Oscar winner Ernest Borgnine, one of Hollywood’s best-known tough guy characters, died on Sunday. He was 95. Borgnine won Best Actor Oscar for playing, against type, a love-sick Bronx butcher in Delbert Mann’s 1955 film Marty. Borgnine won the Oscar for Marty over a field that included Spencer Tracy, James Dean, James Cagney and Frank Sinatra. The film went on to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Most recently, Borgnine was the voice behind Mermaid Man in the animated TV series SpongeBob SquarePants.
Borgnine also has a GE link. He appeared with Zsa Zsa Gabor in a 1961 episode of General Electric Theater, the weekly TV series hosted by Ronald Reagan. The episode, The Legend that Walks Like a Man, was written by Budd Schulberg. It follows the return of a legendary director (Borgnine) to Hollywood. But when he is faced with filming a scene with an old love (Gabor), tempers fly.
