Mysterioii]

EVERY American adult knows who Kevin Bacon is.

All but one knew who Ernest Borgnine was...   

[shmokes]

You're all about titles, accolades, and "letting the community collectively decide what is good" in Hollywood.  You know, the Rotten Tomatoes thing.

So, let's consider this guy's resume:

• Academy Award:  Best Actor
• Golden Globe:  Best Actor
• Emmys in three different decades
• SAG:  Lifetime Achievement Award

He was in the main cast of two successful network television shows and a whole lot of very well known movie classics.  More of either than Kevin Bacon.

1956, Chad. Seriously.

Anyway, I'm not about any of those things. They are indicators, that's it. They allow you to make educated guesses, rather than wild guesses. Just recently I discussed how much I disliked The Artist, which I think won Best Picture this year. I also hated, HATED Titanic. And Spy Kids (no Oscar, but like 90+ on the Tomato Meter, IIRC). I just watched The Kid With a Bike, which is not only critically acclaimed (96% at RT), but French, and I absolutely hated it.

Trust me, a narcissist like me would never allow the community to trump his own opinions.  

[shmokes]

EVERY American adult knows who Kevin Bacon is.

All but one knew who Ernest Borgnine was...   

They certainly claim to, at any rate.   

[ChadTower]

1956, Chad. Seriously.

Yep.  1956 matters in Hollywood when we're talking about someone that was still prominently working in 2011.

[shmokes]

So long as you have a flexible definition of "prominently". "Prolifically" is probably a more appropriate description.

[ChadTower]

So long as you have a flexible definition of "prominently". "Prolifically" is probably a more appropriate description.

Also consider "Perpetually".

[shmokes]

Agreed. Both prolifically and perpetually work well, and both lend some credence to your claim. But I don't think you can make a good argument to complete the alliteration with "prominently". He has not had prominent roles in decades, let alone 2011.

[ChadTower]

He won an Emmy in 2009.  I would call that prominent.

Spongebob Squarepants is prominent if we want to count voice acting.

[saint]

You're all about titles, accolades, and "letting the community collectively decide what is good" in Hollywood.  You know, the Rotten Tomatoes thing.

I think that's actually me

[shmokes]

Spongebob Squarepants is prominent if we want to count voice acting.

Yeah, we don't want to count that. Unless you think people spend much time reading credits after children's cartoons.

And even his Emmy is only questionably prominent. Nobody watches the Emmys to begin with (fewer than 15 million, compared with greater than 40 million for the Academy Awards, for example). And his award was for Outstanding Guest Actor. Which almost by definition is the opposite of a prominent role in a TV series (key word being guest).

I agree that his stint on ER appears to be his most prominent role in a very long time. But I wouldn't describe the role as objectively prominent.

[ChadTower]

That's reasonable.  The issue at hand, though, is not how recent his prominence is.  The issue is overall fame and familiarity.   

The opposite of a prominent role in a TV series can't be an Emmy winning guest spot.  It would be more like sitting at a PC arguing over how famous Ernest Borgnine should be considered.

FML.   

[shmokes]

Agreed. 100%. See below.

It just strikes me as strange that he has a thread dedicated to him . . . . But now it's beginning to strike me as even stranger that I'm in here defending this position so ardently. So I guess I'll stop.

And yet . . . here I am.

[hypernova]

Apparently more famous than I was aware. I'm skeptical, sure, primarily because I do tend to have a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of Hollywood. But plenty slips through the cracks. It really has little to do with not wanting to admit it. I just find the claims incompatible with the evidence and my own experiences.

I've been in that boat once or twice.  I've got a fairly good (and relatively useless) knowledge of Hollywood as well, and end up hearing a name that's supposedly famous that I've never heard of.  Then I see a picture or something about their roles, and I'll recognize them.  Like I said, it's rare though.  Admittedly, I may not have been able to pick Borgnine's picture out of a lineup of old, slightly less famous (currently) people, but I've heard his name plenty of times over the years.

[shmokes]

Exactly the opposite for me. I mean, exactly the same concept, but with name and face reversed. I instantly recognize his face, but I've never known his name. Not like I just forgot it or I couldn't necessarily produce it on command. Seeing his name on this thread wasn't like, "Oh . . . that's right, his name is Ernest Borgnine." It was just a brand new thing. I recognize the actor, but have definitely never known his name.

And that's especially unusual for me, because I have an excellent head for facts, but I'm much less competent with faces (and I'm completely retarded with directions). My wife, on the other hand, never forgets a face. Like, uncanny, never forgets. So she'll be watching, like, an episode of SVU and she'll be like, "That guy is from that one movie. What's that movie with . . . OMG . . . what's his name . . . he's in Star Wars . . . "

"Mark Hamill?"

"No . . . the like . . . good looking guy."

"Harrison Ford?"

"Yeah . . . what's that movie he was in a long time ago where some guy gets murdered in a bathroom or something and an Amish kid witnesses it?"

"The Witness?"

"Oh yeah . . . haha . .. yeah.  That guy is the kid from The Witness."

"What? That guy is like 40! You can't tell if he's the kid from the Witness."

"No . . . That's totally him."

And, of course, it's totally him. It's always him. She's never wrong. This sort of thing happens ALL THE TIME. My wife and I play like a six-degrees-of-separation game to get to any movie she's thinking of. Like, "What's the name of such and such movie where such and such happens? Right . . . remember the bad guy in that movie? He was in that other movie with that one black guy, what's that black guy's name? Okay . . . what was the name of the movie he was in where he played a cop tracking down a serial killer?

[Malenko]

I said none of us knew his name. Which I think is almost certainly true, or at least almost none of us knew his name....... And it's not like any of us, not a single one of us, ever in our entire lives went out of our way to watch something because we knew that Ernest Borgnine was in it.

I knew who he was. Why pigeon hole us all?

I watched Airwolf because of him, Jan Michael Vincent was a 


---smurfing--- AIR WOLF BRO



AIR WOLF

also, he was hilarious in Baseketball.

[ark_ader]

Agreed. Both prolifically and perpetually work well, and both lend some credence to your claim. But I don't think you can make a good argument to complete the alliteration with "prominently". He has not had prominent roles in decades, let alone 2011.

I will always remember him as Harry Booth in The Black Hole.

Another film that is getting a reboot.

[Well Fed Games]

I will always remember him as Harry Booth in The Black Hole.

Another film that is getting a reboot.

That movie freaked me out as a kid- crazy propeller chopper hand things!

[wp34]

Unless I'm missing something I'm only seeing three "RIP" threads in the last month with another one two months ago.  Doesn't seem like all that much traffic to me.