FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Leslie Nielsen, who traded in his dramatic persona for inspired bumbling as a hapless doctor in “Airplane!” and the accident-prone detective Frank Drebin in “The Naked Gun” comedies, died Sunday. He was 84.
The Canadian-born actor died from complications from pneumonia, his agent John S. Kelly said in a statement.
Nielsen came to Hollywood in the mid-1950s after performing in 150 live television dramas in New York. With a craggily handsome face, blond hair and 6-foot-2 height, he seemed ideal for a movie leading man.
Nielsen first performed as the king of France in the Paramount operetta “The Vagabond King” with Kathryn Grayson. The film — he called it “The Vagabond Turkey” — flopped, but MGM signed him to a seven-year contract.
His first film for that studio was auspicious — as the space ship commander in the science-fiction classic “Forbidden Planet.” He found his best dramatic role as the captain of an overturned ocean liner in the 1972 disaster movie, “The Poseidon Adventure.” He became known as a serious actor, although behind the camera he was a prankster. That was an aspect of his personality never exploited, however, until “Airplane!” was released in 1980 and became a huge hit.
As the doctor aboard a plane in which the pilots, and some of the passengers, become violently ill, Nielsen asks a passenger whether he can fly the plane and the man replies, “Surely you can’t be serious.” Nielsen responds: “I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley.”
Critics argued he was being cast against type, but Nielsen disagreed. “I’ve always been cast against type before,” he said, adding comedy was what he’d really always wanted to do.
It was what he would do for most of the rest of his career, appearing in such comedies as “Repossessed” (a takeoff on the demonic possession movies like “The Exorcist”) and “Mr. Magoo,” in which he played the title role of the good-natured bumbler.
After the movie’s success, the producers-directors-writers Jim Abrahams, David and Jerry Zucker cast their newfound comic star as Detective Drebin in a TV series, “Police Squad,” which trashed the cliches of “Dragnet” and other cop shows. Despite good reviews, ABC canceled it after six episodes.
“It didn’t belong on TV,” Nielsen later commented. “It had the kind of humor you had to pay attention to.”
The Zuckers and Abraham converted the series into a feature film, “The Naked Gun,” with George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson and Priscilla Presley as Nielsen’s co-stars. Its huge success led to sequels “The Naked Gun 2 1/2” and “The Naked Gun 33 1/3.” His later movies included “All I Want for Christmas,” “Dracula: Dead and Loving It” and “Spy Hard.”
Between films, he turned serious, touring his one-man show on the life of the great defense lawyer Clarence Darrow.
Nielsen was born Feb. 11, 1926, in Regina, Saskatchewan. He grew up 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle at Fort Norman, where his father was an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
As soon as he graduated from high school at 17, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, even though he was legally deaf (he wore hearing aids most of his life.)
After the war, Nielsen worked as a disc jockey at a Calgary radio station, then studied at a Toronto radio school operated by Lorne Greene, who would go on to star on the hit TV series “Bonanza.” A scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse brought him to New York, where he immersed himself in live television.
