Four-times married Naked Gun star Leslie Nielsen dies from pneumonia aged 84

By Daily Mail Reporter
Updated: 17:38 EDT, 29 November 2010

• World of comedy mourns deadpan genius who started out as a straight actor

Sad loss: Actor Leslie Nielsen passed away at a hospital near his Florida home, aged 84

Leslie Nielsen, star of the Naked Gun films and Airplane!, has died, aged 84.

The Canadian actor's agent said Nielsen passed away in hospital near his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida at 5.34pm yesterday.

Nielsen's wife Barbaree and his family and friends were at his bedside.

His agent John S. Kelly said that the actor had died due to complications from pneumonia.

Nielsen's nephew Doug told Canadian radio station CJOB that the actor had been in hospital for 12 days with the illness.

'He just fell asleep and passed away,' he said.

'He was truly a nice man. A very caring, naturally funny guy in day-to-day life, not just because someone wrote something on paper for him.

'He was a very tender-hearted man. He was one of my best friends and I loved him dearly. 'I'll miss him greatly.'

Nielsen was born in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1926. 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.

His parents had three sons, and Nielsen once recalled: 'There were 15 people in the village, including five of us. If my father arrested somebody in the winter, he'd have to wait until the thaw to turn him in.'

Scroll down for gag reel of Nielsen's funniest moments

Sky high: Nielsen won fans with his dry performance in 1980 hit film Airplane!

The elder Nielsen was a troubled man who beat his wife and sons, and Leslie longed to escape.

As soon as he graduated from high school at 17, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, even though he was legally deaf  and 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.

He first came to Hollywood during the 1950s after performing in 150 live television dramas.

With a craggily handsome face, blond hair and 6ft 2in height, he seemed ideal for a leading man.

Spoof: Leslie Nielsen as Detective Frank Drebin in TV series Police Squad

Nielsen first performed as the king of France in the1956  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 spaceship commander in the science fiction classic Forbidden Planet, also in 1956.

'I played a lot of leaders, autocratic sorts; perhaps it was my Canadian accent,' he said.

Meanwhile, he remained active in television in guest roles. He also starred in his own series, The New Breed, The Protectors and Bracken's World, but all were short-lived.

Nielsen played Debbie Reynolds' sweetheart in 1957's popular Tammy And The Bachelor, and he became well known to baby boomers for his role as the Revolutionary War fighter Francis Marion in the Disney TV adventure series The Swamp Fox.

He quickly became known as a serious actor, although behind the camera he was a prankster - an aspect of his personality never exploited until disaster spoof Airplane! was released in 1980 and became a huge hit.

Drama: A young Leslie Nielsen (centre) playing a more serious role in 1956 sci-fi movie Forbidden Planet

The actor asked to be released from his contract at MGM, and as a freelancer, he appeared in a series of undistinguished movies.

He found his best dramatic role as the captain of an overturned ocean liner in the 1972 disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure.

His lines in Airplane! became legendary. As the doctor aboard a plane in which the pilots, and some of the passengers, become violently ill, Nielsen says they must get to a hospital right away.

'A hospital? What is it?' a flight attendant asks, inquiring about the illness.

'It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now,' Nielsen deadpans.

When he asks a passenger if he can fly the plane, the man replies; 'Surely you can't be serious.'

Nielsen responds: 'I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.'

Hero of comedy: Nielsen with his wife Barbaree at the premiere of 2008's Superhero Movie, in which he starred

Comedy hit: Nielsen starred as Detective Frank Drebin with Priscilla Presley in 1988 film The Naked Gun

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 had really always wanted to do.

And it was what he would do for most of the rest of his career, appearing in such comedies as Repossessed, a spoof of demonic possession movies like The Exorcist, and Mr Magoo, in which he played the title role of the good-natured bumbler.

After Airplane!'s success, film-making trio Jim Abrahams, David and Jerry Zucker cast their new-found comic star as Detective Drebin in a TV series, Police Squad, which sent up Dragnet and other cop shows.

Nielsen received an Emmy nomination for the show but, despite good reviews, ABC cancelled it after only six episodes.

'It didn't belong on TV,' Nielsen later commented. 'It had the kind of humour you had to pay attention to.'

The Zuckers and Abrahams then converted the series into a feature film, The Naked Gun, with George Kennedy, OJ Simpson and Priscilla Presley as Nielsen's co-stars.

Its huge success led to sequels The Naked Gun 2½ and The Naked Gun 33 1/3.

His later movies included All I Want For Christmas, Dracula: Dead And Loving It, and Spy Hard.

In recent years, Nielsen also appeared in Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4, along with comedy films Superhero Movie and Stan Helsing.

He was married four times, and had two children from his second marriage, Maura and Thea Nielsen.

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