Read Online Ernie: The Autobiography by Ernest Borgnine - Free Book Online Page B

got along great with the kids from Columbia.
    Throughout the war I found myself hopscotching up and down the East Coast from Rhode Island to Florida on a variety of assignments. One day I was sitting on the john—in my private john, naturally—and there was a knock on the door.
    The seaman said, “Guess what?”
    “What?” I asked, annoyed. Couldn’t this wait?
    “They just dropped a bomb on Japan that was the equivalent to about twenty tons of TNT. It wiped out everything as far as the eye could see.”
    I said to myself “What a stupid thing? How can one bomb possibly do all that?”
    Well, we turned on the radio and there it was. The United States had dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan, on the city of Hiroshima. The writing was on the wall. We were all quite exuberant about it.
    Three days later President Truman gave the order to drop a second bomb, this time on Nagasaki.
    Those two bombs undoubtedly saved the lives of millions on both sides. The Japanese were not afraid. I mean, they were still fighting valiantly and we had barely scratched their homeland. And now it was over. No more of our boys, or theirs, no more mothers’ sons, had to die. That’s why I consider to this day that President Truman was one of the most wonderful presidents we’ve had since Lincoln.
    Delighted as I was, I now had to face something I hadn’t had to deal with for nearly ten years:
    “Okay, kid. You’re twenty-eight. What do you do with the rest of your life?”

Chapter 9

Postwar Blues

    N ow that the war was over and I was out of the navy, I went home again. I still didn’t know what to do. Once again, my mother made up my mind for me—sort of.
    She said, “Well? Are you going to get a job or not?”
    That may sound like an option, but it wasn’t.
    So I went out looking for work. Not a job, not a career—just any kind of labor. That was pretty much all that was available, due to the slowdown of the war industries. Plus a lot of men—and women—had grabbed the available jobs in my absence. I’d pack a lunch and stand in front of one of the local factories and watch the folks walking into shops. After just a few days of this, with nothing to show but goose-bumps from an early fall, I decided this wasn’t what I wanted to do. Not after everything I’d seen and learned and experienced in the navy. After being on the sea or in big, open ports, going into a factory would be like going to jail.
    Instead, I’d take my lunch and I’d go to a park or go to a movie. It was like The Full Monty , but without the nudity.
    One day I came home and I guess I looked despondent. My mother asked me what was the matter.
    I said, “Mom, for two cents I’d go back and join the navy again. At least I’d get a pension at the end of my twenty years.”
    I wasn’t sure whether she’d approve or disapprove. All I know is I didn’t expect what she actually said to me.
    “Son,” she said, “have you ever thought of becoming an actor?”
    If I was, my reaction didn’t show it. Instead of being cool and thoughtful, I was openly, over-the-top flabbergasted. I made a few inarticulate sounds—“What? Huh?” that sort of thing—as she went on.
    “You always like to make a damn fool of yourself, making people laugh. Why don’t you give it a try?”
    I looked at her, still not sure what to say, and so help me I saw these doors open and a light shined down from the heavens. That smart, worldly, perceptive woman was right, even if she maybe could have couched it a little nicer. But then, that was my mother.
    I said, “Mom, that’s what I’m going to be.”
    Now that the Big Question had been decided, I had no idea where to go, what to do, who to see. Show business? What’s show business? We had a radio—TV was still three years off—and we’d listen to the fights or Jack Benny or Eddie Cantor. We knew that much about show business, but that was it.
    Well, before it faded, that same golden light gave me an idea. Yale University