[Susan Foreman]

"It is one of the immortal exchanges in movie comedy, from 1980’s classic spoof ‘Airplane!’:

Rumack: “Can you fly this plane, and land it?”

Ted Striker: “Surely you can’t be serious.”

Rumack: 'I am serious… and don’t call me Shirley.”

Now the origins of the joke have been revealed by the movie makers, Jerry and David Zucker, and Jim Abrahams, while in conversation with Vulture.

“The origin of that joke is similar to the origin of a lot of jokes in the movie,” says Jerry.

“While we were writing, we used to watch a lot of old, serious movies that had a lot of this overly dramatic dialogue. We’d say, 'Wait, wait, wait. Stop the tape,’ and we’d go back and we’d put in our punch line or our gag in the background. That was one of those lines where someone actually did say, 'Surely you can’t be serious’.”

Added David: “The other person might have even said, 'I am serious’. But we added the 'Don’t call me Shirley’.

But it turned out that the line was not only a killer for audiences, it also had the unexpected effect of persuading Paramount Pictures that they could pull off the film, a project which was on a knife-edge from the start.

Their contracts even contained a clause which stated that they could be fired after one week.

“Paramount Pictures was apprehensive about three first-time directors working together on a movie.” said Abrahams.

“As it turned out, the 'Don’t call me Shirley’ scene was filmed on the first day of shooting. When Paramount Pictures watched the dailies and saw that joke and the way it played, they were relieved. They finally understood the concept and were much more comfortable dealing with us.

Added Jerry: “We got the call and it was kind of like, 'Oh, now we get it’. I think they previously said, 'Okay, fine, you can have [Robert] Stack, [Lloyd] Bridges, [Leslie] Nielsen, and [Peter] Graves’, but I don’t think very many people understood what we were doing by casting these serious, straight-men actors until they saw it.

“It’s a line that a lot of different people could have said, and it would’ve been funny - people would’ve gotten it. But I don’t think it would be remembered in the same way if it hadn’t been said the way Leslie Nielsen says it.”

David goes on: “That’s a good point. We love Bill Murray and people who do comedy well, but it wouldn’t have been the same if a comedian had said that line.”

And that is how movie comedy history was made…"

Origin Of Airplane's Classic 'Don't Call Me Shirley' Gag Revealed