Recently, we lost another member of the Disaster Movie Club, that (personally-imagined) collection of performers who took part in the glorious cycle of 1970s disaster movies. So many of them are no longer with us, though the ones who were younger at the time have naturally lived on. However, the final wail of the lifeboat station alarm has come for one Ernie Orsatti. Orsatti was a key member of more than one disaster epic and we pay tribute to him today. The son of a World Series-level baseball player and an opera singer, and the nephew of a talent agent, his life would be a mixture of action and acting.
Orsatti was born on February 13th, 1940 and was an active youth, taking an early interest in physical activities, cars and various aspects of the movie business. (His father had segued from baseball into prop work and stunts with Buster Keaton, eventually joining his brother Vic's talent agency.) At age 28, he landed a role among the large cast of John Wayne's The Green Berets and allegedly appears somewhere in the cheap-jack exploitation flick The Acid Eaters (both 1968.)
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Attempting a legitimate acting career, he was nonetheless utilized chiefly in instances where a role called for someone to drive (as in The Mechanic, 1972, with Charles Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent)...
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...and then die! He has his neck snapped by the intimidating Bronson.
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A shot at a supporting role in a major motion picture came when he was signed on The Poseidon Adventure (1972) to play Terry, the love interest to Pamela Sue Martin.
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At the New Year's Eve ball, he asks her to dance and, though she does, her mind is really on the older, presumably more compelling, Gene Hackman.
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Unfortunately, a gargantuan wave turns the ship upside-down shortly after midnight, killing many of the passengers aboard. A few stragglers cling to the edges of dining tables for dear life.
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The the most celebrated moment of the sequence, Orsatti is seen holding onto the table until he no longer can...
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...then plunges far below into the light fixture to a premature demise. Though he had long done uncredited motorcycle driving, car stunts and physical doubling, he discovered while preparing for this that he was actually afraid of heights! He had intended to work solely on acting and reduce or eliminate stunt-work from his career, but producer Irwin Allen pressed him to do it because "all the other actors are doing their own stunts" (which was only partially true!) He was knocked unconscious by the famous fall.
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The eye-popping sequence became a celebrated moment in cinema stunt-work. It also became an iconic moment in the film and was featured time and again in TV ads and promotions for later airings of the film on television. This link shows how he was constantly featured in blurbs for the movie despite minuscule screen time. (It's also incredible how rotten the prints were of movies that we watched on television compared to what we now enjoy on DVD and Blu-Ray! In the case of TPA, though, the darker, grimier, grainier look somehow helped it seem more accurate with regards to the oily, charred, murky filth of the ship.)
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Orsatti found himself enjoying a bigger part than he'd previously been granted with The Last American Hero (1973) opposite Jeff Bridges. He played a rival race car driver of the young lead.
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The film also gave us a rare, and brief, chance to glimpse his hairy chest in one confrontational scene.
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Irwin Allen came calling again when it was time for The Towering Inferno (1974.) Thus, Orsatti figures in two of the most memorable disaster sequences of the 1970s. This glass elevator sequence is a huge favorite of mine. He played a firefighter enlisted to help get the disabled car down 130-something floors to the ground. (It took years before I connected that the hairy, tan boyfriend from Poseidon was the same man as this cleaner-cut, comparatively pale fireman!)
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Unfortunately, an explosion knocks the elevator off its track and it dangles helplessly until Steve McQueen as the fire chief can bring a line from a helicopter to it and remove it from the wall.
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Orsatti dutifully helps his boss until the car breaks loose and he slips, apparently headed for another grisly demise!
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I've seen this cherished movie countless times and have no recollection of ever seeing his battered t-shirt or hairy chest (as shown here) in the finished product. I do have to say that I was never keen on the delivery of his line to Astaire, "She's dead." I get that by then he was dog-tired, but somehow it just always comes off a bit blase and unfeeling to me.
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1974 was a key year for Orsatti because it was when he wed his wife Lynda Farrell, a model. They remained wed until his death on September 12th, 2020 and had two sons together. Ernie's brother Frank became a valued stuntman as well and Ernie's sons proceeded in the same vein, making it a true family business. His son Noon Orsatti is a hugely busy and successful stunt coordinator. The man with them here is longtime Irwin Allen stunt coordinator Paul Stader, who shared much of his expertise with Ernie.
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Although Inferno was a box-office bonanza, it was 1976 before Orsatti acted in another movie role. In Sky Riders, he was part of a hang-gliding troupe (in clown-face for much of his screen time) who helps James Coburn train for a daring hostage rescue.
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1977 brought a supporting role in The Car, which had James Brolin trying to stop a seemingly possessed vehicle from killing everyone in its path.
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This time he was helping to pull someone up instead of falling down himself. After this, he worked for Irwin Allen again with small roles in Viva Knievel! (1977) and The Swarm (1978.) At the same time, he was performing stunts in other movies, eventually becoming the coordinator on some, including Underground Aces (1981) and Death Wish II (1982.) In 1985, he took part in Irwin Allen's star-packed presentation of Alice in Wonderland.
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Having popped up in bits on Hawkins and Mannix, Orsatti began to appear frequently on TV series which needed a henchman or a bad guy to pop up and then be knocked around some. This pic is from Wonder Woman.
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Seen here in The Greatest American Hero, he's a henchman who finds himself on the receiving end of the title character's powers.
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His roles most often were that of villain parts where a little bit of emoting came in handy along with the action.
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He continued in this vein through the early-1990s while simultaneously working as a stunt coordinator on many, many projects. His longstanding reputation for devising and performing stunts for TV and movies (and notably that big fall in Poseidon) earned him the nickname "The Legend."
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For a time, the '70s disaster epics fell out of favor and were derided by mainstream cinema writers, but the fans weren't about to let go of their beloved movies. As celebrations and anniversaries rolled around, Orsatti found himself as an honored guest at various events.
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As a handsome young man (though hardly a jaw-dropping actor), he might have enjoyed a few years of decorative roles before petering out, but his decision to go for the stunt from the floor to the ceiling of the capsized liner led him down an entirely different career path. As a result, he was busier than he likely would ever have been had he remained solely a performer. When the stroke claimed him at age 80, he'd been retired for about a decade, but had earned that right after countless cuts and bruises. He could now watch the next generation, including his sons, take their lumps for the pleasure of screen audiences.
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The End!
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