Marty in Hollywood

So waddayawanna talk about tonight? Kim Novak's latest? Naw. Sam Goldwyn is 76? Wish him a happy birthday, but what's more to talk about? Lolly Parsons is in Hawaii? Let her stay out there and eat pineapples. Waddayawanna talk about? Tell you what, let's talk about this guy Ernie.

This guy Ernie (as many a conversation in Hollywood steam rooms and Gibson shops made clear last week) was just an ordinary guy from Connecticut 15 years ago, serving a long hitch in the Navy. One day he was laid up in the hospital in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and right away he fell in love with his nurse. Girl by the name of Rhoda. Kind of fat girl, but nice, and it figured: he was fat; she was fat; they were happy.

One day Ernie took it into his head he wanted to act. His face was as homely as a cold baked potato, but he worked hard around summer theaters, and he got a few bits in television. All of a sudden he was in From Here to Eternity--playing Fatso, the sergeant who made chopped herring out of Frank Sinatra. The picture was a smash, and so was Ernie. He got other parts, but nothing really big till a couple of producers came along, name of Hecht and Lancaster, who wanted to do a picture about a fat Italian butcher boy --a real sweet kid, but lonesome. Ernie read for the part, and he was in. This guy Ernie did not just play Marty; he was Marty, sitting around the corner saloon with his cronies, drinking beer and saying: "So waddayawanna do tonight?"

Before a man could say "Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences," there was Ernie wearing a set of tails like the headwaiter at Romanoff's, up there on the stage getting an Oscar. But where was Rhoda? On Oscar night she was with him and gave him a big buss, but most of the time she was home. And home was a dumpy little house in Van Nuys, a neighborhood where not even an extra would want to live between pictures. Rhoda liked it there with all the other homebodies, and for a while Ernie liked it too. But then everybody wanted Ernie to be a big shot, and at the same time everybody wanted him to be Marty. On the set they went around saying, "Jeez, what a real sweetie, just like Marty."

All day, he was busy being lovable. At night he went home and blew his top.

Came the time when Ernie was on location in Arizona, shooting The Badlanders, and who should be playing opposite him but Katy Jurado, a very classy actress--no spring chicken, but. as they say, built. When she heard that Ernie and Rhoda had split, she came around, just neighborly like, to say she was sorry. "Waddayawanna do tonight." said Ernie, and they went out on the town.

In Los Angeles last week, Mrs. Rhoda Borgnine got a divorce from Ermes Effron Borgnine on grounds of mental cruelty. The settlement gave Rhoda $2,000 a month alimony, the custody of their six-year-old daughter, a $53,000 insurance policy on her ex-husband's life and the house in Van Nuys. In court she testified that Ernie used to fly into rages, tossed furniture, locked himself in his room for 24 hours. Later she added to reporters: "He did not change much after he made Marty. Just a little more self-confident, maybe. The consensus is that the individual has gone too far."

A friend suggested: "Rhoda just didn't have the equipment to keep up the pace." Said Ernie: "I don't want to hurt Rhoda, bless her; she's a wonderful person. I just don't think she could have ever coped with the situation. You know, well, here's a star now--but I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.''

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