Friday, March 28, 2008

Ernest Borgnine - A Nice Photo, Ruined

Ernest Borgnine has been one of my favorite actors, since first seeing him on the 1960s tv comedy "McHale's Navy". It was some time later that I found out he was a seasoned actor and appeared in many movies before his tv series.

In 1980, I sent him a nice portrait photo to sign, and what did he do? He, or perhaps a secretary, used a rubber-stamped signature! And whoever did this, didn't even do it neatly. The photo, of course, is ruined now. I was disappointed by this, and never sent him another photo, thinking this would happen again.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You should send him back the same photo with a letter telling him how displeased you are with the sloppy stamp and asking him politely if he could put a genuine signature on it. Couldn't hurt to try.

Anonymous said...

You have to remember also Bill that in 1980 he had just starred in "All Quiet On The Western Front", "Crossed Swords","The Black Hole" and "When Time Ran Out" and probably every kid had tried to find his postal address to write to him and his secretary probably had sacks of mail arriving every day (being a kid at the time and seeing all these movies because he was in them, if I had his address, I'd have written to him too!)

Ernest is my all time favorite actor and am looking very much forward to his autobiography "Ernie", out in August. Give him another try now.

I love how you sent him a still from "The Oscar". I have seen nearly all of his films and I would have to say that is his worst performance--this was his first movie after "McHale's Navy" ended and with all the years of mugging he had to do in that show followed him into this movie, and believe me, he's in turbo-mode here (probably trying to breathe some life into that crazy movie). It wasn't until his collision with Robert Aldrich and "The Dirty Dozen" the following year that he was back to his old self again.