Claim: Photograph shows the gravestone of actor Leslie Nielsen.

TRUE

Example: [Collected via e-mail, June 2011]



Is this really the gravestone of Leslie Nielsen? Is this really the gravestone of Leslie Nielsen?





Origins: This image is indeed a photograph of the marker at the burial site of actor Leslie Nielsen, who was interred at Fort Lauderdale’s Evergreen Cemetery after passing away at the age of 84 in November 2010. As the South Florida Sun Sentinel noted of the unusual epitaph:





Leslie Nielsen couldn’t resist one last joke. Leslie Nielsen couldn’t resist one last joke. His tombstone in the city’s historic Evergreen Cemetery reads “Let ‘er rip.” Nielsen, the star of such comic movies as “Airplane!” and “Naked Gun,” had a low-key retirement in Fort Lauderdale before his death last fall at 84. Neilsen loved gags about gas and whoopee cushions and promised in a 1996 interview that the line would be his epitaph. Flatulence jokes from movie stars is something new for Evergreen. Nielsen’s grave is located in the cemetery’s northern corner. A bench in his honor is under a nearby shade tree with a comment from him: “Sit down whenever you can.”





Last updated: 9 June 2011



Sources: