Leslie Nielsen RIP

[Artemis]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=het1kl-A8qw

Heh, I was just coming on to post that one. Probably my favourite Police Squad clip. Awesome comedy.

[Ignatius_S]

Damn! Beat me to that one! Strange that he didn't play the murderer in either, he was really wasted in the first, as an innocent bystander...

I think it was a safe bet that one of us would have mentioned it!

Actually, I was thinking that it would have been rather nice if he had been a murderer in one episode - particularly in one of the post-seventies shows.

Personally, I rather like him in Lady in Waiting and think I've appreciated his role with repeated viewing - certainly the part that character plays is more important than I initially credited it with.One thing I rather like about Columbo is that you get some great performers like Don Ameche in small supporting parts (although Nielsen's was rather larger in this one.

.... McGoohan then murders Nielsen with what looks like a golfing iron, weirdly appropriate considering his later golf videos.

I think it's something like a tire iron - but I rather like that connection!

[lipsink]

Nielsen was, along with Bill Murray, pretty much one of my first comedy heroes. RIP.

[Crabwalk]

I don't think a week has gone by in my life for about 20 years where I've not called someone 'Mr Poopy Pants'. There can be no higher praise. Cheers big Les.

[Santa's Boyfriend]

From the ever-brillian B3ta:

[SavageHedgehog]

One friend of mine, sadly no longer with us (I'm afraid he was actually murdered) always enjoyed Nielsen's stuff, perhaps it's just as well he didn't live to see AN AMERICAN CAROL, not that many people did of course. Apart from not knowing half the people and things referenced in it, while from the other side of things poilitically, it reminded me of the accusations made by the Tory press in this country of "so-called alternative comedy" in the 1980's, namely being shrill and simplistic, and maintaining a pompous moralising tone alongside fart and arse jokes.

Not that it matters, but despite appearing in An American Carol I don't think Nielsen was a Republican. David Zucker (who has drifted that way) said of his participation "[Leslie] is a liberal... but some might say he's too liberal when it comes to accepting movie parts"

Anyway, it's a strange thing to say but Neilsen's passing is a day I've long dreaded. RIP. If you haven't ever read it check out his spoof-autobiography The Naked Truth. Sample line; "Naked Gun 2 1/2 was the highest grossing film ever, and Paramount has assumed me after the video is out it will be in profit"

[NoSleep]

Lest we forget:



Monsters, John. Monsters from the Id!

That was the first thing to come to mind when I heard the news, too. He didn't really start doing the comedy until Airplane in 1980.

[Jemble Fred]

I was sorely disappointed when I saw Forbidden Planet, but that's mainly because I was watching it as an adaptation of The Tempest, and it just wasn't anywhere near as close to the source material as I'd hoped.

My god, who does young Nielsen look just like in that picture? It's uncanny, but at the same time I can't quite get the name of who it is... Not Jude Law or Jonathan Rhys-Meyers...

[Lookalike Mark Chapman]

Daniel Craig?

[Jemble Fred]

Yes!!! Spot-on. Particularly in Our Friends In The North.

[momatt]

Waaaaaaaaaaah!
I know he was old, but this is still really mega-sad, a real hero of mine.  He'd make the best grandad ever I think.
His imdb.com acting list is so huge!
He was in Columbo, MASH, Ironside, Kung Fu, Murder She Wrote, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Hawaii Five-O, The Golden Girls and the awesome Forbidden Planet. 
Oh and Surf Ninjas.
This news was exactly what I didn't need during a massive come-down in a cold crappy room in Amsterdam.  :'(

I think a dose of Airplane with Dr. Rumack is required tonight.  Then I must check out him raping Barbera Streisand, bet it's hillarious.

[tygerbug]

Forbidden Planet is great though. Top, top 50s sci fi.

[NoSleep]

I love how Robby the Robot went on to have a career in film and TV after Forbidden Planet.

[Jake Thingray]

I think it was a safe bet that one of us would have mentioned it!

Actually, I was thinking that it would have been rather nice if he had been a murderer in one episode - particularly in one of the post-seventies shows.

Personally, I rather like him in Lady in Waiting and think I've appreciated his role with repeated viewing - certainly the part that character plays is more important than I initially credited it with.One thing I rather like about Columbo is that you get some great performers like Don Ameche in small supporting parts (although Nielsen's was rather larger in this one.
I think it's something like a tire iron - but I rather like that connection!

That's a nice post, thank you. Meant to comment on it before. In the days just prior to the Internet, when I had great trouble getting information on the post-1989 COLUMBO's (as opposed to the 1971-78 run, which the BBC endlessly repeated), I remember erroneously thinking Nielsen had done an early 90's one as the murderer, turned out I'd remembered seeing somewhere that an actor who'd been in the 70's run had done another, and had mixed him up with either William Shatner or George Hamilton.

Very true that you got some fine people in subsidiary roles in COLUMBO -- the most obvious being Vincent Price in "Lovely But Lethal". What a shame he only had a couple of scenes in that, and what a splendid, imperious guest murderer he would have been -- there are a million ways in which "Dagger Of The Mind" could have been improved from the silly mess it ended up as, but wouldn't Price have been great as the ham actor, it could have acted as a pre-empt of THEATRE OF BLOOD.

[mr. logic]

Watched Naked Gun last night.  Frank's suggestion as to who could have attacked Nordberg (as the latter's wife stands by him):  "thug, blackmailer, jealous husband, gay lover."

There's two kind of jokes people remember in those films: the puns and the physical stuff.  But I love the runs like that best of all- with Frank just riffing, completely oblivious.