Priscilla Presley

Priscilla Presley keeps a straight face while the film around her becomes ridiculous. As Jane Spencer in David Zucker’s The Naked Gun (1988), she acts as though she has been hired for an ordinary film, and nobody has thought to tell her otherwise. We laughed at that untroubled seriousness beside Leslie Nielsen’s solemn detective. She gives him space, but her own apparent faith in what is happening makes the silliness funnier.

The route to that performance ran through Dallas, where she played Jenna Wade from 1983 to 1988. The poise and self-reliance she brought to that role proved useful when the material changed from soap opera to parody. Presley had no previous comedy experience when she was cast in The Naked Gun, a quality the filmmakers deliberately wanted. It is easy to see why: an actor busy demonstrating a sense of humour would have been less useful here.

Zucker surrounds her with actors who are equally willing to stay serious. Ricardo Montalban and George Kennedy share the business of treating the nonsense as ordinary, while composer Ira Newborn’s music treats Nielsen’s Drebin with the respect he expects. Presley fits that company because she does not keep asking us to admire her timing. The supporting cast leaves Nielsen room without leaving him to supply every laugh, and her restraint is part of why the comedy works so reliably.

She returned as Jane in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991) and Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult (1994). Those returns make the part central to her screen work, though the first film supplies the strongest evidence for our view of her. Its crude, elderly jokes are a reminder that playing things straight cannot make every gag worth keeping. Start with the 1988 film, and watch how rarely she asks to be noticed.