Ernest Borgnine relaxed in a chair on the set and detonated one of his trademark hearty laughs.
Legendary actor Ernest Borgnine relaxes last week in Harrisburg
during the filming of "Another Harves
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Ernest Borgnine, left, talks with director Greg Swartz
on the Harrisburg State Hospital movie set.
This room at the former Harrisburg State Hospital is being used as a set in the movie
"Another Harves
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Shaking hands with him for the first time, you feel as if you've known the guy for years.
Eyebrows like impressionist brush strokes.
Gap-toothed grin.
Barrel chest.
He's the doorman in TV's "The Single Guy," Lt. Cmdr. Quinton McHale in "McHale's Navy."
He's the good guy — or the bad guy — in a slew of movies co-starring other Hollywood greats.
Today, at 91, he comes across as a genial grandpa for the masses. Just call him Ernie, he says animatedly.
For the next week or so he'll answer to "Frank," a leading character in the indie drama "Another Harvest Moon."
Lancaster-based Aurora Films is shooting the feature at the former Harrisburg State Hospital. Former Lancaster resident Greg Swartz is directing.
The film profiles an aging World War II Marine who has suffered a stroke and is pondering suicide.
The theme sounds a bit subdued for the silver screen, no?
Maybe, Borgnine allows, but the conflict, man versus human frailty, is one for the ages. The story by Jeremy Thomas Black invests the characters with spunk and wit.
Frank is a courageous, nuanced guy, in Borgnine's view. "He's a sucker for the ladies," with whom he plays cards and deconstructs life in the common room down the hall.
"He loves this Piper Laurie, who plays June." She keeps telling him everything will be OK. "I feel that there's a great moral to this, and hope."
The actor added that the chance to break new ground drew him to the role: "I never played a guy with a stroke."
Portraying nursing home residents along with Borgnine and Laurie are Anne Meara and Doris Roberts.
Richard Schiff ("The West Wing") and Cybill Shepherd star as Borgnine's son and daughter, Jeffrey and Vickie.
"We're going to make a nice little picture here," promised Borgnine, who reflected on his craft, his co-stars and his life during a break in the filming Thursday.
He described meeting Meara for the first time the day before. He said the two have been corresponding for some 20 years, since he wrote and told her how much he enjoyed her comedy shtick with husband Jerry Stiller.
He praised the 40-odd-person movie crew and also dished on the film's characters.
"Oh golly," Borgnine said about Shepherd's Vickie, "she's a case. She's just like my daughter. '
Dad!' "
Borgnine has three children in real life, and five grandchildren.
"I got it made," Borgnine said. "A wonderful wife." People called them an odd couple, he added, but their marriage has lasted more than 30 years.
Borgnine's fifth wife, Tova Traesnaes, is a beauty products entrepreneur who appears on the QVC television home shopping network, based in West Chester. The couple maintains a nearby home.
Borgnine said he spends more time at their California address. "I don't like to shovel. Snow, that is."
He does fancy the actor's art. In more than 55 years in show business, he has played both heavies and good guys by the score.
He played against type to earn an Academy Award for portraying shy, sensitive "Marty" in the eponymous 1955 film.
"I like doing drama," he said. "I like the comical side of things."
He prefers screen to stage, he added; it pays better and it's more challenging.
The key to any performance is to identify the character's quirks and traits, according to Borgnine, who once explained to an admirer how he approaches that task.
"You sit on a park bench and watch the people go by."
Years ago, though, when he was making a movie with William Holden, he experienced actor's block. "I couldn't find the character."
Then Borgnine learned that his wife was divorcing him. Suddenly, he said, the character took shape.
"I'm playing my ex-wife," he told the director. "Beautiful on one side, bad on the other!"
Borgnine, who has mowed down platoons of enemies in action flicks like "The Wild Bunch," had warm words for other cinema tough guys.
Charles Bronson?
"There was a man," Borgnine said. "He didn't say much," but then he didn't have to. In person, he was a nice guy.
While filming a Western with Bronson in Mexico, Borgnine recalled, they took a breather to go get cigarettes at the store. Mexican soldiers stopped the pair, who were still on horseback and in period getup.
"The army thought we were bandits, you know. All these rifles were leveled at us."
Borgnine defused the situation by calling out, "Artiste! Artiste!"
Borgnine said he has always liked to watch movies by Bronson and Clint Eastwood.
"They're good actors," he said. "Came up the hard way."
Borgnine said he especially admired Gary Cooper, whom he called an underrated actor.
"He listens," Borgnine said. "It's the idea of a conversation going back and forth. He was wonderful. So was Spencer Tracy. Lee Marvin, great guy."
Borgnine counted Frank Sinatra, who knew him as "Fatso," and John Wayne among his personal friends.
"I worked with just about all of them, except John Wayne," Borgnine said; the Duke once asked him why they'd never filmed a picture together.
"I said, 'Because you're afraid of working with a good actor,' " Borgnine reported with another booming laugh.
He is set to reach his 200th movie role this year by mounting up for another Western, "Death Keeps Coming."
His life story, "Ernie, the Autobiography," which he said he started working on about 10 years ago, is due out in a month.
"I'm the lazy kind," Borgnine said. "I don't like to recall things unless they're good things."
As the interview was winding up Thursday, Willie Fordham, a former Harrisburg Senators baseball player who narrowly missed making the 1952 Brooklyn Dodgers team, dropped by to deliver a baseball to Borgnine.
Fordham also gave the actor a copy of his book, "I Gave It My Best Shot."
Aurora Films producer Bob Black said Borgnine has been putting forth his best effort in "Another Harvest Moon."
"He is a true professional," said Black, who was standing outside the "Frank" set in Building 52.
The movie crew had fitted out Frank's blue-painted room with authentic looking mementos and appliances, such as framed photographs, a bedside lamp, a clock radio and a battery of prescription pill bottles.
Lights poked like black snouts above the bed, and cables snaked along the inside walls of the sprawling, two-story brick edifice.
Most of the filming is being done there, though scenes also were shot at a cabin in York Haven and a sportsmen's club in Harrisburg.
Borgnine has spent much of his time in Harrisburg decked out in hospital pajamas.
"He has tremendous range," Black said. "It's not easy playing somebody with a stroke."
Black said the actor had to learn to fake a "bum arm" for his role. "From what I understand he did a lot of research."
The stars are scheduled to wrap up their work on July 8, according to Black.
"It was surreal to see them here," he added. "It's a small movie, big actors."
Jon Rutter is a staff writer for the Sunday News. His e-mail address is jrutter@lnpnews.com.
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