page_title: Ernest Borgnine
section_title: McHale's Navy
hierarchical_section_title: Ernest Borgnine / Acting career / Television / McHale's Navy
caption_attribution_description: Publicity photo of Ernest Borgnine as Commander McHale from the television program McHale's Navy.
context_page_description: Ernest Borgnine was an American actor whose career spanned over six decades. He was noted for his gruff but calm voice and gap-toothed Cheshire Cat grin. A popular performer, he also appeared as a guest on numerous talk shows and as a panelist on several game shows.
  Borgnine's film career began in 1951, and included supporting roles in China Corsair, From Here to Eternity, Vera Cruz, Bad Day at Black Rock and The Wild Bunch. He also played the unconventional lead in many films, winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for Marty. He achieved continuing success in the sitcom McHale's Navy, in which he played the title character, and co-starred as Dominic Santini in the action series Airwolf, in addition to a wide variety of other roles.
  Borgnine earned his third Primetime Emmy Award nomination at age 92 for his work on the 2009 series finale of ER. He was known as the original voice of Mermaid Man on SpongeBob SquarePants from 1999 until his death in 2012. He had earlier replaced the late Vic Tayback as the voice of the villainous Carface Caruthers in both All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 and All Dogs Go to Heaven: The Series.
context_section_description: In 1962, Borgnine signed a contract with Universal Studios for the lead role as the gruff but lovable skipper, Quinton McHale, in what began as a serious one-hour 1962 episode called Seven Against the Sea for Alcoa Premiere, and later reworked to a comedy called McHale's Navy, a World War II sitcom, which also co-starred unfamiliar comedians Joe Flynn as Capt. Wally Binghamton and Tim Conway as Ens. Charles Parker. The insubordinate crew of PT-73 helped the show become an overnight success during its first season, landing in the Top 30 in 1963.
  He thrived on the adulation from fans for their favorite navy man, and in 1963 received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. At the end of the fourth season, in 1966 low ratings and repetitive storylines brought McHale's Navy to an end.
  Tim Conway said about the sitcom: "You know, we were all guys, it was about the war, and about men, so, there weren't many women working on the show, so we can spit, talk, swear, and everything—smoke? Gosh. So, it was male oriented." Conway once referred to Borgnine making new friends off of the Universal set, "It was the beginning of the trams, going through Universal. Ernie was probably one of the few people at Universal, who would stop the trams and say, 'Hello, how are you?' He would talk to everybody at the tram." While the show McHale's Navy was going strong, Tim had also said of Borgnine's short-lived marriage to Ethel Merman, "Ernie is volatile. I mean, there's no question about that; and Ethel was a very strong lady. So, you put two bombs in a room, something is going to explode, and I guess it probably did." He also said about the cancellation of McHale's Navy was, "We had gone from the South Pacific to Italy, and then, once in a while, we got to New York or something. The storylines were beginning to duplicate themselves. So, they actually said, 'Maybe, they had its run!'". Conway kept in touch with Borgnine for more than 40 years, while living not too far from one another. In 1999, the duo reunited to lend their voices to several episodes of the popular 2000s animated comedy, SpongeBob SquarePants. 
  At the time McHale's Navy began production, Borgnine was married to actress Katy Jurado. Her death in 2002 drew Borgnine and Conway much closer, as Conway had heard so much of the actress's death. He knew that Borgnine had once referred to her as "beautiful, but a tiger." Conway thought Borgnine was more than likely to have died an Italian count, had it not been for Benito Mussolini: "I can't envision him as a count. But maybe as a king — certainly not a count." The last thing he said about his acting mentor's long career: "There were no limits to Ernie. When you look at his career — Fatso Judson to Marty — that's about as varied as you get in characters and he handled both of them with equal delicacy and got the most out of those characters."
caption: Borgnine as Lieutenant Commander McHale in McHale's Navy in 1963
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