Life became a little less funny with the passing of Leslie
Nielsen over the weekend. The world lost the unlikeliest of comedic
legends.
If you had asked someone to describe Leslie Nielsen prior
to 1980 you might hear adjectives like “handsome leading man” or
“silver haired villain.” You would never hear adjectives like
“funny man” or “comic genius.”
But then in 1980 along came a little movie called
Airplane! All of a sudden, Nielsen’s career would
literally and figuratively take off in a whole new direction. Now
Nielsen wasn’t the only actor who the triumvirate of Jerry Zucker,
Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker cast against type. Who knew that
Robert Stack could take out Hari Krishnas and the Moonies out with
one fell swoop? Who knew Lloyd Bridges had an addiction to glue?
Who knew Peter Graves was so curious about Turkish prisons? And who
knew Barbara Billingsley was so fluent in jive? But despite their
brilliant turns Stack, Bridges, Graves and Billingsley generally
weren’t cast in other comedic roles.
So what made Nielsen’s turn as Dr. Alan Rumack so special?
Nielsen not only played him straight he was downright serious.
Surely you can’t be serious? Well, I am serious and don’t
call me Shirley. But serious or not, Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker had
only scratched the surface of Nielsen’s potential as a comedic
actor. They would cast Nielsen as Lieutenant Frank Drebin in a
television series called Police Squad, a satire of police
procedurals which aired on ABC in 1982. Unfortunately, ABC never
fully embraced the vision of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker and cancelled
the series after only six episodes. Despite getting the axe,
Police Squad would develop a loyal and enduring cult
following.
Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker also weren’t quite ready to
relinquish custody of Lieutenant Drebin and neither was Nielsen.
Six years later, their persistence paid off with the release of
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad. It enjoyed
the kind of commercial and critical success that so alluded
Police Squad. Over the next six years, The Naked
Gun would spawn two sequels. At a time when most actors would
slow down, Nielsen reached the height of his popularity in his
sixties.
To give you an idea of just how popular Nielsen was in the
early 1990s, I remember attending Canada Day festivities on
Parliament Hill in Ottawa in 1993. There must have been at least a
hundred thousand people there. When Nielsen (who was born in
Saskatchewan) came on the video screen to give a few remarks he
received the loudest applause of the night.
Let me offer one more anecdote. When the second
Naked Gun movie came out in 1991 I was still living in
Thunder Bay having just graduated from high school. I invited my
friend Renny Maki out to see the movie with me. Now he hadn’t seen
the first Naked Gun movie but I had assumed he heard of
it. As it turns out he thought The Naked Gun was a
straight police drama. So when he saw the first sight gag it really
threw him for a loop. Don’t get me wrong. He thought the movie was
hilarious. But I thought it was even funnier that he didn’t know it
was a comedy. At the time, Renny and I were opposites on the
political spectrum (he was the conservative and I was the
socialist.) So in the years that followed when Renny and I
disagreed about something in front of others and he seemed to be
getting the upper hand in the argument I would invariably point
out, “Yeah, but Renny thought The Naked Gun was a serious
movie.” People would look at Renny as if he had lived under a rock.
But it was all in good fun.
I think my mother probably summed up The Naked
Gun movies when she described them as “pleasantly silly.” It
is an assessment with which I completely agree. As I become older I
find it harder to laugh. Things are either not as funny to me as
they once were or what is considered fashionably funny just isn’t
funny at all. Leslie Nielsen’s brand of humor has aged well and is
devoid of the meanness that is often at the core of contemporary
humor.
For all the ridiculous situations Lieutenant Drebin found
himself in and for all the absurdity that ensued, Nielsen
nevertheless played that character with warmth and empathy that
made people want more. My favorite scene in The Naked Gun
takes place when Jane (played by Priscilla Presley) pulls a gun on
Drebin. Despite facing certain death, Drebin tells her of his love
and proposes marriage and in a brilliant variation of the ending of
Casablanca, Drebin says, “It’s a topsy-turvy world, and
maybe the problems of two people don’t amount to a hill of beans.
But this is our hill. And these are our beans!” Not only does Jane
agree to marriage but it stops an on-field brawl between the
Seattle Mariners and the California Angels, it moves Curt Gowdy to
tearfully apologize for yelling at Jim Palmer, and results in an
embrace between Jew and Arab.
I can only hope that some enterprising network will pay
tribute to Nielsen by airing a weekend marathon of all six
Police Squad episode, The Naked Gun trilogy and,
of course, Airplane! In a world full of danger, terror and
general anxiety unease, Lord knows we could all use a really good
laugh.
