The Swamp Fox meets his end.

Leslie Nielsen, who has died at age 84, spent a lot of his career as a doofus, but I think of him as a dish. He played Francis Marion in Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color and to a young girl, it was thrilling stuff. Looking through his screen appearances, I was surprised to see that he was the bachelor to Debbie Reynolds' Tammy in Tammy and the Bachelor. It makes me wonder if I recognized him from "The Swamp Fox" at the time, because I know I saw Tammy when it was on the big screen. A few years later, Nielsen starred in The New Breed, a TV show about L.A. police that I liked because he was in it.

So go ahead and think of him as a goofball. In my memory cupboard, Leslie Nielsen will always be a dish.