It's common now for comedic actors to split their time doing drama, and for serious actors to frequently dip into comedy, but Leslie Nielsen, who died Sunday at 84, was a case unto himself.
A head case, he'd probably say with a grin, because Nieslen's about-face from aging dramatic actor to one of the goofiest performers of his generation was as much a wholesale reinvention as it was a late-career bloom.
A TV-show journeyman who ventured into film sporadically, the biggest movie of Nielsen's young career, 1956's "Forbidden Planet," remains one of the seminal sci-fi flicks of the '50s. But Nielsen's Commander Adams existed in a kind of time tunnel – sturdy yet genial, steadfast but curious, he's the star but still a comic-strip character writ large.
Not quite large enough for Nielsen to hit the stratosphere, however. That opportunity came when he got the chance to spoof his straight '50s roles - as well as his stern, concerned ship's captain in "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972) - in the groundbreaking "Airplane!"
And let's call a spade a spade: the movie was groundbreaking, at least in terms of what it let loose. Just as Mel Brooks' brand of genre-riff was petering out, writer-directors David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams' 1980 mash-up of disaster-movie clichés brought an anarchic, anything-goes style to film comedy that's still the model for spoofs. Much of the credit for that lies with Nielsen, who became its seriously silly face.
The fact that the Canadian-born actor had only been cast in serious parts for the previous 30 years made his ascendancy to comedy king funnier. You could sense Nielsen's glee in every deadpan line, including perhaps the movie's most quoted line, "... and stop calling me Shirley." When he and the ZAZ team went to television for the tragically short-lived cop spoof "Police Squad!," Nielsen made his Lt. Frank Drebin, throughout six glorious episodes, more than just an "SNL"-style skit character. In Nielsen's hands, Drebin was a kind of baroque meta-detective, informed no doubt by the gazillion guest spots the actor did on cop shows in the 1970s.
As Drebin moved to the big screen in the "Naked Gun" films, beginning in 1988, some of the subtlety was lost, but even that seemed to suit Nielsen. Yes, he could finesse the finer points of verbal and visual badinage, but he also could let things rip into wide-target buffonery. The "Gun" films allowed him the space to do that, as did subsequent lesser projects like "Dracula; Dead and Loving It" (directed by Brooks), "Spy Hard," "Mr. Magoo," "Spy Hard," and several entries in the "Scary Movie" franchise.
What eminated from them all was a performer's palpable thrill at being allowed to focus on his strengths. Surely that kind of thing was visible to the naked eye. And yes, keep calling him Shirley.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/2010/11/29/2010-11-29_naked_gun_star_leslie_nielsen_made_impressive_transformation_from_drama_to_comed.html#ixzz16fRkRcaU
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