The first time I saw Borgnine in anything, it was Escape from New York. He played Cabbie: the guy driving the taxi through the streets of the then-future maximum security prison that was Manhattan. Not long afterward he appeared for the first time as hotshot veteran pilot Dominic Santini on Airwolf. And over the years I managed to catch his earlier work too, like Marty (for which he won an Academy Award) and his sitcom McHale's Navy.
Borgnine had more than 200 acting credits, right up to the last few years where he was known to younger audiences as Mermaid Man on SpongeBob SquarePants (I will admit to having never seen anything pertaining to Spongebob: I only know what the kiddies tell me...)
Thoughts and prayers going out to Mr. Borgnine's family tonight.
And in tribute to his memory, here is the ultra-violent shootout scene he was involved in from the 1969 western The Wild Bunch!
