Labor & Employment Law

Screen Actors to Honor Ernest Borgnine

By James Parks

Ernest Borgnine

For more than six decades, Ernest Borgnine has played an astounding range of characters on television, the big screen and on stage. His roles have ranged from the jovial and lovable captain on TV?s popular series ?McHale?s Navy,? to the vicious ?Fatso? Judson, who beat Frank Sinatra?s Maggio to a pulpy death in the Oscar-winning film ?From Here to Eternity.? 

He has portrayed the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover twice and won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe as the title character in the movie ?Marty.? In his latest effort, he joins an all-star cast?Morgan Freeman, Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Richard Dreyfuss and Brian Cox?in the movie ?Red.?

Now, his colleagues and co-workers plan to honor him with the Screen Actors (SAG) Life Achievement Award for career achievement and humanitarian accomplishment. Borgnine, 93, will receive the award at the 17th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards?the nation?s largest and only-nationally televised all-union awards show?which premieres live on TNT and TBS Sunday, Jan. 30, 2011, at 8 p.m. ET/PT, 7 p.m. CT and 6 p.m. MT. SAG represents nearly 120,000 actors in film, television, industrials, commercials and music videos.

SAG President Ken Howard said of Borgnine:

Whether portraying brutish villains, sympathetic everymen, complex leaders or hapless heroes, Ernest Borgnine has brought a boundless energy which, at 93, is still a hallmark of his remarkably busy life and career. It is with that same joyous spirit that we salute his impressive body of work and his steadfast generosity.

The son of Italian immigrants, Borgnine entered drama school after he left the Army in 1941. He caught his first big break in 1949, when he won the role of the hospital attendant in a Broadway production of ?Harvey.? His success in live television prompted a move to Los Angeles, where in 1951, he made his motion picture debut in ?The Whistle at Eaton Falls.? Since then, Borgnine has performed in more than 200 motion pictures, five TV series and dozens of television films and guest appearances.

Borgnine also served on SAG board of directors from April to November 1962 and again from November 1974 to November 1977. Borgnine?s 2008 autobiography, ?Ernie,? was a New York Times bestseller.  He lives in Beverly Hills with his wife of 37 years, Tova.

As a Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Borgnine joins such previous honorees as Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward (1985), Elizabeth Taylor (1997), Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee (2000), Edward Asner (2001), Clint Eastwood (2002) and Shirley Temple Black (2005), Julie Andrews (2006), Charles Durning (2007), James Earl Jones (2008) and Betty White (2009).

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on December 30, 2010 (boomark / email).