Another light in the zaniness firmament has dimmed. Leslie Nielsen died yesterday at age 84.
Here’s a guy who built a career as a serious, not to say melodramatic, actor and then around age 50 he just hung a left straight into silliness. To the betterment of movies, audiences and society in general.
There’s a quote about him by Jerry Zucker, one of the team of lunatics who launched Nielsen’s second career in Airplane: “Leslie kept emitting gas in a very loud and embarrassing manner. We just assumed he'd been to Mexico or something. Then we found out he has this little rubber gadget that makes these terrible noises. And we realized that what we had here was a 10-year-old dipstick parading around as a genteel 50-year-old.”
People has a collection of clips from his movies. Two caveats: don’t be drinking anything whilst watching, as you’ll snort it out onto your keyboard; you might not want to view them at work, unless you don’t mind your colleagues thinking you’ve gone mental.
Most of the focus today will be on his movies—Airplane, the Naked Gun series, etc. But my fondest memory of him was his guest appearances on Due South as RCMP Sgt. Buck Frobisher. My favourite episode was “All the Queen’s Horses”, where he and his old partner (now deceased) rescue his partner’s son, Constable Benton Fraser, from a train that’s been taken over by an Insane Arms Dealer. It’s full of unconscious Mounties (members of the Musical Ride) who’ve been gassed by the IAD. But Frobisher escaped gassing because he was in the loo, on account of he’d had a hinky caribou burrito (or the like)…
Okay, I haven’t the words to explain it; you really do have to see it. When I got back from living in Europe at the end of 2001, knowing I was being laid off and not sure of employment prospects, I was in my house for a weekend before the cable could be connected. I pulled out the “All the Queen’s Horses” video and felt that in a world where Buck Frobisher could be a Mountie, maybe anything was possible.
Thanks, Leslie.
1 comment:
Here's a long comment (sorry) but my tribute to Leslie Nielsen.
As some readers will know, my husband works at the Canadian Embassy. He was fortunate to meet Leslie Nielsen about two years ago there. Whenever a native son or daughter is in DC,they usually stop by or have an event. While there, Leslie was very nice, down to earth, funny, and had as much time for worker bees like my husband as the Ambassador.
Leslie was in the lobby waiting with entourage for whatever his next official thing was, and my husband got called to fix the temperature or something similar. At the time he literally had a blue collar uniform with his name patch above the pocket. Leslie Nielsen actually left the entourage, went over, shook his hand and introduced himself.
He asked where he was from and when my husband said "Ottawa," Leslie made the "we won't hold that against you" joke, commenting about DC, the two capitols and government everywhere. Leslie's brother Erik was a big-time Canadian Conservative and former deputy prime minister. He asked all about the Embassy building -- which totally won my husband over because that's his pride and joy. And Leslie stayed and chatted, away from the muckety-mucks, until it was time for him to go!
I think it is a good measure of character. You know, "how they treat the help" sort of barometer. We always liked him, and then we "shirley" became bigger fans.
:-)
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