The stalwart spaceship captain in the science fiction classic “Forbidden Planet” (1956), the wealthy, available Southern aristocrat in “Tammy and the Bachelor” (1957) and an ocean liner captain faced with disaster in “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972), the Canadian-born actor, is dead. He died at a hospital near his home in Fort Lauderdale where he was being treated for pneumonia. He was 84.
Leslie William Nielsen was born on Feb. 11, 1926, in Regina, Saskatchewan. The son of a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police of Danish heritage and a Welsh mother, he grew up in the Northwest Territories and in Edmonton, Alberta, where he graduated from high school. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force before his 18th birthday and trained as an aerial gunner during World War II.
In a film and television career spanning more than 60 years, he had many on screen faces, serious and then comic, but he is probably best remembered for playing the bumbling cop Lt Frank Drebin in the Naked Gun franchise. With a handsome face and blond hair he seemed ideal for a movie leading man and slowly graduated to serious acting from comedy roles, but he remained a prankster in the background. The amazing thing about him is that he managed to build a second career as a comic actor, far more successful than his first career as a serious actor.
Here is a clip from Police Squad Epilogues
Nielsen died from complications from pneumonia. His wife Barbaree and friends were at his bedside at the time of his death.
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