No other actor on the planet has garnered the kind of accolades that Leslie Nielsen has. He has won two People’s Choice Awards, a Golden Globe, a Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival, a Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, an American League batting title, and made it to the finals of the Publishers’ Clearinghouse Sweepstakes on three occasions. And, of course, in 1990 he was rewarded with the most coveted trophy in the film industry, the Nobel Prize for Good Acting.
This comes to us straight from the man himself courtesy of his autobiography “The Naked Truth.” Upon closer inspection, not everything he says in there might be true. In fact, most of it isn’t, but it makes for a funnier story, so we’re going to take Leslie at his word…sometimes.
For the first half of his career, Leslie Nielsen played it straight: dramatic theater, cop shows, westerns, disaster films, romantic leads, all that stuff. But then one role came along that completely changed the public’s perception of him and allowed Nielsen to embrace his true persona – that of Hollywood’s favorite deadpan buffoon.
Early Years
Leslie William Nielsen was born on February 11, 1926, in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, the son of Ingvard Everson Nielsen and Mabel Elizabeth Davies. His father was Danish, his mother was Welsh, and he had two older brothers, Erik and Gordon. His brother Erik Nielsen deserves a quick mention here since he entered politics and served as the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada between 1984 and 1986.
Leslie also had a notable uncle named Jean Hersholt, a pretty famous actor in his day. He was best known for his role as Dr. Christian, which he played in a long-lived CBS radio drama, a series of movies, and a TV show. Hersholt was also President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences during the early 1940s and helped develop the Motion Pictures Relief Fund to provide assistance and medical care for struggling people in the movie industry. Ever since 1957, the Academy has given out an honorary Oscar dubbed the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to honor his philanthropic efforts to recognize “individuals in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry.”
Nielsen’s father wasn’t quite as prolific. He was a constable with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and shortly after Leslie was born, he was stationed in one of the remotest places on the planet, Tulita, known as Fort Norman back then. Located about 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle, it started as a trading post for the Hudson’s Bay Company, and it wasn’t until 1984 that it became big enough to be designated a hamlet. During the 1920s, Tulita’s population was measured in the dozens, five of which were the Nielsens. If you wanted to leave the settlement, you could only do it by boat on the Mackenzie River, and only during the warm months. Or as Nielsen put it: “If my father arrested somebody in the winter, he’d have to wait until the thaw to turn him in.”
It was certainly a unique environment, but it didn’t last long. In the early 1930s, the Nielsens moved to Edmonton so that the boys could attend a proper school. This was Leslie’s first taste of civilization, and immediately, he felt drawn to the world of movies. He remembers going to the cinema with his brothers for the first time when he was five years old and seeing the original Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff.
Leslie’s newfound passion was encouraged by his primary school teacher, Mr. Stockwell, who “probably had more impact on [Nielsen’s] life than anyone other than [his] parents and [his] second wife’s divorce attorney.” Stockwell had a profound love for theater, particularly Shakespeare, and was keen to share it with his students. However, since Shakespeare was a bit too advanced for primary school, the teacher adapted his plays for kids. And so, Leslie Nielsen’s first starring role came in the fourth grade, playing Romeo in Romeo & Gretel, a tale about two star-crossed lovers who get lost in an enchanted forest. Leslie got cooked in the oven for the big finale and, even though his teacher called his role “half-baked,” his first taste of applause convinced him this was the life for him.
Nielsen graduated from high school in 1943 and, like many young men his age, he wanted to fight in World War II. He joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and trained as an aerial gunner, but never saw any action overseas. We’re not sure why. In real life, it might be because Nielsen was legally deaf and had to wear a hearing aid for most of his life. In his version of the story, it was because his acting chops made him better suited as a pilot fighter instead of a fighter pilot. According to Nielsen, there was a belief among high-ranking officers that fighter pilots lacked confidence because their job was so dangerous and they had already seen so many of their buddies die. So it was up to Leslie to boost their self-esteem. How did he do that? By going to the same bars as them, acting drunk and obnoxious, picking a fight with the pilots, and then letting them win, so they would feel like heroes.
Which version do you think was true? Either way, Nielsen stayed with the Royal Canadian Air Force until the end of the war, at which point it was time to finally break into showbiz.
Breaking into Showbiz
Nielsen’s first foray into showbiz involved working at a radio station in Calgary named CKMM, where he served as announcer and DJ. He loved every minute of it, but it was a short-lived position because Nielsen felt like he needed some proper training. That’s why he left Calgary and traveled to Toronto, where he enrolled in the Academy of Radio Arts under the tutelage of Lorne Greene, a Canadian actor best known for his starring roles as Ben Cartwright in Bonanza and Commander Adama in the original Battlestar Galactica. After a year in Toronto, Nielsen did well enough to earn a scholarship to New York City to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse theater school under Sandy Meisner. Shortly afterward, he also began attending classes at the Actors Studio, which had recently opened in 1947 and would go on to become one of the most esteemed drama schools in America.
Nielsen auditioned for almost any and every role he could find. Partly out of desire to practice his craft, partly out of desire to buy food and pay rent. In the long-standing tradition of budding actors, Leslie Nielsen was dirt poor during his years of training in New York. In fact, the two most important skills he developed during this time were waiting on tables and learning to enjoy ketchup sandwiches. Performing in small auditoriums was a rare treat for Nielsen, but he wouldn’t turn his nose up at a show staged in a bar or a park or a converted loft. One time, he did Richard III in the backroom of a kosher deli on Hester Street.
After doing this for a while, the roles started getting a little meatier, and most of them even took place in theaters. One particular highlight for Nielsen was acting in The Philadelphia Story during the American stage debut of English actress Sarah Churchill, the daughter of Winston Churchill.
In 1950, Nielsen made his first TV appearance on an anthology drama series called Studio One. While he didn’t remember his role, he did remember that he was paid $7.50 a day for it. It was a good time for new actors to break into television. The established industries of cinema and radio were so afraid of this new boogeyman coming in and taking their spotlight that the major studios began including clauses in their contracts preventing their actors from appearing on TV.
Of course, this meant more work for young actors like Leslie Nielsen, who didn’t have such contracts. His approach to television was similar to that of theater, meaning that he was willing to do any show, narration, or commercial that would have him. In one year alone, Nielsen was featured in 46 different TV programs and made $5,000. He even started getting recognized on the street. Not to the point where people remembered his name, of course, but as what’s-his-face from that thing on TV the other night.
Nielsen loved theater. He loved television. But his dream had always been to make it onto the big screen. To star in movies. But as we said, back then, cinema and television were two entirely different worlds. For Nielsen, it not only meant moving from New York to Los Angeles, but was almost like starting his career again from scratch. At a crossroads in his life, he asked for guidance from his uncle, Jean Hersholt, who advised him to come to California. With his encouragement, Nielsen emptied his bank account, hopped on a Greyhound bus, and traveled across the country to Hollywood.
Hollywood’s Jack-of-All-Trades
As Nielsen expected, his television career didn’t mean diddly squat in Hollywood. Nobody was bending over backwards to cast him in their next movie just because he had some TV credits back in New York. His first year in Los Angeles consisted mainly of failed auditions. All the big movies of the day – Mogambo, The Caine Mutiny, From Here to Eternity…Leslie Nielsen was in none of them. You name it, and he wasn’t in it.
Eventually, the piggy bank was getting a little empty so reluctantly, Nielsen had to start taking work as an extra. Generally, this wasn’t advised because casting directors and producers tended to look down on that sort of thing, but Nielsen didn’t have a choice – he needed a paycheck more than he needed their approval.
Finally, he got a movie role in the horror-thriller Pi Aren’t Squared?, where he played an evil Albert Einstein who turned to a life of crime and built a combustion engine capable of creating the largest vacuum in the world and sucking up the entire planet. Hmmm, we think Leslie might be making stuff up again, but his actual movie debut is somewhat uncertain. Some say it was the police procedural Ransom! and others claim it was the musical The Vagabond King. Nielsen genuinely appeared in both movies and they were both released in 1956, but there seems to be some confusion over which one he filmed first. Neither one was particularly noteworthy, but Nielsen’s performance impressed the execs at MGM enough to offer him a multi-movie contract. His next film under the MGM banner was the sci-fi Forbidden Planet.
This became Nielsen’s first hit, and even today, it is regarded as a great sci-fi movie. His other films during this time were a mixed bag, although he did have another hit with Tammy and the Bachelor, a romantic comedy where he starred opposite Debbie Reynolds.
In 1959, Nielsen’s contract with MGM was up, and a new one was not forthcoming. He didn’t want them, they didn’t want him, we’re not sure, but Nielsen decided to return to television. But this was not the same world of television he left at the start of the decade. The production quality had increased dramatically. TV shows had actual budgets for things such as good scripts, costumes that didn’t look like they came from a Halloween store, and filming on location instead of using cheap backdrops.
In 1959, Nielsen starred in a Disney historical miniseries titled The Swamp Fox about Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion. In 1961, he played the lead role in a cop show titled The New Breed. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Nielsen made hundreds of television appearances, including memorable shows such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Rawhide, Columbo, MASH, The Fugitive, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Hawaii Five-O, The Love Boat, and countless others.
That’s not to say that he gave up on his movie career. Nielsen took a few years off, but in 1964 he returned to the silver screen by starring in the spy thriller Night Train to Paris. He had over 40 movie credits during the ’60s and ’70s. Most notable was his role as Captain Harrison in the 1972 disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure, which was nominated for eight Academy Awards. But then the 1980s came along and, with them, a role that would completely change the trajectory of Leslie Nielsen’s career, his life, and his legacy.
Don’t Call Me Shirley
Up until this point, Nielsen usually played straight-laced, stern characters. Your typical Hollywood leading man who’s there to look handsome, get the girl, and not do anything too silly or controversial that would ruin his image. But that’s not who Leslie Nielsen actually was. Fortunately for him, in 1980, he met three men who introduced the true Leslie Nielsen to the world.
Their names were Jim Abrahams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker, three childhood friends who wanted to make movies together. In 1977, they released their first indie flick titled The Kentucky Fried Movie, and just a few years later, they were ready for their follow-up, a slapstick comedy called Airplane!, a parody of the disaster film genre, particularly a 1957 film called Zero Hour!. Since the movie was filled to the brim with farcical situations and surreal gags, the trio of filmmakers thought it would be funny if they included several actors known for playing solemn, no-nonsense characters to give deadpan reactions to the absurdity happening around them. They got Robert Stack and Peter Graves, so why not that guy who played the captain on The Poseidon Adventure?
Fortunately for Leslie Nielsen, he was that guy. In Airplane!, he played a supporting character called Dr. Rumack, but he got to deliver some of the best lines in the movie. He asked us not to call him Shirley and taught us all what a hospital is, but that’s not important right now. We could stop doing the bio right now and just start quoting memorable lines from Airplane! and those other movies you know are coming up, but we don’t want to butcher the classics. If you’re in the mood to relive them, you should probably just watch the movies again.
Anyway, Airplane! was a runaway hit. It’s still hailed as one of the funniest movies in history in any list or poll you can find, and Nielsen’s “don’t call me Shirley” line even made the American Film Institute’s Top 100 movie quotes of all time.
Nobody came out of that film more popular than Leslie Nielsen. Looking back at it, he was grateful that Abrahams and the Zucker brothers were able to see him for what he truly was – a “closet comedian” – and asked him to come out and play. From that point on, nobody took Leslie Nielsen seriously anymore, and we mean that in the best way possible. And the silliness was about to get even sillier as Nielsen would soon embark on his greatest role – that of opera singer and part-time baseball umpire Enrico Pallazzo…who also happened to moonlight as a cop named Frank Drebin.
The Naked Gun
Shortly after Airplane!, Nielsen collaborated with Abrahams and the Zucker brothers again. It wasn’t a movie this time, but rather a cop show spoof titled Police Squad!, where Nielsen played the main character, Detective Frank Drebin. The gags were very similar to those of Airplane! but, for whatever reason, the humor didn’t resonate with a TV audience as well. Only six episodes of Police Squad! were filmed, and the show was cancelled mid-run, but that wasn’t the last we heard of Frank Drebin.
It took a few years, time during which Nielsen resumed his practice of accepting most roles that came his way and starred in a few dramas, disaster films, and even an action flick or two. But in 1988, Abrahams and the Zucker brothers got the green light to take Frank Drebin to the big screen. The result was The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
To put it simply, this is one of the funniest movies ever made, and that is a 100 percent incontrovertible fact, definitely not just our opinion or anything like that. And the best part is that they made two sequels: The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear in 1991 and Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult in 1994. All three were hits with the critics and the public. Well, maybe not so much the third one, but just in case there were any lingering doubts that Leslie Nielsen was a comedy actor, these films put them to rest.
Following the first Naked Gun, Nielsen rarely took on non-comedic roles, at least not on screen. He did have a soft spot for one particular dramatic role – that of Clarence Darrow, the lawyer best known for the highly-publicized 1925 trial where he defended high school teacher John T. Scopes for teaching evolution in a public school. He also defended the infamous crime duo Leopold and Loeb, whom we’ve covered in a previous Biographics, just in case you’re interested.
Nielsen played Darrow on stage during the mid-to-late 90s in a one-man show that first toured in Canada and then the United States. He was only the second actor to star in the play, after Henry Fonda did it on Broadway during the 1970s. This was more than just a passing interest for Nielsen. His personal library contained multiple Clarence Darrow biographies and the lawyer’s own writings. Nielsen admitted to getting choked up reading some of Darrow’s moving speeches and summations, describing him as “an extraordinarily feeling and compassionate man” whose “values had to do with people and things called loyalty, friendship, humanity and kindness.” This was a reminder that Leslie Nielsen could still, on occasion, put his serious hat back on, even though he mostly preferred to wear a jester cap.
Later Life & Career
Nielsen’s post-Naked Gun career consisted mainly of roles in similar comedies that spoofed other genres or well-known movies. He played a priest in Repossessed, a parody of The Exorcist, a James Bond-type secret agent in Spy Hard, and a man framed for murder in Wrongfully Accused, a parody of The Fugitive. These were…not great, to put it politely, and they failed to make an impact with either critics or audiences. And the less said about Mr. Magoo, the better. Not even a collaboration with Mel Brooks, the king of the spoofs, on Dracula: Dead and Loving It, managed to generate significant buzz, and that’s a shame because that movie was ok.
It wasn’t until the 2000s that Nielsen appeared in a box office hit again when he played the role of the President of the United States in Scary Movie 3 and 4. Both those movies were directed by David Zucker, by the way, who seemed to be the most capable when it came to maximizing Nielsen’s comedic efforts.
The collaboration between Nielsen and Zucker continued in 2008 with Superhero Movie, another spoof that parodied, as you can tell from the title, courtroom dramas. Just kidding, it was superhero movies. The critics hated it, but it did well at the box office, so the duo worked together again on An American Carol, a film that parodied Michael Moore-style documentaries. This one didn’t do so hot with either critics or audiences, and today it is best remembered as Dennis Hopper’s last movie role during his lifetime.
Nielsen’s own final role was not far behind. His last movie appearance was made posthumously in a 2011 low-budget stoner comedy called Stonerville, where his character was simply titled “Producer.” However, prior to his death, Nielsen did record voice lines for an untitled animated film by Bryan Waterman. It still has not been released, and, since it’s been 15 years already, the chances of it ever seeing the light of day are looking pretty slim.
With over 260 acting credits to his name, Nielsen left behind some great classics, both of the comedic and non-comedic variety, and, let’s be honest, more than his fair share of stinkers. Although that’s to be expected from a man who was in the habit of accepting almost any role that came his way.
Leslie Nielsen died on November 28, 2010, aged 84, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from complications from pneumonia. One last thing you should know about Leslie Nielsen is that he thought that farts were the funniest thing in the world. According to his friends and coworkers, he always carried around a fart machine on sets and in interviews to help release the tension, so to speak. Consequently, his headstone features an epitaph to commemorate his fondness for flatulence. It says:
“Leslie Nielsen
Feb 11, 1926 – Nov 28, 2010
