The Big Picture
- Priscilla Presley’s connection to Elvis Presley caught the attention of the Zucker brothers who were looking for an actress without comedic experience for the role of Jane in The Naked Gun.
- Presley’s earnestness and ability to deliver lines without trying to be funny made her the perfect leading lady for Leslie Nielsen’s Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun films.
- Presley effortlessly performed physical comedy without self-consciousness, playing it straight and adding to the comedic impact of the films. However, in the final installment, her reactions and expressions broke the comedic wall, detracting from the film’s original humor.
Thanks to the brilliant team of Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, and David Zucker, audiences have been laughing along for 43 years to one of the best comedies ever made, Airplane! And thanks to this same team, audiences got the gift of seeing actor Leslie Nielsen, best known for dramatic roles in classic films like Forbidden Planet and The Poseidon Adventure, playing comedy for the first time. And thanks to Nielsen’s commitment to portraying Dr. Rumack, the discombobulated physician trying to save the passengers on a doomed airliner, as if he were the most serious character in the most serious disaster movie ever made, Nielsen’s career as a comic performer was born, some 30 years after his first onscreen appearance. Airplane! was a send-up of 1957’s Zero Hour, a low-budget “airliner in peril” movie, and some of the movie’s dialogue was lifted directly from the film and inserted into the Airplane! script. Abrahams and the Zucker brothers knew that for Airplane! to work, the actors in the film would have to play it straight, just like the actors in Zero Hour did, and Nielsen nailed the assignment. When it was time to bring The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! to the big screen, with Nielsen as the hopelessly inept, yet downright deadpan Detective Frank Drebin, the search was on for an actress who could play his love interest with the same sense of earnest commitment to the completely absurd. Enter Priscilla Presley, a completely unlikely choice, but a perfect fit as Jane Spencer, the woman who just can’t resist the bumbling gumshoe.
What Was Priscilla Presley’s Comedy Experience Before ‘The Naked Gun’?
Like Leslie Nielsen, the actress cast as Jane couldn’t be known for comedic roles, because audiences would immediately recognize that she was winking and nodding to them, no matter how straight she tried to play the part, which would ruin the entire lampooning premise of the film. Even casting a well-known dramatic actress could be risky, since she might “overplay” the comedic elements and fail at walking that fine line between absurdity and sincerity. Finally, whoever was cast as Jane would need to be physically beautiful, someone alluring enough to extract Drebin’s nearly empty head from the depths of the precinct’s file drawers.
Priscilla Presley had been dabbling in acting for about five years and had recently been featured as a recurring character on the hugely popular primetime drama Dallas, but her true claim to fame was being the former wife of music legend Elvis Presley and the mother to his only child. It was, in fact, Priscilla’s connection to the King of Rock and Roll that got the Zuckers interested in considering her for their film.
According to a 1988 Los Angeles Times story, David Zucker acknowledged that “we were big Elvis fans and the name held some fascination.” They were also looking for someone who had never performed comedy, an actor who could recite the most hilarious piece of dialogue without the slightest suggestion that she understood it was hilarious. In a 1994 interview with journalist Mark Greczmiel, Priscilla Presley talked about meeting with the Zuckers to discuss the first Naked Gun film. “That was one of the questions – have you ever done comedy before, and I said ‘no.’ And they said ‘thank you very much’…so I walked out of there thinking that I don’t have the part.” One week later, she got a call saying she had won the role, so it’s not surprising to imagine the Zuckers saw a certain naïveté and inexperience in Presley that they knew would work for what they had planned.
And work it did. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad made over $78 million, and its two sequels combined brought in over $138 million, making the Police Squad series one of Hollywood’s most successful comedy franchises, joining the ranks of audience favorites like the Austin Powers and Meet the Parents film series. So what made Presley the perfect leading lady for Leslie Nielsen’s intellectually unconscious Frank Drebin? Her earnestness.
Why Was Priscilla Presley Perfect in ‘The Naked Gun’?
When most actors do comedy, there’s a certain exaggeration in their work, a hint of an amplification in their presence that says, “I’m being funny and saying funny stuff.” Take, for instance, Meryl Streep in Death Becomes Her. While she gives an extraordinarily hilarious performance, it borders on caricature, which is exactly what the role calls for. The same goes for Jane Fonda in 9 to 5. As the clumsy Judy Bernly, Fonda goes over the top to bring out the character’s shtick. For the Naked Gun films, a performance filled with such strong comic force would have destroyed the efforts Abrahams and the Zuckers were making to nail the films’ parody aspects. As Jane Spencer, Presley delivers her lines without the sense that she’s trying to be funny, and that’s a commendation, not a criticism. In a scene where Frank nonchalantly brings up to Jane the subject of photos he had seen that day, Jane’s immediate response, “I was young. I needed the work,” is delivered by Presley with such earnestness and sincerity, it’s almost as if she initially read the line in the script and interpreted it as part of a scene of tremendous gravity.
The same goes for when Jane explains to Frank her relationship with the film’s villain played by Ricardo Montalbán. “Vincent Ludwig and I, there was never anything between us,” Jane says fervently. “He likes East German men.” Once again, there isn’t a glimmer of wit in Presley’s facial expressions or in how she says the line. To Presley, it’s a dramatic confessional moment, and she plays it completely straight. Equally notable is the way in which, as Jane, Presley reacts to some of Frank’s more ridiculous statements with the same sense of straightforward candor. In 1991’s The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear, Frank, now estranged from Jane, sees her after a period of time and asks, “How are the children?” Jane responds bluntly without missing a beat, “We didn’t have any children. How was your prostate operation?” Presley’s eyes look directly into Nielsen’s as if she’s participating in a perfectly normal conversation.
Priscilla Presley Effortlessly Delivers Hilarious Physical Comedy
Even Priscilla Presley’s physical comedy in The Naked Gun films comes off without a trace of self-consciousness. When Jane is first seen in the original Naked Gun, she seductively descends a spiral staircase, conjuring up images of Barbara Stanwyck in the noir classic Double Indemnity. Before she reaches the bottom, however, she loses her footing and falls, but then gets right back up, continuing to gaze at Frank as if she’s just made the sexiest move a woman could make. As she glides past him and glances backward, holding her stare, she promptly walks into the wall, then makes her exit holding her hand over her nose. Presley executes her entrance from start to finish with the allure of an irresistible temptress, not as a comedienne showing off her slapstick prowess. Her commitment reads like she has no idea she’s performing pratfalls, and that’s what makes it so funny.
As Priscilla Presley recounted in the aforementioned Los Angeles Times article, “David (Zucker) said, ‘Priscilla, you know what? Just play it straight. Like walking into the wall happens every day to you or falling down the stairs is your routine.’”It worked flawlessly, and the scene is priceless. In The Naked Gun 2 1/2, Jane is seen spending a quiet evening in her apartment feeding her pets. They’re not cats or dogs, though. They’re two chickens, two piglets, and one giant hog. But Jane gleefully spreads their feed all over her hardwood floors as if she’s just opened up a packet of Tender Vittles for her tabby. Later, she tells Frank she’s going to take a shower, and as she reaches down to remove her shoes, she’s suddenly about eight inches shorter than she was before. She then produces two gigantic high-heeled shoes as she exits the room, not revealing the faintest realization that she’s in the middle of a sight gag. Playing it straight totally works, and there’s no doubt she was the perfect counterpart to Nielsen’s equally resolute and determined Detective Drebin.
Why Priscilla Presley’s ‘Naked Gun 33 1/3″ Performance Doesn’t Work as Well
With 1994’s Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult, director Peter Segal took over the directing reins from David Zucker (although the Zucker brothers penned the movie’s script), and it’s apparent from watching this film that Segal’s approach to parody was much more pronounced. The characters utter the same silly dialogue, but instead of sticking with their stony, poker-faced approach, they frequently do double takes, furrow their brows, and dart their eyes back and forth, as if to say to audiences, “See? Were doing comedy!” The movie suffers for it because it negates what The Naked Gun films were all about in the first place – comedies that were so funny because they seemed to take themselves so seriously.
Even Presley abandons the unenlightened embodiment of Jane in this one, pausing to give puzzled reactions after other characters say or do something preposterous, breaking that wall between the actor and the audience and letting them know she’s in on the joke. The movie’s finale takes place at the Academy Awards, a perfect setting for a film that makes fun of the art of filmmaking, and while there are still some truly hilarious moments (like Raquel Welch accidentally swallowing a microphone and Pia Zadora stumbling across the stage with a tuba on her head), some of the funniest exchanges are marred by the all the unnecessary mugging. When Frank and Jane arrive at the awards to prevent a bomb from going off, Jane says, “Frank, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Frank replies, “Yes! Florence Henderson is gonna win it, and it’s about time.” The scene would have been hilarious had Jane not reacted at all. Instead, she pauses momentarily, gives a perplexed look, then delivers her next line, diminishing its comic impact. Presley was much more effective as an actress in a comedy when she played it more straight.
Watching Presley in this Segal-helmed installment of the franchise only adds emphasis to just how ingenious the Zuckers were in their selection of the young actress and their adept direction of a woman with a limited understanding of comedy. Everything seemed to click, and Priscilla Presley went from being Elvis’ wife to being a cinematic funny lady. She’ll finally get her due biopic with the November release of Sophia Coppola‘s Priscilla, but her work in the Naked Gun movies proves Priscilla Presley should also get her due as an actress with some fine comic chops.
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