Ernest Borgnine, actor, died July 8, aged 95. He won an Oscar for the lead role in Marty (1955). His genre roles included The Devil’s Rain (1975), The Ghost of Flight 401 (tv movie, 1978), The Black Hole (1979), Escape From New York and Deadly Blessing (both 1981), Airwolf (1983) and Alice in Wonderland (1985). Twice his career path crossed Harlan Ellison’s, when Borgnine was cast in The Oscar (1966, script by Ellison) and in the short-lived tv series Future Cop (1976-77) — a show whose makers Ellison and Ben Bova famously sued for plagiarism.
[Thanks to Steve Green for the story.]
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Also the 1997 film Gattaca — which I hated with a passion, but he was excellent in it.
How could you forget “All Quiet on the Western Front?” And I don’t blame you much for not mentioning “McHale’s Navy.”
@Taral: Are you somehow thinking those were genre shows? It’s good that Richard filled in Gattaca. Borgnine worked a lot, I just wanted to mention his sf/fantasy connections. (I confess I watched McHale’s Navy every week, but I was only 12 at the time.)
Borgnine also played a villain on the science fiction TV series “Captain Video and His Video Rangers”, according to the LA Times obituary by Dennis McLellan in the Chicago Tribune website. That would have been in the early ’50s.
Only mentioning genre related TV and film… ick. Yeah, looking back at the item, you did say that. I’ve never thought his genre appearances added much luster to the actor’s career, though.
I recall he was eaten by rats in WILLARD. In order to get the rats to cooperate, he had to have peanut butter slathered on under his clothes.