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BBC MUNDO RADIO
Comedian who spent younger years in Edmonton had been in Florida hospital with pneumonia
By Postmedia News and Edmonton Journal, edmontonjournal.com
Edmonton — Canadian actor Leslie Nielsen, who spent much of his childhood in Edmonton, died Sunday afternoon.
Nielsen died in a hospital near his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., from complications of pneumonia. He was 84.
Nielsen appeared in more than 100 movies, with the star shining most brightly in comedies including Airplane! and The Naked Gun.
His family released a statement Sunday night saying Nielsen’s wife and friends were at his side when he died just after 5:30 p.m.
“We are saddened by the passing of beloved actor Leslie Nielsen, probably best remembered as Lt. Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun series of pictures, but who enjoyed a more than 60-year career in motion pictures and television,” said the statement.
Nielsen’s nephew, Doug Nielsen, who lives in Richmond, B.C., said his uncle had been in the hospital with pneumonia for 12 days, and his condition worsened in the last 48 hours.
“This afternoon, surrounded by family, his wife and friends, he basically just fell asleep. It was very peaceful,” he said.
“He was truly a nice man. A very caring, naturally funny guy in day-to-day life, not just because someone wrote something on paper for him. He was a very tender-hearted man. He was one of my best friends and I loved him dearly. I’ll miss him greatly.”
Nielsen and his two brothers Gordon and Erik, who became deputy prime minister in the Mulroney Conservative government, were sons of an RCMP officer. After being born in Regina, the actor moved around the west and the north with his family. The Nielsen boys were sent from their home in the remote town of Fort Norman, 300 kilometres from the Arctic Circle, to attend school in Edmonton. They went to the inner-city McKay Avenue School and Victoria High School in Edmonton, with the future actor graduating in 1942.
At the time, Nielsen once said, he was never the class clown.
“In those days, I was too busy trying to be Mr. Perfect. You try to be Mr. Perfect so that your parents can find nothing wrong with you. They have a lot of other things to think about like putting food on the table, so you just don’t want to rock the boat.”
However, he later suspected comedy was already in his genes during his school days after he discovered details of his Mountie father’s life.
“I remember seeing pictures of my father at RCMP Sports Days (sort of an athletic picnic), and he was in a clown outfit. He was the regiment clown.”
Nielsen’s entry point into showbiz was in radio, as an engineer, DJ and announcer at a Calgary station. After that, he went to the Lorne Greene Academy of Radio Arts in Toronto, then received a scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. That led to dance training with Martha Graham, the Actor’s Studio, and in the December of 1949, the fresh medium of live television.
In 1956, Nielsen appeared in the sci-fi cult favourite Forbidden Planet.
In the ’60s and ’‘70s, Nielsen worked constantly in TV action series such as Wagon Train, The Fugitive, The Virginian, Cannon and Kojak. During this time, he turned down the iconic role of Gunsmoke’s Matt Dillon.
However, Nielsen was best known for his Hollywood comedic roles of the ’80s and ’90s, where he played deadpan, oblivious characters followed by chaos and widescreen jokes. The trend began in the 1980 hit Airplane! and continued in the 1982 police spoof on television, Police Squad. In the late ’80s and ’90s, Nielsen resurrected the Drebin character in the trilogy of The Naked Gun movies, and became a household name because of their success. After those films, Nielsen was one of Canada’s best-known actors and made an appearance at the White House.
He received the Order of Canada at Rideau Hall in December 2003. That same year, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Alberta Motion Pictures Industries Association and was presented with an Award of Excellence from the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists.
Nielsen frequently returned to Edmonton as a performer and former resident, who helped celebrate events such as the YMCA’s 100th anniversary. Grant MacEwan University named its School of Communication after Nielsen in 2003.
The TV and film actor received the Order of Canada at Ottawa’s at Rideau Hall in December 2003.
He may be best remembered for a line from the movie Airplane! Nielsen uttered an often-quoted retort to the question: “Surely, you can’t be serious?”
“I am serious ... and don’t call me Shirley,” he said.
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