Ernie: The Autobiography (30 page)

If anybody ever deserved some kind of lifetime achievement Oscar, it was Bob Mitchum.

I mentioned my friend George Lindsey back a ways, and I want to say a little more about him. He’s a character who came into my life in the 1970s. My marriage to Donna was on the rocks and I needed to get out of the house for a while. One day I took my car and I was so upset, I almost went over a cliff in the Hollywood hills. I needed to calm down, so I went to my gas station at the foot of the hill and said, “Oil, grease it, do something, I’m going to go for a cup of coffee.”

While I was having my coffee, in walks this guy.

He said, “Hello, how are you? My name is George Lindsey. I play Goober on
The Andy Griffith Show
.”

I knew of him, of course, though we’d never met. We started talking and the first thing you know we were on a golf course. The next thing you know we were out in his car driving around the mountains and talking. By the end of the day, when I went to pick up my car, it was like I had been to a psychiatrist. From that day, whenever George had a problem with his marriage or I did with mine, or if we were down about work or life in general, we’d get together, we’d go out. We’d play golf, we’d have lunch or dinner, we’d shop. We even went out to watch farmers grow parsley. We became really great good buddies.

To this very day I think that George Lindsey is one of the greatest guys in the world. I can’t say too much about that old boy and how he used to keep me in stitches talking about his home in Alabama, how he gave up being a science teacher to act, and how—my hand to God—he turned down the part of Mr. Spock on TV’s
Star Trek
, the role that made Leonard Nimoy famous. He even convinced me to do a guest appearance on a TV show he was working on at the time,
Hee Haw
, with Roy Clark and Buck Owens and all those
Hee Haw
honeys. I don’t get to do as much comedy as I like, so I had a helluva time.

Thanks, buddy. Thanks for everything.

There are two more people I have to tell you about briefly.

Ever since I first enlisted in 1935, the navy’s been part of my life. It’s afforded me the opportunity to meet some wonderful people. One day, a really close navy friend, Captain Kathy Dugan—the one-time head of the Philadelphia Navy Yard—called me and said, “Listen, would you do me a favor?”

I said, “Anything.”

She wanted me to send a pep talk via e-mail to the crew of a cruiser that had been in the Persian Gulf for six months.

I was a little hesitant at first, not sure what to say and less sure that most of the kids would know who I was, but I took the bull by the horns and wrote a long e-mail, one finger at a time, because that’s the way I do it. I plugged away and finally sent it off.

Lo and behold, I had a note back in no time at all from Captain Peter Squicciarini. “I have posted your e-mail up on the bulletin board,” he said. “The guys are just crazy to meet you.”

When they came back to Norfolk, Peter Squicciarini was on the list to be relieved as the skipper of the Cruiser USS
Monterey
. They invited me to go to Norfolk for the change-of-command ceremony.

Peter and his crew showed me an incredible time. There I was, over eighty years of age, running up and down and across and over that whole ship. I saw the engine room, the gunnery department, the whole thing from the bridge to the bilge. Believe me, that’s one big ship.

But it still wasn’t as big as its skipper. On the day that Peter Squicciarini was relieved of his command, I saw it in his eyes: the realization that there would be no more going to sea for him. He loved the ocean, he loved being the skipper of a ship, and his crew loved him.

I knew that feeling and I told him so. Afterward, he said how much it meant for me to say that. My own example reminded him that ending a long career in the navy was just the start of the next phase of his life.

That had nothing to do with me being an actor. It had to do with me being a former navy man. I don’t think enough of us realize how, in big ways and small, we have the ability to touch other people.

This would be as good a time as any to suggest, by the way, that you get out and do what you can for our veterans. I was on
The Larry King Show
one night and I started crying while we were talking about the war in Iraq.

I said, “Please, for heaven’s sake, if anybody lives next to a hospital, a veteran’s hospital or something, take a half hour, take an hour, take two hours, and go down there and visit our veterans. They would love to see you. Bring ’em flowers or something. Just to say hello. Believe me, they’re hungry for people to come and see them.”

More than that, they deserve our thanks, in person. I’ve gone many times, around the country, and it’s never failed to move them, and me. We owe our freedom and opportunity to them. It’s the least all of us can do.

The last guy who needs mentioning here is Bobby Herron. When I first started in pictures, I did all my own stunts. In westerns, they’d say “Get on the horse” and I’d be in the saddle in a minute. If I was in a war picture, they’d say “Stand by that explosion” and I did.

While we were making the 1953 western
The Stranger Wore a Gun
, Bobby Herron came up to me and said, “You know, mister, you’re taking the bread out of our mouths.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

He said, “When they tell you to jump on the horse, you have the right to use a stuntman for that.”

I said, “I thought they’d think I was a scaredy-cat.”

He said, “No. They’d think you were smart. When they ask you to do that stuff, they’re just trying to get out of paying us.”

You may recall how frightened I really was doing the run down the hill with that horse, the one that had Lee Marvin tsk-tsking. I gathered up the reins and said, “Please take them. I am so happy to know this.”

What I didn’t know about riding horses was in proportion to what Bobby Herron
did
know.

Bobby and I have been together in just about every picture where I needed a horseman or somebody to do a “gag”—a stunt trick—for me. As a matter of fact, he did a stunt in
Convoy
that could’ve killed him. I played a cop who was supposed to be chasing a truck. The way that the script read, my car was supposed to go off the cliff, right through the middle of a signpost, and into a building full of chickens.

There weren’t any instruments in these cars, and the way Bobby was strapped in he couldn’t have read them anyway. There was no way of knowing how much velocity he’d achieved. And, honestly, no way to stop, either, since the brakes were mostly disconnected. The whole thing about a stunt car is that it gets stripped down so that parts aren’t dislodged in the crash and become projectiles.

When he went through the signpost, he not only went through the top of this house where the chickens came flying out, he landed about two-hundred feet even farther. There was a camera mounted in the car filming him as he did it.

He tore every bit of cartilage off his ribs. Before he passed out, he turned off the motor and the camera. Watching him sail through the air, I thought for sure that he’d killed himself.

Did I mention that these stunt guys are tough? Two weeks later, we were playing golf together.

That’s why, when critics say, “
Convoy
was a so-so picture,” don’t you believe it. Audiences aren’t as jaded as critics. And none of them knows just what stuntmen go through to make pictures look real.

Chapter 40

Dedicated to the Ones I Love

I
’ve written about the people who have helped me and impressed me and whose lives intersected with mine only briefly, but made a big impact. As I look back, there are others who played roles large and small in bringing me to this point.

Foremost among these is my right-hand woman, Joyce McConnell.

I stole Joyce from Tova over twenty years ago. She was sitting there at her desk in Tova’s business office, where she helped with the skin care merchandise, and I happened to stop by. I was thinking about how distracting it was that I was still answering my own phone, typing my own correspondence—badly, as I’ve indicated—instead of studying scripts. I felt it was time to change that, so I said, “Do you want to work for me?”

She said, “Okay.”

That was that. I guess she felt she’d have more fun in the movies.

So we set up an office in my home and Joyce has been here ever since.

She’s more than a secretary. She’s a confidante. She takes care of the house while I’m gone on location, if Tova’s not around. She’s a jack of all trades—handles all my correspondence and computer stuff and protects me from scam artists who try to use my name, fame, and money. She’s a very, very good woman, tough when she needs to be. It’s been a pleasure to have her with me. She’s happily married to her husband Bob, who became a meat cutter after he got out of the marines. He’s retired and now plays senior softball. He knocks them out of the park all the time, and takes great pride in it. I’ll say, “How’d you hit ’em today?” He’ll say, “Nine out of nine.” I’ll say “Not bad!” God bless Joyce and Bob. I was the best man at their wedding. Ours has been a wonderful association. They’re both very special people.

Another person who helps me personally and professionally is Brent Braun. He came up to the house to introduce himself when he was in the FBI’s Los Angeles office. He wanted me to speak at a ceremony honoring fallen FBI agents. It was a moving experience, and since then Brent has become a good friend. I call him my hired gun. He’s retired from the FBI now and involved in a variety of public-service ventures, which includes looking after my ass when personal security could be a problem and also teaching me how to handle weapons properly on camera. You shouldn’t fake that stuff, you know. Not unless you want to hear from a few thousand people who do know what they’re doing!

Italians gravitate toward one another and Larry Manetti and I gravitated. We met when I guest-starred in an episode of
Magnum P.I.
in Hawaii. Larry was one of the costars with Tom Selleck—who, for the record, is absolutely the sweetest, gentlest man. The first thing you know, Larry and I were out eating, sampling various Waikiki restaurants, enjoying each other’s company. We still do. He brings over meals that he cooks himself.

Larry and I spent one memorable afternoon visiting Frank Sinatra. We went to his summer home on the Pacific Coast. There we were, Frank, Larry, and myself eating spaghetti and talking about old times. No star egos, no checkbook, just three Italians gravitating.

I met A. C. Lyles while doing
Run For Cover
with Cagney. A. C. was doing the publicity for Paramount on that picture. He and Cagney were friends and shared a suite at the hotel. Later, Cagney made his only directorial effort on a Paramount picture that A.C. produced,
Shortcut to Hell
. A.C.’s been at Paramount for over seventy years—no kidding!—and has been a good friend of mine for over fifty of them. He and his lovely wife Martha are among the most respected couples in Hollywood, true movie nobility!

Alex Cord, on
Airwolf
, has been a real anchor in the shaky times there, willing to do his share and more. He’s a wonderful actor and has become quite a noted author as well. He’s a horseman of the first water, plays polo, and lives on a beautiful ranch with his wife in Texas. Whenever he comes to town, we get together and talk old times.

I consider myself lucky to have these people in my life. I hope all of you have people like them in yours.

Last but far from least, I want to say how very grateful I am for my three children, Nancee, Sharon, and Cristofer.

Nancee—who, you may recall, was born while I was onstage with Helen Hayes doing
Mrs. McThing
and had Ms. Hayes as godmother—grew up in the midst of a bad divorce. She was always being pushed and pulled. It wasn’t the most pleasant thing for a little girl like her, but she made the best of it. Her mother passed away a number of years ago, but today, I must say, my daughter and I are the best of friends.

The same is true of Sharon and her year-younger brother Cristo-pher. Even after we hadn’t had contact for so long, we are very close friends and she has a beautiful family of her own.

Cristofer was my miracle kid. He was a sickly baby, and I remember sitting in an ambulance holding him in my hands, begging him, “Hey, kid, come on, you’ve got to pull yourself together. We’ve got to make this thing go, baby.”

I’m happy to say that today he’s a robust man with two kids of his own.

It wasn’t a miracle that it all worked out for us: it took a lot of hard work and forgiving, on their part. But they did it—
we
did it—and have never, ever taken our relationships for granted.

To any parent or child who is reading this book, I want to say, fathers and mothers are just people, which means they make mistakes. Don’t hold that against them. Whatever flaws they may have, they created you in a moment of love and are among the few who “knew you when.” When they’re gone, there won’t be anyone to take their place.

Chapter 41

Odds and the End

P
arenting and these glorious United States aren’t the only soapboxes to which I’m going to subject you, just a little. There’s something else I feel quite strongly about, and that’s smoking.

I tried smoking when I was a kid, with some of my father’s old Italian stogies. I remember my buddy Joey and I were at the top of the hill. By the time we finished those stogies we were down at the bottom. We had rolled down, sicker than dogs. It kind of held me off smoking until I was around eighteen and joined the navy. I saw everybody else smoking cigarettes, so it came kind of naturally.

I was going along smoking mostly Bull Durham in those days. Cigarettes only cost five cents a pack at the navy PX and we didn’t realize that it was really an addiction.

Just before I started
McHale’s Navy
I was smoking five packs a day. I had become a chain-smoker. My fingertips were brown from the smoke. I would cough from the morning until about midday. It wasn’t a problem when I was doing a scene, because I was concentrating on something else. But when I was just by myself I would cough like a madman.