In his memory and honor, the GWD team I temp’d for chose to call ourselves Mermaid Man’s Fan Club since it was the last role Ernest had been doing consistently, pretty amazing for guy in his early nineties! I figured he was younger but I should’ve known better if he was a WWII vet.
When I was growing up, Ernest was a semi-constant fixture in numerous Sci-Fi/Disaster films I saw: The Black Hole, The Poseidon Adventure and Escape from New York. My brain tends to place him as a policeman…now I know why, he starred in Future Cop, this weird ABC show about an android officer on the force.
Not everything he did was low-brow. He won an Oscar for Marty (keep putting that off) and co-starred in The Wild Bunch, a featured movie in Joe Bob Brigg’s Profoundly Disturbing since it treaded new turf for Westerns…and violence.
Beyond Spongebob Squarepants, I loved his performance on The Simpsons (“Boy-Scoutz ‘n the Hood”) even if the animators were responsible for the subtle gag involving Ernest not washing his hands when he meets the kids. Mermaid Man wouldn’t be the same without him shouting the hero’s catchphrases, babying Barnacle Boy and senility.
Lastly, I will be adding him posthumously for this year’s (second) annual tribute to Italians. I never gave his ethnicity/origin much thought. I knew his surname was modified to something easier to pronounce or hide where his family came from. Odds favored it originally being more difficult like Polish, Russian or other Eastern European countries.
Farewell Lt. Command McHale. Thanks for all the great performances and showing you were game to do anything: TV, film, cartoons, comedy, drama, high-brow and mass audiences.