Reflections of a stormy petrel

In the old days, comedy leads were either cast as bewildered young men (Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin - Chaplin kept his juvenile looks into his fifties) or people with naturally funny faces (WC Fields, both Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy). Leslie Nielsen, who had spent his youth playing lead in minor movies and TV productions, looked like a president and delivered his lines with authoritative aplomb; responding to the Western public's growing suspicion, already strong in the seventies, that we are really governed by clowns.