Ernest Borgnine passed almost exactly ten years ago. He did a lot of interviews and told a lot of stories later in life, and one that I never forgot involved a verbal confrontation with a group of Italian guys in some quiet New York City neighborhood. (Or possibly in Boston or Rhode Island or Newark, New Jersey…some northeastern city with a significant Italian population.)
It happened a few weeks after the August ’53 opening of From Here to Eternity, in which Borgnine achieved a big career breakthrough for his performance as “Fatso” Judson, a sadistic Army stockade sergeant whose racist brutality leads to the death of Frank Sinatra‘s Pvt. Maggio.
Borgnine had just walked out of a bar or was hailing a cab, and four or five guys walked up and one of them said “you’re him, right?” Borgnine copped to being the guy who played Fatso, and the guy said, “So what’d you kill Frank Sinatra for?”
Borgnine tried a standard rational response — “I didn’t kill him, I played a guy who killed him, I’m an actor and so is Sinatra,” etc. But the under-educated Italian guys weren’t having it — “yeah but why’d you kill him?” They’d apparently decided that Borgnine/Judson, who’d called Sinatra a “wop” two or three times in Eternity, was a symbol for all the racist bullies they’d known all their lives, all the guys who’d picked on Italians or denigrated them with slurs.
Borgnine gradually realized that there was no avoiding fisticuffs, so he offered to take them on one at a time if that’s how it had to be. One of the Italian guys said something to another in Italian, and Borgnine, born in Hamden, Connecticut to Italian-immigrant parents, answered back in the same tongue. The air of hostility immediately ceased.
For several years I’ve tried to find a video clip of Borgnine telling this story, and I’ve never had any luck.
