HOLLYWOOD great Ernest Borgnine died last night at 95 after a movie and TV career that spanned six decades.
The cleft-chinned, gravel-voiced star who mainly played tough guys, died of kidney failure in hospital after falling ill in LA. His wife Tova and four children were at his side.
Despite his many "baddie" roles, he won his only Oscar for his tender portrayal of a lovesick butcher in the 1955 classic tearjerker Marty.
He played a 34-year-old who fears he is so unattractive he will never find romance. Then, at a dance, he meets a girl who has similar self-doubts.
At one point in the film his character movingly tells his mother: "One fact I gotta face is that, whatever it is that women like, I ain't got it... I don't wanna get hurt no more."
Five-times married Borgnine believed the film had a powerful effect on his own failed relationships.
He said in an interview in 1966: "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."
He added: "Sooner or later, there comes a point in a man's life when he's gotta face some facts".
Borgnine, who starred in hit movies such as Ice Station Zebra, The Dirty Dozen, The Poseidon Adventure and The Magnificent Seven, began his career in the 1930s.
But he also won a new generation of fans with roles in TV shows including McHale's Navy in the mid-60s and Airwolf in the 80s.
More recently he even voiced Mermaid Man in the animated show SpongeBob SquarePants.
Borgnine first hit the big time in the early 50s as vicious Fatso Judson, who beat Frank Sinatra's character to death in From Here to Eternity.
He went on to star with William Holden and Robert Tyan in Sam Packinpah's The Wild Bunch - one of the bloodiest Westerns ever made.
He went on Holden and Packinp - one West H ma tows His four failed marriages included one to Ethel Merman, which lasted less than six weeks in 1964.
But he finally found happiness with Norwegian-born Tova Traesnaes in 1973. During an interview in 2007, he expressed his delight in ex that their union had lasted 34 years.
He said: "That's longer than my other four other marriages put together."
