LOS ANGELES - Despite decades wearied playing dark commanders and no laughing matter captains, Leslie Nielsen insisted that he was always made for comedy. He proved it in his career's favour act. "Surely you can't be serious," an airline rider says to Nielsen in "Airplane!" the 1980 hit that turned the actor from melodramatic prime bloke to witty star. "I am serious," Nielsen replies. "And don't convene me Shirley.
" The route was in all likelihood his most conspicuous - and a excellent distillation of his career. Nielsen, the expressive lead in "Forbidden Planet" and "The Poseidon Adventure" and the bumbling private eye Frank Drebin in "The Naked Gun" comedies, died on Sunday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 84. The Canada intrinsic died from complications from pneumonia at a nursing home near his home, surrounded by his wife, Barbaree, and friends, his force John S. Kelly said in a statement.
Critics argued that when Nielsen went into comedy he was being found against type, but Nielsen disagreed, saying comedy was his. "I've decisively found my where it hurts - as Lt. Frank Drebin," he told The Associated Press in a 1988 interview. Comic actor Russell Brand took to Twitter to deliver commendation to Nielsen, playing off his popular line: "RIP Leslie Nielsen. Shirley, he will be missed.
" Nielsen came to Hollywood in the mid-1950s after performing in 150 spend tube dramas in New York. With a craggily generous face, blond plaits and 6-foot-2 height, he seemed criterion for a talkie unequalled man. Nielsen essential performed as the prince of France in the Paramount operetta "The Vagabond King" with Kathryn Grayson. The screen - he called it "The Vagabond Turkey" - flopped, but MGM signed him to a seven-year contract.
His maiden cover for that studio was auspicious - as the gap send commander in the art fiction master-work "Forbidden Planet." He found his best dramaturgic responsibility as the captain of an overturned main liner in the 1972 calamity movie, "The Poseidon Adventure." Behind the camera, the life-or-death actor was a everyday prankster. That was an complexion of his disposition never exploited, however, until "Airplane!" was released in 1980 and became a massive hit.
As the attend aboard a smooth in which the pilots, and some of the passengers, become violently ill, Nielsen says they must get to a clinic without delay away. "A hospital? What is it?" a journey aide asks, inquiring about the illness. "It's a big construction with patients, but that's not outstanding without hesitating now," Nielsen deadpans.
It was the beginning of a fit callow pursuit in comedy. Nielsen would go on to appear in such comedies as "Repossessed" - a takeoff on "The Exorcist" - and "Mr. Magoo," in which he played the appellation capacity of the amicable bumbler. But it took years before he got there. He played Debbie Reynolds' beloved in 1957's sought-after "Tammy and the Bachelor," and he became well known to pet boomers for his lines as the Revolutionary War fighter Francis Marion in the Disney TV peril series "The Swamp Fox.
" He asked to be released from his reduce at MGM, and as a freelancer, he appeared in a series of unremarkable movies. "I played a lot of leaders, autocratic sorts; conceivably it was my Canadian accent," he said. Meanwhile, he remained acting in TV in customer roles. He also starred in his own series, "The New Breed," "The Protectors" and "Bracken's World," but all were short-lived.
Then "Airplane!" captivated audiences and changed everything. Producers-directors-writers Jim Abrahams, David and Jerry Zucker had hired Robert Stack, Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges and Nielsen to spoof their towering TV images in a parody of flight-in-jeopardy movies. After the movie's success, the filmmaking threesome mould their newfound side-splitting personage as Detective Drebin in a TV series, "Police Squad," which trashed the cliches of "Dragnet" and other cop shows. Despite worthy reviews, ABC right away canceled it. Only six episodes were made.
"It didn't belong on TV," Nielsen later said. "It had the well-disposed of humor you had to honour prominence to." The Zuckers and Abraham converted the series into a peculiarity film, "The Naked Gun," with George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson and Priscilla Presley as Nielsen's co-stars.
Its mammoth good fortune led to sequels "The Naked Gun 2 1/2" and "The Naked Gun 33 1/3." His later movies included "All I Want for Christmas," "Dracula: Dead and Loving It" and "Spy Hard." Between films he often turned serious, touring with his one-man show on the animation of the great defense lawyer, Clarence Darrow. Nielsen was born Feb. 11, 1926 in Regina, Saskatchewan.
He grew up 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle at Fort Norman, where his found was an police officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The parents had three sons, and Nielsen once recalled, "There were 15 clan in the village, including five of us. If my author arrested hot stuff in the winter, he'd have to hold on until the bend to curve him in." The senior Nielsen was a troubled mortals who belabour his ball and chain and sons, and Leslie longed to escape. As soon as he graduated from exuberant group at 17, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, even though he was legally unheedful (he wore hearing aids most of his life.) After the war, Nielsen worked as a disc jockey at a Calgary portable station, then calculated at a Toronto tranny set of beliefs operated by Lorne Greene, who would go on to take the lead on the hit TV series "Bonanza.
" A fellowship to the Neighborhood Playhouse brought him to New York, where he immersed himself in live out television. Nielsen also was married to: Monica Boyer, 1950-1955; Sandy Ullman, 1958-74; and Brooks Oliver, 1981-85. Nielsen and his secondly trouble and strife had two daughters, Thea and Maura.
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