I just saw a number of his films at a local festival. The people who introduced the pictures would always pronounce it "borr-ZAH-gee", but I overheard a guy behind me say it should be "borr-ZAY-gee". Does anyone know?
Thanks!
The guy behind you was right.
"I'm not used to being happy. It's funny, it hurts." Janet Gaynor as Diane, 7th Heaven, 1927.
Helen Hayes was once describing a film (probably "Seventh Heaven"} and pronounced it "Bor-zay-jee".
Does that help? He was also the director for the Gary Cooper/Helen Hayes vehicle "Farewell to Arms".
I'm sorry, my memory is playing tricks: Borzage was prnounced BOR-ZAY-GHEE with a hard "G" as Helen Hayes pronounced it in a documentary> My apologies--put it down to my aging brain. 26 March 2007
"Bor-zay-jee" is also how Martin Scorsese pronounces it in a documentary.
Did he train you? Did he rehearse you? Did he tell you *exactly* what to do, what to say?!
If you're talking about that "journey through Amercan cinema" then I think he actually used a hard g: I had always pronounced it with a j sound but I remember seeing that documentary and realising I was wrong...
shareIs that Score-SAY-zee or Score-SEH-see?
or Score-SAY-zay or Score-SEH-zay...
But cdg(Cdorothygale-1), I'm calling bogus on your story. Edna Skelton was Frank Borzage's wife, not his daughter. If Red Skelton introduced you to her as Frank's daughter, that uh seems a bit odd - - Frank was her SECOND husband, Red was her first. Would be VERY odd depending on whether Red was married to her at the time he introduced her to you... she hadn't married Borzage yet... More likely Red had long divorced her...NOT amicably, by the way, which makes it odd that Red would be introducing her at all... And since she was only married to Frank Borzage for 3 years, divorced in 1949, so when exactly were you introduced? I would guess long after she had divorced Frank too, unless you're like 100 years old now...
Anyway, Frank Borzage's father pronounced the family name Bor-ZAH-guh. It's Italian. The spelling was changed slightly in America, by turning the final A into an E (a "mistake" I think typical of US immigration officials when recording Italian immigrants), but the pronunciation could still be the same. Much later, Frank himself told a reporter his name was pronounced Bor-ZAY-ghee. My guess is he changed the pronunciation based on everybody MIS-pronouncing it for many years, so he just gave in to it (not uncommon an occurrence in America for somebody with an odd foreign name).
As for Martin with another Italian name, that's for another thread, but I think I'm giving up on that one...