'SURELY you can’t be serious.' That line, said not by Leslie Nielsen but to him (by Robert Hays, the ostensible male lead of “Airplane!,” the movie in question), might be taken to sum up Mr. Nielsen’s career, or at least the part of it that people are most likely to remember. Of course Mr. Nielsen could be serious. “I’m serious! And don’t call me Shirley.” And that’s what was so funny. He had also, up until “Airplane!,” been a sober and solid character actor, mostly on television, sometimes playing heavies, sometimes figures of bland authority. And if not for “Airplane!” and the spoofs that followed, he would be recalled now as one of those “hey, it’s that guy” guys of an earlier era, lingering in the memory banks of baby boomers and Gen-Xers who watched way too much TV when they were kids.
Mr. Nielsen’s I.M.D.B. page lists a host of such appearances, on series whose names conjure images of urban decay and embattled masculinity: “Ironside,” “Kojak, “Cannon,” “Columbo.” He also had bigger roles in shorter-lived shows, not all of them about cops (like “Bracken’s World” and “The Virginian”). But all the curious researcher may really need to know to understand his peculiar and exemplary cultural trajectory is that he was the captain of the S.S. Poseidon.
Less than a decade separates “The Poseidon Adventure” — the grandest, goofiest and still the most watchable of the disaster flicks of the ’70s (thanks mainly to Gene Hackman and Shelley Winters) — from “Airplane!,” which appeared in 1980 to finish off that moribund genre and establish an era of spoofery that has not yet ended. By now it is likely that more people are familiar with the parody than with the “Airport” movies that were its targets, along with the older “Zero Hour!” And similarly, younger audiences (which is to say younger than 35 or so) are more likely to recognize Lieut. Frank Drebin, Mr. Nielsen’s character in the “Police Squad” franchise, than the battered paladins of law enforcement he was lampooning.
When he died on Sunday at 84, he had transcended both his “Police Squad” and “Airplane!” roles in part by declining to deviate from them, becoming instead an all-purpose embodiment of the parodic principle itself. What made the old cop shows and disaster movies so susceptible to mockery — to the extent that they could survive in the pop-cultural bloodstream only when dosed with irony — was that their clean-cut, strong-featured heroes represented the last vestiges of a squareness that had been thoroughly routed by the youth culture of the ’60s. Pilots, doctors, police detectives, ship captain: these were the kind patriarchal figures whose authority was almost completely undone, but who were still in some way necessary.
“Airplane!,” released in the year of Ronald Reagan’s election, is full of them. The pranksters who dreamed it up — the brothers David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams, collectively known as ZAZ — recruited not only Mr. Nielsen, but also Peter Graves (“Mission: Impossible”), Robert Stack (“The Untouchables”) and Lloyd Bridges (“Sea Hunt”), an example of the comic overkill that made the film an instant touchstone among smart alecks weaned on Mad magazine movie satires and the pop irreverence of the first seasons of “Saturday Night Live.” So many sonorous voices and furrowed brows in one place! So many dads to make fun of!
This is not to understate his talent. On the contrary. Mr. Nielsen’s ability to stay in character, to reel off sublime non sequiturs and koans of cluelessness with a precisely measured balance of dignity and density represents both a rare gift and considerable work. Looking back, it is easy to see that the times required someone like Leslie Nielsen: a handsome silver-haired gentleman of fatherly demeanor willing to commit and submit to any kind of indignity without losing his cool. But only the man himself had exactly the right background.
Not only because he was originally from Canada. That in itself is not special. Lorne Greene — a historical precondition for Leslie Nielsen — was Canadian. So is Lorne Michaels, the godfather of “Saturday Night Live,” who helped pave the runway for “Airplane.” So are most people named Lorne and most people who manage to be funny on television or in movies without also being black or Jewish.
No, the uniqueness of Leslie Nielsen is inseparable from the nonspecialness of much of his career, his brilliant lack of distinction. Like many aspiring actors of the postwar era he trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, absorbing the high-middlebrow culture of the time (studying dance with Martha Graham), taking whatever opportunities came his way and maturing into a reliable and reasonably versatile actor.
The hallmarks of that kind of performer include a willingness to embrace even a half-baked part in a mediocre piece of work and a steadfast refusal to wink, mug or showboat even if circumstances cry out for it. “The Poseidon Adventure” may be a sublimely campy shipwreck, and the cop shows of the ’70s may look now like gamy, cynical showcases for wide ties and retrograde social attitudes, but our ability to make jokes about and out of them would be spoiled if they had treated themselves like jokes in the first place.
Self-seriousness was always part of the fun, and no one understood that more completely, or made more of it, than Mr. Nielsen. Surely.
Mr. Nielsen’s I.M.D.B. page lists a host of such appearances, on series whose names conjure images of urban decay and embattled masculinity: “Ironside,” “Kojak, “Cannon,” “Columbo.” He also had bigger roles in shorter-lived shows, not all of them about cops (like “Bracken’s World” and “The Virginian”). But all the curious researcher may really need to know to understand his peculiar and exemplary cultural trajectory is that he was the captain of the S.S. Poseidon.
Less than a decade separates “The Poseidon Adventure” — the grandest, goofiest and still the most watchable of the disaster flicks of the ’70s (thanks mainly to Gene Hackman and Shelley Winters) — from “Airplane!,” which appeared in 1980 to finish off that moribund genre and establish an era of spoofery that has not yet ended. By now it is likely that more people are familiar with the parody than with the “Airport” movies that were its targets, along with the older “Zero Hour!” And similarly, younger audiences (which is to say younger than 35 or so) are more likely to recognize Lieut. Frank Drebin, Mr. Nielsen’s character in the “Police Squad” franchise, than the battered paladins of law enforcement he was lampooning.
When he died on Sunday at 84, he had transcended both his “Police Squad” and “Airplane!” roles in part by declining to deviate from them, becoming instead an all-purpose embodiment of the parodic principle itself. What made the old cop shows and disaster movies so susceptible to mockery — to the extent that they could survive in the pop-cultural bloodstream only when dosed with irony — was that their clean-cut, strong-featured heroes represented the last vestiges of a squareness that had been thoroughly routed by the youth culture of the ’60s. Pilots, doctors, police detectives, ship captain: these were the kind patriarchal figures whose authority was almost completely undone, but who were still in some way necessary.
“Airplane!,” released in the year of Ronald Reagan’s election, is full of them. The pranksters who dreamed it up — the brothers David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams, collectively known as ZAZ — recruited not only Mr. Nielsen, but also Peter Graves (“Mission: Impossible”), Robert Stack (“The Untouchables”) and Lloyd Bridges (“Sea Hunt”), an example of the comic overkill that made the film an instant touchstone among smart alecks weaned on Mad magazine movie satires and the pop irreverence of the first seasons of “Saturday Night Live.” So many sonorous voices and furrowed brows in one place! So many dads to make fun of!
This is not to understate his talent. On the contrary. Mr. Nielsen’s ability to stay in character, to reel off sublime non sequiturs and koans of cluelessness with a precisely measured balance of dignity and density represents both a rare gift and considerable work. Looking back, it is easy to see that the times required someone like Leslie Nielsen: a handsome silver-haired gentleman of fatherly demeanor willing to commit and submit to any kind of indignity without losing his cool. But only the man himself had exactly the right background.
Not only because he was originally from Canada. That in itself is not special. Lorne Greene — a historical precondition for Leslie Nielsen — was Canadian. So is Lorne Michaels, the godfather of “Saturday Night Live,” who helped pave the runway for “Airplane.” So are most people named Lorne and most people who manage to be funny on television or in movies without also being black or Jewish.
No, the uniqueness of Leslie Nielsen is inseparable from the nonspecialness of much of his career, his brilliant lack of distinction. Like many aspiring actors of the postwar era he trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, absorbing the high-middlebrow culture of the time (studying dance with Martha Graham), taking whatever opportunities came his way and maturing into a reliable and reasonably versatile actor.
The hallmarks of that kind of performer include a willingness to embrace even a half-baked part in a mediocre piece of work and a steadfast refusal to wink, mug or showboat even if circumstances cry out for it. “The Poseidon Adventure” may be a sublimely campy shipwreck, and the cop shows of the ’70s may look now like gamy, cynical showcases for wide ties and retrograde social attitudes, but our ability to make jokes about and out of them would be spoiled if they had treated themselves like jokes in the first place.
Self-seriousness was always part of the fun, and no one understood that more completely, or made more of it, than Mr. Nielsen. Surely.
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