Leslie Nielsen, like Peter Graves and Robert Stack, was a living artifact of an earlier era of acting, from back when audiences expected far different things, in terms of emotive expression and range, from their leading men.

Like Graves and Stack, Nielsen was a solid, dependable, stoically handsome action hero who was fortunate enough to age into a distinguished-looking older gentleman, and like them, the gravitas that his appearance gained over time was precisely what allowed him, in his later years, to subvert the sorts of square-jawed, ever-dignified characters that he'd once built his career on.

What made Graves, Stack and Nielsen so hilarious in Airplane! was that they delivered their comic lines with just as much stone-faced earnestness as the roles they'd played decades before.

Nielsen evolved beyond Graves and Stack, not only by being up for just about anything, no matter how bizarre, but also by letting his goofier side shine through, as he did in Police Squad! and The Naked Gun.

Few would have guessed that the man who so embodied responsible, respectable, unflappable authority in Forbidden Planet in the mid-1950s would gain his greatest fame close to a quarter-century later as the man who responded to the statement, "Surely you can't be serious," with the deadpan rejoinder, "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley."

Nielsen himself wasn't surprised, because deep down, he'd always had the heart of a funnyman, and he was quick to insist that it was all that drama that was casting him against type.

For the last 30 years of his life, Nielsen's acting career not only got a third-act revival, but he finally got to spend his life doing what he'd wanted to do most all along, which was to make audiences laugh.











We'll always remember the good times.

-It's the same old story. Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl, girl dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange Bowl on New Year's Day.

-Goodyear?

-No, the worst.

Well, maybe "admire" isn't quite the word, but still...

Rest in peace, Frank. You will be missed.