a serious actor who became a comic star with his career-changing roles
in “Airplane!” and “The Naked Gun” comedies, died Sunday in
Nielson died of complications from pneumonia at a
hospital near his home, surrounded by his wife, Barbaree, and friends,
his agent
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 Los Angeles Times Arts Editor
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 Detective
It was quite a career shift for an actor who seemed perfectly cast as a handsome leading man when he came to
A typically serious early role was as the space ship
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
“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
“I will be forever grateful to them,” Nielsen told
the Times in 1991. “It is just an amazing roll of the dice. I am so
lucky to be a representative of their humor.”
Nielsen then was cast in “Police Squad!,” which aimed to do to cop shows what “Airplane” did to disaster movies.
It lasted all of six episodes on
“Leslie has the idea to play it maybe not straight but deadly serious,”
performance and just transfer it from a comedy to a drama. There’s just
no difference — that’s what he can do.”
Nielsen was born
He joined the Royal Canadian Air Force after graduating from high school and after the service studied at a
Nielsen’s later movies included “All I Want for
Christmas” in 1991, “Dracula: Dead and Loving It” in 1995, “Spy Hard”
in 1996 and “Mr. Magoo” in 1997.
He also toured with his one-man show on the life of defense lawyer
Nielsen had two daughters and was married three
times previously, according to The Associated Press. A complete list of
survivors was not available.
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