Althouse: "I just want to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you."

November 28, 2010

"I just want to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you."

Goodbye to Leslie Nielsen. Goodbye and good luck.

30 comments:

traditionalguy said...: Nielsen was a great actor. I still remember his role in Forbidden Planet.; 11/28/10, 10:41 PM
sonicfrog said...: :-(

He helped shape comedy for a decade.; 11/28/10, 10:43 PM
Anonymous said...: A sad, sad day for world hilarity. Ours is a less funny planet now.

R.I.P.

I use that line all the time, by the way. Nobody gets it any more.; 11/28/10, 10:43 PM
Rialby said...: Thanks for the laughs! RIP.; 11/28/10, 10:45 PM
Anonymous said...: You take chances every day. When you wake up in the morning. When you cross the street. When you stick your head in a fan.; 11/28/10, 10:47 PM
Fred4Pres said...: Miss you. RIP

Say hi to all the comedy greats in that club in the hereafter.; 11/28/10, 10:53 PM
EK said...: traditionalguy said...

"Nielsen was a great actor. I still remember his role in Forbidden Planet."

I agree--that was a great film.; 11/28/10, 10:54 PM
Joel C Anatoli said...: thats sad to hear..; 11/28/10, 11:16 PM
Anonymous said...: People of my generation tend to be unaware that Leslie Nielsen was a highly-regarded dramatic actor before turning to comedy. His final dramatic role was a small, but absolutely bone-chilling, scene in Barbra Streisand's "Nuts."; 11/28/10, 11:30 PM
Amexpat said...: Surely, he was funny.; 11/28/10, 11:56 PM
rcocean said...: And stop calling me Shirley!

R.I.P.; 11/29/10, 12:11 AM
holdfast said...: Nielsen played some great parts, but he also had some parts in some truly awful movies (as my friends would attest, I am a huge fan of awful comedies), and yet you always felt that he was giving it 100%, not matter how awful the script and wooden the other actors were (Dracula: Dead and Loving It comes to mind).

Really gonna miss him.

And don't call me Shirley!; 11/29/10, 1:50 AM
Saint Croix said...: Airplane was his first comic role. But what made him a star was the Naked Gun movies. Naked Gun 2 1/2 is hilarous.

If you want to see him straight, watch Night Train to Paris. What a fun flick that is.; 11/29/10, 4:42 AM
Bob_R said...: Nice beaver.; 11/29/10, 5:50 AM
MadisonMan said...: Great actor, made me laugh.

The writers should get credit for the words, though.; 11/29/10, 7:41 AM
Opus One Media said...: First time I was aware of him was in Forbidden Planet playing "John Adams" the commander...with all the hype that Disney was putting out on the movie pre-release on the Wonderful World of Color.

Have to admire anyone who can do anything for over half a century.; 11/29/10, 7:47 AM
Unknown said...: He was stuck in a lot of nondescript supporting roles before he got into comedy. "Airplane" came along at just the right time. It was nice to see him and guys like Lloyd Bridges get a second shot.

PS I'll never forget the Swamp Fox.; 11/29/10, 7:49 AM
ndspinelli said...: A great pitcher in baseball makes adjustments as they grow older. Like a pitcher, Leslie Nielsen evolved into a great comedic actor.; 11/29/10, 8:16 AM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Its an entirely different kind of flying altogether.

Its an entirely different kind of flying..; 11/29/10, 9:11 AM
jayne_cobb said...: Det. Nordberg: Drugs... drugs...
Frank: Nurse! Get this man some drugs! Can't you see he's in pain?
[nurse administers drugs]
Det. Nordberg: No... no...
[pulls Frank towards him]
Det. Nordberg: Heroin, Frank! Heroin...
Frank: Uh... that's a pretty tall order, Nordberg. You'll have to give me a couple of days on that one.; 11/29/10, 9:54 AM
Bob Ellison said...: He was a great actor who could do both dramatic and comedic roles, but that's not important now.; 11/29/10, 10:26 AM
Sofa King said...: Lem, funnily enough, that line (but not the deadpan response) is ripped straight from the serious version of Airplane!, called Zero Hour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q__vuyH1JEI; 11/29/10, 11:20 AM
Trooper York said...: Great actor and a great guy. I know someone who was a friend of his and said he was a real regular guy which is about he best thing you can say about Hollywood actors.; 11/29/10, 12:44 PM
Trooper York said...: We have had a rash of deaths this week in Carroll Gardens. All three parish churches have funerals for the next three days, sometimes two in a day.

Now deaths come in threes and a lot of them seem to happen this holdiay season.

I have Gary Busey in the poll.; 11/29/10, 12:47 PM
Trooper York said...: Actually in the pool. The dead pool.

My buddy has Abe Vigoda but my money is on Gary.

Although I might trade for Tom Sizemore or Jeff Conaway.; 11/29/10, 12:51 PM
Trooper York said...: Oh....Happy Holidays!; 11/29/10, 12:52 PM
Tibore said...: "ndspinelli said...
A great pitcher in baseball makes adjustments as they grow older. Like a pitcher, Leslie Nielsen evolved into a great comedic actor."

Here's the funny thing: If you read between the lines in James Doohan's biography (Jimmy Doohan... you know, played Scotty in Star Trek?), you could pin Nielsen's "evolution" to comedy on being the victim of typecasting early in his career. Because in his offscreen life the guy was a total hoot and practical joker. Doohan talks about how Nielsen was always pulling pranks on people and giving that deadpan stare afterwards years before he did it on Airplane and Police Squad. He also mentioned how Nielsen was one of the earliest fan and dedicated user of the whoopie cushion. He may have started out with dramatic roles, but if I'm reading Doohan's bio right, moving towards comedy was less an evolution for Nielsen and more him simply getting roles that were more like his natural self.

That's not to diminish your point about making career adjustments, though. He still had to pull those roles off. And being funny in person is no guarantee of being funny onscreen; look at poor Bob Saget as an example of this.

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Word verification: annizer. Is that a new website that makes your prose read like Althouse wrote them?; 11/29/10, 2:11 PM
DADvocate said...: I loved him. I laughed so hard at Airplane! that my sides hurt. It may have been the funniest movie ever.

And, don't call me Shirley!; 11/29/10, 2:55 PM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: My favorite is Nielsen standing in front of a humungous catastrophic raging fiery crash scene....

Telling people.

"Nothing to see here. Move along. Nothing to see."

I use the phrase all the time when I want to be sarcastic.; 11/29/10, 5:08 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: Happy Toast drew a cartoon:

Dr.: "Mr. Neilsen, I'm afraid I've got some bad news about your lung."

Mr. Nelsen from a hospital bed: "What is it?"

Dr.: "It's the essential respiration organ inside your ribcage, but that's not important right now."

Prodigy 69 drew a cartoon:

St Peter at Heaven's Golden Gates: "I'm sorry Mr. Neilsen, I can't find your name."

Mr. Neilsen: "That's ok, I sometimes go under my maiden name."; 11/30/10, 12:52 AM