The Naked Gun (1988)
At Disc Dish, we were saddened to hear about the passing of Leslie Nielsen yesterday at age 84. Nielsen’s 60 years in show business found him careening all over the screens big and small, first as a supporting player on television in the early 1950s, then as a leading man in the movies in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and then doing a little bit of both up through the late 1970s. And it was then that the Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrahams cast the Canada-born actor in the comedy Airplane! (1980), in which Nielsen’s deadpan delivery of such lines as “And don’t call me Shirley” re-sparked his career renaissance as a first-class comic actor.
We’re saluting Nielsen by remembering 10 of his more memorable performances:
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
Police Squad!: The Complete Series (1982)
The Zuckers/Abrahams TV series only ran for a half-dozen episodes, but it proved to be the launching pad for Nielsen’s immortal Detective Frank Drebin.
Available on DVD
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
Eight years after the Police Squad series came the first and best entry in the Naked Gun trilogy, featuring Ricardo Montalban as a baddie aiming to assassinate the Queen of England and Lielsen as Drebin.
Available on DVD
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
Nielsen proved to be a better cop than ocean liner captain, as the S.S. Poseidon didn’t fare too well under his command!
Available on DVD
Airplane! (1980)
The Opposite Sex (1956)
Broadway producer Nielsen flies out to Reno to get a divorce from high-kickin’ wife June Allyson in this late-period MGM musical that offers a chance to see the man do some hoofin’.
Available on DVD from Warner Archive
Airplane! (1980)
“I just want to tell you both good luck. We’re all counting on you.”
Available on DVD
The Reluctant Astronaut (1967)
This Don Knotts movie is silly from start to finish, even with Nielsen keeping his chin up as a veteran astronaut who portrays the jittery funny man.
Available on DVD
Tammy and the Bachelor (1957)
Tanmy and The Bachelor (1957)
Debbie Reynolds star turn as adorable Southern cutie Tammy Tyree finds her romancing a dashing Nielsen after his plane crash-lands in her backyard swamp.
Available on DVD
Creepshow (1982)
Stephen King and George Romero collaborated on this colorful, comic-book-styled horror anthology that finds murderer Nielsen buried up to his neck at the beach as the tide slowly rolls in….
Available on DVD
Forbidden Planet (1956)
Forbidden Planet (1956)
This classic science-fiction film is actually an outer-space re-imagining of Shakespeare’s classic The Tempest, wherein Nielsen commands a spaceship and discovers the planet Altair IV — and the beauty of the distant world’s sexy Altaira (Anne Francis).
Available on DVD
Nuts (1987)
High-class call girl Barbra Streisand kills kinky customer Nielsen in self-defense then stands trial in one of the actor’s strangest supporting turns.
Available on DVD
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