Ernie: The Autobiography by Ernest Borgnine Page A

California. So what am I gonna do?”
    “Is she Jewish?” he asked. Cohn himself was Jewish.
    “As a matter of fact she is.”
    He snorted, “Damn Jews are all alike. When you’re finished with this picture, get the hell out of here.”
    Wow , I thought. There goes my movie career!
    After he’d gone, Arnow came over to me and said, “Listen, don’t worry about it. He throws a lot of people off the lot until he needs them again. If something comes along, I’ll have you back. Don’t you worry.”
    I couldn’t promise I wouldn’t worry, but I thanked him very much. In retrospect, though, I’m glad I didn’t take the deal. In those days they put contract players into everything, and you couldn’t say no. It’s true that they taught you all kinds of skills—riding, dancing, swordplay, all of that. But it was difficult to break out, especially with all the stars they had under contract.
    Because China Corsair was a low-budget production, it actually came out before The Whistle at Eaton Falls —so, technically, that was my film debut. Thanks to Arnow, though, it wasn’t my last.

Chapter 13

From Here to Eternity…and Beyond

    I t was 1952 and I was really starting to regret that I hadn’t taken Harry Cohn’s offer. The three movies hadn’t set the world on fire and, ironically, more and more TV work was shifting to Hollywood, where there was a deeper pool of nationally known actors to draw from. The lack of opportunities left me a little depressed. That was when my old buddy Bart Burns saw a picture that he thought I ought to see.
    We didn’t have enough money for my wife to go to the movie with me, and we couldn’t afford a babysitter, so I went alone. When I came back I was euphoric. I had seen Charlie Chaplin in Limelight . What a picture! It was a love story about an old comedian who couldn’t get work, and a young ballerina whom he saves from committing suicide. It was so full of hope! That film was just the tonic I needed. I had work, we weren’t living in the streets, and if I kept my shoulder to the grindstone things were bound to get better.
    They did. Not long before I was ready to take a job at the post office, Max Arnow called.
    He asked, “How soon can you get out here to Hollywood?”
    I said, “Why?” It was a stupid question; it didn’t matter. It was work and I needed some.
    Arnow didn’t know how unemployed I was, though, and actually tried to sell me on the project. He said, “They are interested in seeing you for the part of Fatso Judson in From Here To Eternity. ”
    I almost dropped the phone. I had read the novel almost three years before. It was a massive tome, a huge best seller based on author James Jones’s own war experiences at Pearl Harbor. At the time I remember thinking what a great part the sadistic jailer would be for me. I told Arnow I was free, but asked if they were going to be looking at anyone in New York. I wasn’t trying to play hard to get. I needed to be here to earn a paycheck.
    Arnow said that director Fred Zinnemann would be in New York and set up a time for me to go and see him. He told me to bring a monologue; anything, it didn’t matter.
    I honestly don’t remember what I read. Truth be told, the audition was a total nothing. By that I mean I felt from the way he looked at me that he had made his decision when I walked in the door. Of course, I didn’t know at the time what that decision was. And to tell you the truth, my heart sank a little when we started talking and he told me that Frank Sinatra was going to be in the picture as Private Maggio, the guy whose skull I would fatally crack in the stockade.
    “My God,” I thought, “they’re making a musical out of it!”
    I didn’t know Frank at the time, but I figured anything he did was going to have singing and dancing in it. How wrong I was.
    No sooner had I got home than the phone rang. It was Arnow.
    “There’s a ticket waiting for you at the airport,” he said. “See you