By The Beachwood Deadpan Delivery Affairs Desk
Leslie Nielsen’s death on Sunday from pneumonia – or complications thereof – has a nation rightly remembering his best lines from Airplane!, The Naked Gun and the horribly underacknowledged Police Squad!. He was a man of many acting talents.
“Mr. Nielsen, a tall man with a matinee-idol profile, was often cast as an earnest hero at the beginning of his film career, in the 1950s,” Anita Gates writes in the New York Times.
“His best-known roles included 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).
“In the 1960s and ’70s, as his hair turned white and he became an even more distinguished figure, Mr. Nielsen played serious military men, government leaders and even a mob boss, appearing in crime dramas, westerns and the occasional horror movie.”
But is it possible his best work was in these commercials for Medicare?
1. Oh, uh, hello . . .
Posted on November 29, 2010
