Leslie Nielsen:FEW PEOPLE watching the career of Leslie Nielsen, who has died aged 84, could have predicted that the stolid actor would become known as a comedy star after more than two decades in show business. His reputation was transformed by playing Dr Rumack on board the threatened aircraft in Airplane!(1980) and Frank Drebin, the hilariously inept cop, in three Naked Gunfilms.
What the writer-directors Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker saw in Nielsen was his po-faced persona. “They spotted me for being what I really was, a closet comedian,” he said.
Nielsen's acting style altered not one iota from when he played the ship's captain in The Poseidon Adventure(1972) and the mayor in City on Fire(1979). The success of his performances derived from his playing it straight, as if he believed in the crazy goings-on around him.
Nielsen was born in Regina, in Saskatchewan, Canada, to a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a Welsh mother. His brother, Erik, became deputy prime minister of Canada. After high school Nielsen joined the Canadian air force, training as an aerial gunner in the second World War.
He began working as a DJ at a Calgary radio station but soon moved to New York to seek employment and to study acting.
More than 20 years before he played Drebin, Nielsen was third-billed as a serious policeman in his big screen debut, Ransom!(1956).
He exuded a certain weary charm playing a wealthy pilot who crashes in Mississippi and is nursed back to health by backwoods girl Debbie Reynolds in Tammy and the Bachelor(1957). But despite the huge box-office takings, Nielsen plodded on in bread-and-butter roles. These included a cattle-baron villain in The Sheepman(1958); and an ineffectual lieutenant in the third (and worst) version of Beau Geste(1966). He was also in some dire comedies, playing straight man to Don Knotts in The Reluctant Astronaut(1967) and to Bob Hope in How to Commit Marriage(1969).
Drebin first appeared in the short-lived but funny TV series Police Squad!(1982), Abrahams and the Zuckers' clever parody of TV cop series. The show used many of the gags that were repeated and expanded in The Naked Gun(1988) and its sequels.
Nielsen's deadpan acting rescued the films from crassness. His comic persona did not stretch very far, although he was better than his material in Repossessed(1990), a parody of The Exorcist; as the count in Mel Brooks's Dracula: Dead and Loving It(1995); and as agent WD-40 in Spy Hard(1996). However, he hardly raised a smile in the misconceived Mr Magoo(1997) or the Scary Moviehorror spoofs. In contrast, he successfully toured the US in a one-man show as famed lawyer Clarence Darrow.
His fourth wife, Barbaree, and two daughters, Maura and Thea, from his second marriage, survive him.
Leslie Nielsen: born February 11th, 1926; died November 28th, 2010