The unexpected genius of Leslie Nielsen

The "Airplane!" actor will be remembered as a manic goofball -- but his comedy success almost didn't happen

By Matt Zoller Seitz
Salon.com

As a child, Leslie Nielsen, who died yesterday at 84, was obsessed with the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies. When he heard there was an open call to cast Tarzan and Jane's adopted child in 1939's "Tarzan Finds a Son!," he started fantasizing about playing the role.

And then he stopped. "They found a guy; Johnny Sheffield was his name," the actor told an interviewer at a 2008 repertory showing of "Airplane!" "But it dawned on me before then that I never had a chance to be Tarzan's son. It was just not in the cards. And why? Because I'm bow-legged. You can't have a bow-legged kid swimming and running around and doing all those things Johnny Sheffield could do."

To appreciate Leslie Nielsen's work after "Airplane!," picture a bowlegged kid becoming an Olympic-caliber long-distance runner.

Prior to that 1980 comedy by Jerry Zucker, David Abrahams and David Zucker (also known as ZAZ), there was little on the Canadian actor's résumé to suggest a world-class clown in the making. He was a well-liked, capable leading man who had spent the previous 30 years supporting himself in a cutthroat industry without turning into a jerk -- no small feat, admittedly, but not the stuff of legend either. Every now and then he'd get to be funny -- for instance, playing opposite Don Knotts in "The Reluctant Astronaut" or playing a cop on "The Red Skelton Christmas Show." But those were the exceptions. Whether he was acting in a classic sci-fi film ("Forbidden Planet"), romantic melodrama ("Tammy and the Bachelor") or disaster picture (he was the captain in the original "The Poseidon Adventure"), or guest-starring in a TV show -- often playing characters whose names were preceded by Dr., Col., Officer, Agent and other official titles -- Nielsen projected dignity, competence and wary charm. He was on "Ben Casey," "Dr. Kildare," "The Big Valley," "Bonanza," "Gunsmoke," "S.W.A.T." and many other series. Sometimes he was the bad guy: a murderer, a crooked businessman, a craven desk-jockey obstructing the heroes. But most of the time he was just another actor in the frame, helping tell a story whose weight was being carried by performers with bigger names and fatter paychecks.

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