THE STAR OF the Naked Gun and Airplane! films, Leslie Nielsen, has died at the age of 84.
Nielsen died on Sunday at a hospital near his Florida home, where he had been staying following a brief bout of pneumonia.
The Canadian had began his cinematic life as a more dramatic actor, appearing in films such as The Poseidon Adventure in 1972, but it was through his deadpan roles in comedies that he became better known – although his turn to comedic roles came relatively late in light.
Ironically, Nielsen was never seen as a comic in front of the camera until his appearance in Airplane! in 1980, where his off-screen knack as a prankster was first harnessed in front of the camera.
From that role he was offered the part of Frank Drebin in a six-part TV series ‘Police Squad!’, which was then spun off into the massively popular Naked Gun series, where Drebin’s marvellous delivery for deadpan lines was best exploited in lines that became cinema classics.
“Yeah, he was a white guy, moustache, about six foot three,” one witness in one of the Naked Gun films said to him. “Awfully big moustache,” Nielsen responded.
“Surely you can’t be serious,” a passenger in Airplane! had asked. “I am serious,” Nielsen quipped, before adding what probably became his most famous line: “And don’t call me Shirley.”
Another line – delivered as Drebin was about to venture into the line of fire – went, “Danger’s my middle name!” Asked, with reference to his on-screen other half, “What about Jane?”, Nielsen quipped: “I don’t know her middle name.”
He also appeared in spoof films 2001: A Space Travesty, Repossessed (a skit of The Exorcist) and Dracula: Dead and Loving It.
“I didn’t want to go ahead and be pegged for doing only comedy, although comedy is burgeoning,” Sky News quotes him as offering in a 1996 interview. ”I’d like to see how far I can stretch and keep on doing ‘dumb and stupid’ (comedy) and drama and if possible be accepted at both.
“There’s a line with an audience you can’t always cross over. Sometimes, they only want to see you being funny.”
He is survived by his second wife, Barbaree, and four children.
