Left: Anne Francis and Leslie Nielsen in ‘Forbidden Planet.’ Right: Nielsen and Jeannette Charles in ‘The Naked Gun.’ Sources: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images; IMDB.
Leslie Nielsen’s legacy rests on Airplane! and the Naked Gun movies, but the late comedy genius spent over two decades as a serious actor before finding himself in the zany world of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker productions. For years, the classically handsome leading man played it straight to great success. Pictures like Forbidden Planet, Tammy and the Bachelor, and The Poseidon Adventure” all leveraged his matinee-idol good looks and trustworthy aura.
For younger readers it’s hard not to imagine him making a hilarious remark but for many years Nielsen was a very serious actor. (Twitter)
Then, three decades into his Hollywood-star-worthy career, it made an abrupt change. He went from Jack Lemmon to Jack Black. “Airplane!” and the “Naked Gun” movies spotlighted an uproarious side of Neilsen most people never knew existed.
Three filmmakers, Jim Abrahams and brothers David Zucker and Jerry Zucker, saw the funnyman beneath the serious veneer. “They spotted me for what I truly was, which was a closet comedian,” Nielsen said. “Ever since Airplane! began they would come over and knock on the door of the closet and say ‘Leslie come on out and play.’ “
Leslie Nielsen Is From The Great White North. The North Part Of It
Thankfully, Nielsen found “Airplane!” and the “Naked Gun” trilogy. (IFC)
Perhaps the most unlikely aspect of Nielsen’s life was its beginning. He was born and raised just 200 miles from the Arctic Circle, a son of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer. As he put it, “There were 15 people in the village, including five of us. If my father arrested somebody in the winter, he’d have to wait until the thaw to turn him in.”
“Like a midget at a urinal, I was going to have to stay on my toes,”
In order to venture out in the real world, Neilson joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and became a gunnery sergeant. Eventually, he scored a radio job in Calgary despite being legally deaf, which eventually led him to the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York.