Leslie Nielsen, who spent 30 years forging a career as a serious actor, and then another 30 playing the same parts for laughs, has died aged 84. We look back over his life in clips
Few actors have the ability to raise a smile just by the thought of them. Leslie Nielsen, deadpan extraordinaire, who used his training as a regular leading man in po-faced dramas to fruitfully spoof them for 30 years, was one of them. News of his death today will be greeted with both remembered happiness and a huge amount of sadness.
Nielsen was born in Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1926, 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle, the son of a Mounties and a Welsh immigrant from Fulham. His older brother, Erik, was deputy prime minister of Canada during the 1980s, while their uncle, Jean Hersholt, was a prominent silent-film actor. Here, on David Letterman, promoting the second Naked Gun film, Nielsen credits those long cold days of his childhood – "60 below zero, four months of year" – as the fuel of a fantasy life that triggered his acting career.
After graduation Nielsen enlisted in the Canadian air force and was trained as an aerial gunner during the latter part of the Second World War, though he never served overseas. He then won a scholarship to acting school, and moved to New York. He made his first TV appearance, in 1948, on an episode of Studio One, alongside Charlton Heston, and his first film, Forbidden Planet, six years later. It's a movie now almost impossible to take seriously, not just for its ropy B-movie production values and wobbly plot, but because of the presence of a (looser-limbed, darker-haired) Nielsen. His (practically to-camera) laugh when hearing that evil Walter Pidgeon's "alluring daughter" hasn't only not met a young man before, but not heard of a bathing suit betrays the audience-aware sense of humour that was later to make him world famous.
The film was a great success and Nielsen won a string of leading man roles. You can glimpse him having "too much excitement" at the end of this clip from The Opposite Sex.
And here he is doing his best sweaty hunk in Tammy and the Bachelor. Again, it's difficult not to watch the clip through the filter of 2010, in particular his double take on Tammy's assertion that he's pleasured her no end.
He tried out for higher-brow blockbuster fare, including, unsuccessfully, Ben Hur. Here's his hearty screen test.
Nielsen ploughed his furrow on TV through much of the 70s, starring in a show called Swamp Fox and another, The New Breed, which boasts the kind of title sequence that leaves you desperate for more. If anyone can find clips from this, please do post them.
Likewise, this one, for The Bold Ones, a later iteration of which (The Protectors), Nielsen had a guest spot on.
Nielsen's movies in this period were very much products of their time. Here he is making a decent fist of assailing a kung fu master in a slightly Garth Marenghi-style 1977 thriller, Project: Kill. The Zucker brothers were no doubt looking and learning: the sound effects of trumpets to punctuate each punch are very Naked Gun.
One of his last straight roles was as a corrupt mayor whose cost-cutting and glad-handing come home to roost when construction troubles strike in disaster movie City on Fire. Here he is with disgruntled nurse Shelley Winters (and unconvincing limp).
This later scene shows how Nielsen has learned to see the error of his ways and, even, redeem himself by becoming a bit of a hero.
It was a true turning-point role: not only in signalling the kind of fare he was shortly to become famous spoofing, but because it was one of his rare forays into the world of being a baddie. Nielsen was always the good guy, well-meaning, often lethally so, but dimly endearing always.
When released in 1980 Airplane! was a copper-bottomed hit – the general audience was evidently eager for this kind of treatment of the disaster movie after years spent enduring the genre at the cinema. Nielsen doesn't feature too much in the trailer, allthough his "Don't call me Shirley" line does get a debut at 2:35.
(Real Shirley aficionados can see a longer version of that scene below.)
I won't cover Airplane! in too much detail on account of our coverage of its 30th anniversary earlier this year. The success led to a sequel (which Nielsen didn't appear in) but, more significantly to the Zucker brothers and Nielsen teaming up again to spoof those police shows that had also been a staple of his career.
Nielsen won an Emmy nomination for his role as Lieutenant Frank Drebin, the most inept cop on the block, but the show itself – Police Squad – was axed after six episodes. The files were dusted off again in 1987, however, for the first film in the Naked Gun trilogy. It's easy these days to reflect on the films as pure slapstick, but they set out their political stall as take-no-prisoners satires right from the opening scene:
(Note the cameos for Idi Amin, Colonel Gaddafi, Mikhail Gorbachev.) They didn't always aim lowbrow, either – note the Eisenstein references in Naked Gun 33 1/3 …
The series was full of wonderful moments – please do post your favourites below – but here's just a couple: the Ghost-homage love scene:
And the driving instructor car chase scene:
With indefatigable commitment to the genre, Nielsen kept on spoofing after the series ended (thought last year there were hints the series would be revived). These weren't always masterpieces; indeed what they best highlighted was the skill and work that must have gone into what went before. Repossessed, featuring a remarkably amusing turn from Linda Blair, had its moments, however.
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