Oscar-Winning Airwolf Actor Dies In LA

Ernest Borgnine has died in a Los Angeles hospital at the age of 95.

The US actor, whose bulldog appearance made him a natural for tough-guy roles in films such as The Wild Bunch, died of renal failure at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre.

His wife and children were at his side.

After achieving notoriety for mainly villainous roles, Borgnine won a best actor Oscar for playing against type as a lovesick butcher in the 1955 film Marty.

Borgnine was known as the character who beats up Frank Sinatra in From Here To Eternity and one of the thugs who menaces Spencer Tracy in Bad Day At Black Rock.

He successfully made the transition to TV comedy, starring as a maverick World War II patrol-boat skipper in the popular 1960s television comedy McHale's Navy.

In the mid-1980s he co-starred in the television action series Airwolf.

Borgnine's later films included Ice Station Zebra, The Adventurers, Willard, The Poseidon Adventure, The Greatest (as Muhammad Ali's manager), Convoy, Ravagers, Escape From New York, Moving Target and Mistress.

More recently, he had a recurring role as the apartment house doorman-cum-chef in the NBC TV comedy The Single Guy.

He had a small role in the unsuccessful 1997 movie version of McHale's Navy and he was the voice of Mermaid Man on SpongeBob SquarePants and Carface on All Dogs Go to Heaven 2.

Born in Hamden, Connecticut, as Ermes Efron Borgnino, he was the son of Italian immigrant parents.

He joined the US Navy in 1935 and served on a destroyer during World War II.

After leaving 10 years later he contemplated taking a job with an air-conditioning company, but his mother persuaded him to join a drama school. He stayed for four months, the only formal training he received.

Borgnine had a somewhat colourful private life that included four failed marriages, including one in 1964 to singer Ethel Merman that lasted less than six weeks.

His fifth marriage, in 1973 to Norwegian-born Tova Traesnaes, was a longlasting and happy union.

In 1966 he told an interviewer: "The Oscar made me a star, and I'm grateful.

"But I feel had I not won the Oscar I wouldn't have gotten into the messes I did in my personal life."