THE IMPORTANCE OF ERNEST'S BEING

Another major farewell: RIP to the seemingly indestructible Ernest Borgnine, passed on at 95.

I got to see Borgnine at work once, a little over a decade ago. A friend of mine was production manager on a low-budget, Grisham-esque legal comedy-drama called Whiplash, and I visited him on location, in the chambers of the Arizona Supreme Court. There I got to watch Borgnine, Oscar winner for Best Actor in 1955 for Marty, the guy from The Wild Bunch and The Poseidon Adventure and McHale’s Navy and Jubal and Bad Day at Black Rock and From Here to Eternity and The Dirty Dozen and Johnny Guitar and on and on, play the same scene over and over again for most of an hour.

The old-school work ethic on display was impressive. Borgnine, playing a wry old judge opposite some young actor as an idealistic lawyer, clearly knew his lines cold, and because of this was able to shade the scene a little differently every time, first realistically, then a little more broadly, then drawing the lines out, then whispering them in an ironically conspiratorial tone. At an age when he could have shown up, recited his lines mechanically and collected his check—and the filmmakers would still have regarded it as a coup for their project—he behaved like a true actor-tradesman, providing his employers with various options. It was a privilege to witness.