Leslie Nielsen loved using his fart machine to prank people

A student at the Actors Studio, an academic in love with theater, a passionate admirer of dramatic arts…Yes, that’s Leslie Nielsen we’re talking about. Long after his extensive TV work and film performances in fare like The Poseidon Adventure and Forbidden Planet, Nielsen became solely tied to comedy, and for good reason. But it wasn’t just Airplane! and The Naked Gun that solidified him as a master of the genre – it was his beloved fart machine.

Leslie Nielsen loved a good prank, and what better way to break up a room than to break a little wind? As is well documented, he would carry around a fart machine to shock pretty much everybody around him. He also made it a habit of bringing his toy on the publicity circuit, surprising hosts with a squeak in the middle of a sentence or when crossing his leg, usually revealing that he was pulling one on them. (His 1993 appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien is probably the best example.)

One collaborator who distinctly remembers Leslie Nielsen’s gaseous gadget is David Zucker, who helped catapult Nielsen into the comedy stratosphere with Airplane! and short-lived series Police Squad! As he once told Cracked, “Even before he met us on Airplane!, he’d carry that fart machine around. He’d carry on seriously with somebody, then he’d adjust his seat and fart. On Airplane!, I’d say he waited until about the second week of filming to try it out on set, then he started doing it all the time. He was always trying to crack up the other actors while they were doing their takes. Leslie even began selling them on set, and everyone on the crew was buying them — it was causing a big disturbance. Eventually, the assistant director couldn’t control anyone, so he wouldn’t allow them on set anymore. Leslie gave me one, too. I put it in a glass case, and I still treasure it to this day.”

The world lost one of the great comedians 15 years ago but the stories of Leslie Nielsen’s pranks continue even on his grave stone. Below his date of birth and date of death – Feb. 11, 1926 – Nov. 28, 2010 – the epitaph reads, “Let ‘er rip.”

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