Jim Abrahams Dies: ‘Airplane!’, ‘Naked Gun’ & ‘Police Squad!’ Writer-Director Was 80

Erik Pedersen
·5-min read
Jim Abrahams Dies: ‘Airplane!’, ‘Naked Gun’ & ‘Police Squad!’ Writer-Director Was 80

Jim Abrahams, part of the writing-directing-producing team behind such comedy touchstones as Airplane!, the Naked Gun films, and Police Squad!, died Tuesday at his Santa Monica home. He was 80.

His son, Joseph Abrahams, confirmed the news to our sister site The Hollywood Reporter.

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Along with brothers David and Jerry Zucker, Abrahams also was behind laugh-inducing — and often intentionally groan-inducing — comedy films including Top Secret! and the Top Gun spoofs Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux. Students of the Mel Brooks School of Anything for a Laugh, the trio paired absurd situations with deadpan lines and fueled Leslie Nielsen’s unlikely rise to leading man after 30 years in the business.

The trio got their big-screen start writing The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), a series of decidedly un-PC vignettes directed by John Landis that ranged from silly to uproarious to “what the hell?!” and back. Sample: A TV news anchor deadpans from behind a desk: “I’m not wearing any pants. Film at 11.” Several of the independently made pic’s risqué and unapologetically crude sketches would be inappropriate to detail today.

But it was 1980 when it all changed for Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker.

Also known simply as “ZAZ,” he trio fairly assaulted theaters with Paramount’s Airplane!, a no-holds-barred sendup of ’70s disaster movies that starred Nielsen along with Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty and a cameo cast of ’50s and ’60s TV stars and others playing it ever-so-straight. Who could forget Peter Graves’ fish-eating pilot, Barbara Billingsley’s jive-talkin’ passenger, Robert Stack’s acerbic military vet or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s slow-boiling co-pilot?- Oh wait, that was Roger Murdock (wink-wink).

RELATED: Hollywood “Destroying Comedy” With Its Fear Of Offending Anyone, Says ‘Airplane!’ Director David Zucker

Comedy geeks of a certain age — probably all ages — revere the film’s litany of quotable lines:

  • “Do you like movies about gladiators?”

  • “How soon can we land?” “I can’t tell.” “You can tell me, I’m a doctor.”

  • “We have Clearance, Clarence.” “Roger, Roger. What’s our vector, Victor?”

  • “This woman has gotten to a hospital!” “A hospital — what is it?” “It’s a big building with patients, but that’s not important right now.”

The list goes on and on.

Airplane! was a commercial and critical hit and later made The New York Times‘ 2003 list of Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made. It earned a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Screenplay, a Golden Globe nom for Best Motion Picture Comedy or Musical and a Writers Guild Award for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium. It also was selected in 2010 for the National Film Registry, which ensures the survival, conservation and increased public availability of America’s film heritage.

The pic spawned a 1982 kitchen-sink sequel that brought most of the band back together and continued the knee-slapping or face-palming punchlines, unrepentant sight gags and inexpressive line readings — fourth wall be damned. It also led to Police Squad! a brilliant but short-lived 1982 ABC sitcom that starred Nielsen as LAPD Detective Frank Drebin and earned Abrahams and the Zuckers an Emmy nom for writing.

Fast-forward to 1988, and Nielsen’s Drebin — now a lieutenant — hit the big screen in The Naked Gun, which combined Airplane!‘s shameless gaggery with elements of Brooks and Buck Henry‘s Get Smart! crossed with ’70s cop dramas. Subtitled From the Files of Police Squad!, the film co-starred Priscilla Presley as Drebin’s love interest and O.J. Simpson as his accident-prone fellow cop and borrowed some of the jokes from the series as it spoofed a U.S. visit by Queen Elizabeth.

RELATED: Jeannette Charles Dies: Queen Elizabeth II Lookalike In ‘The Naked Gun’, ‘European Vacation’ & Austin Powers Sequel ‘Goldmember’ Was 96

Tthe impeccably coiffed and collected Drebin and company returned in 1991 with The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear and again in 1994 with The Naked Gun 33⅓. The trilogy combined to gross more than $216 million globally, and a reboot starring Liam Neeson and directed by Lonely Island’s Akiva Schaffer is set to hit theaters in August.

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Along the way, Abrahams and his childhood friends the Zucker brothers continued to twist parodic knives into unsuspecting genres, skewering the spy game with Top Secret! (1984) starring Val Kilmer and the likes of Omar Sharif (!), and Top Gun with Hot Shots! (1991), starring Charlie Sheen and Cary Elwes with Airplane! alum Lloyd Bridges, Efrem Zimbalist and others. Hot Shots! Part Deux followed in 1993, and the films combined to bank more than $312 million worldwide.

Born on May 10, 1944, in Shorewood, WI, Abrahams also directed Big Business (1988) and, with the Zuckers, 1986’s Ruthless People. He wrote and directed the 1998 organized-crime sendup Mafia! starring Jay Mohr and Bridges and, in something of a genre departure, also helmed the 1990 dramedy Welcome Home, Roxy Charmichael, toplined by Winona Ryder and Jeff Daniels.

Last year saw the publication of Surely You Can’t Be Serious, a memoir penned by Abrahams and the Zuckers about the making of Airplane! that borrowed its title from Hays’ famous line that fed Nielsen’s more famous retort, “I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley.”

Along with son Joseph, survivors include Abrahams’ wife of nearly 50 years, Nancy Cocuzzo; son Charlie; daughter Jamie; and three grandchildren.

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