Recently we were looking at some of the funniest comics in our generation. I did not recall Leslie Nielson till I read the headlines this evening. Leslie was a brilliant comedian and a very funny actor.
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-leslie-nielsen-20101129,0,2787062.storyLeslie Nielsen dies at 84; serious actor became a comic starThe Canada native, who seemed perfectly cast as a handsome leading man when he came to Hollywood in the 1950s, had career-changing roles in the 'Airplane!' and 'Naked Gun' comedies.Leslie Nielsen, a serious actor who became a comic star with his career-changing roles in "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun" comedies, died Sunday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 84.
Nielson died of complications from pneumonia at a hospital near his home, surrounded by his wife, Barbaree, and friends, his agent, John S. Kelly, said in a statement.
In "Airplane!," the 1980 send-up of just about every disaster movie plot imaginable, Nielsen as Dr. Rumack was "an essentially serious actor taking essentially preposterous material very straight," wrote Times Arts Editor Charles Champlin in his review.
Just how preposterous was it?
As the crew and passengers became ill, Nielsen said they needed to get the sick to a hospital.
"A hospital? What is it?" a flight attendant asked.
Nielsen: "It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now."
And when Nielsen was told, "Surely you can't be serious," he answered: "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley."
Nielsen followed up "Airplane!" with another goofy role delivered with deadpan conviction as Frank Drebin in the "Police Squad!" television show and "Naked Gun" movies.
It was quite a career shift for an actor who seemed perfectly cast as a handsome leading man when he came to Hollywood in the 1950s, already a veteran of live television appearances.
A typically serious early role was as the spaceship commander in "Forbidden Planet, " the 1956 science-fiction classic. "It's the reason I was never asked to do 'Star Trek' or 'Twilight Zone' for TV," he told the Toronto Star in 2002. "I carried too much baggage with me from that movie."
Nielsen played Debbie Reynolds' sweetheart in the 1957 film "Tammy and the Bachelor," was the Revolutionary War fighter Francis Marion in the Disney TV adventure series "The Swamp Fox" and had roles in such TV series as "The New Breed" and "Bracken's World."
"I just always worked," he said. "I played a lot of leaders, autocratic sorts. Perhaps it was my Canadian accent."
Nielsen also was captain of the doomed ocean liner in the 1972 disaster movie "The Poseidon Adventure."
All the while he "was a closet comedian," he told The Times in 1991.
Then "Airplane!" changed his career.
Producers-directors-writers Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker hired Nielsen and other veteran actors Robert Stack, Peter Graves and Lloyd Bridges, all perfectly cast to spoof their own heroic and very serious images.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-leslie-nielsen-20101129,0,2787062.story
Topic: RIP Leslie Nielson : Airplane Funnyman dies @ 84 (Read 591 times)