Remembering Ernest

Ernest Borgnine (1917-2012) starred in one of my all-time favorite movies, Marty. Everything about that movie is perfect. Perfect screenplay. Perfect acting. Borgnine plays a sad-sack butcher whose family walks all over him and calls it love. They practically conspire to keep him single despite constantly pressuring him to get married. Marty’s Mom kvetches the most but when Cupid finally lands an arrow in her son she does all she can to pull it out. It’s heart wrenching to watch.

I especially love the way the scenes are structured. Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay does a remarkable job of contrasting each scene with the next: indoor/outdoor, dark/light, somber/jovial, chatty/silent, sweet/sour, etc. For a film originally written for television, the picture’s genuinely intense emotions make it feel more like a grand, sweeping epic.

So what does Ernest Borgnine have to do with comics?  CCS’s archive of original art is home to every page of McHale’s Navy #3 (Dell Comics, 1964) which of course starred Mr. Borgnine. Though uncredited, I believe the artwork is by Henry Scarpelli who also drew Archie and Dell’s Beverly Hillbilly comics (I’m always impressed by how exacting and accomplished these sausage-factory cartoonists were back then. High-level skill sets!).