Nick Adams
Encyclopedia
Nick Adams was an American
film
and television actor
. He has been noted for his supporting roles in successful Hollywood films during the 1950s and 1960s along with his starring role in the ABC
television series The Rebel
(1959). Decades after Adams' death from a prescription drug overdose at the age of 36, his widely publicized friendships with James Dean
and Elvis Presley
would stir speculation about both his private life and the circumstances of his death. In an Allmovie synopsis for Adams' last film, reviewer Dan Pavlides wrote, "Plagued by personal excesses, he will be remembered just as much for what he could have done in cinema as what he left behind."
to Peter Adamshock and Catherine Kutz. His father was a Ukrainian-born
anthracite coal miner. In 1958 he told columnist Hedda Hopper
, "We lived in those little company houses -- they were terrible. We had to buy from the company store and were always in debt and could never leave."
The family did leave when he was five years old, after Adams' uncle was killed in a mining accident. "My father piled all our belongings into an old jalopy, with our bedding on top", Adams recalled. "We didn't know where we were going. He started driving, and ran out of gas and money in Jersey City, New Jersey
at Audubon Park. A man came over and started talking to us, a Mr. Cohn. He said to my father 'You look like you need a job,' and my father said 'I do'." Adams' father was given a job as janitor
of an apartment
building along with living quarters in the basement. Eventually, they moved to Van Nostrand Avenue between Ocean Avenue and Rutgers Avenue. His mother worked for Western Electric in Kearny, New Jersey.
While still in high school Adams was offered a playing position in minor league baseball
with the St. Louis Cardinals
but turned it down because he was uninterested in the low pay. He briefly worked as a bat boy for the Jersey City Giants
, a local minor league team. Some sources recount Adams made money as a teenager by hustling pool
games.
(who was understudying for Marlon Brando
in A Streetcar Named Desire
). When Palance, whose father was also a Ukrainian
coal miner, asked why he wanted to act Adams replied, "For the money." Palance introduced him to the director of The Silver Tassie as Nick Adams. After the director declined to hire him as an extra Palance sent Adams to a nearby junior theater group where he got his first acting job playing the role of Muff Potter in Tom Sawyer
. While trying to get a role in the play Mister Roberts
Adams had a brief encounter with Henry Fonda
who advised him to get some training as an actor.
Adams' friends teased him about his acting ambitions. "Everybody thought I was crazy", he recalled. "My father said, 'Nick, get a trade, be a barber or something.' I said, 'But Pop, I want to do something where I can make lots of money. You can't make lots of money with just a trade.'"
After a year of unpaid acting in New York, Adams hitchiked to Los Angeles
.
Adams' earliest reported paid acting job in Los Angeles was a stage role at the Las Palmas Theater in a comedy called Mr. Big Shot. Although he was paid about $60 a week Adams had to pay $175 for membership in Actors Equity. He also earned $25 one night at the Mocambo
nightclub, filling in for Pearl Bailey
who had fallen ill. Eight years later Hedda Hopper
told Adams she recalled writing about him at the time and he replied by reciting back to her, "Nick Adams, gas station attendant from New Jersey, did an impersonation of Jimmy Cagney and a scene from Glass Menagerie."
After three years of struggle and optimistic self-promotion, his first film role came in 1951, an uncredited one-liner as a Western Union
delivery boy in George Seaton
's Somebody Loves Me
(1952). This allowed him to join the Screen Actors Guild
, but he was unable to find steady acting work, even when "creatively" claiming he had appeared with Palance in The Silver Tassie in New York. Undaunted, Adams joined a theater workshop run by Arthur Kennedy
. In January 1952 Adams was drafted into the United States Coast Guard
.
and after a brash audition for director John Ford
during which Adams did impressions of James Cagney
and other celebrities while dressed in his Coast Guard uniform, he took his accumulated leave and appeared as Seaman Reber in the 1955 film version of Mister Roberts. Adams then completed his military service, returned to Los Angeles and at the age of 23, based on his work in the hit film Mr Roberts, was able to secure a powerful agent and signed with Warner Brothers.
Adams had a small role (as Chick) in Rebel Without a Cause
(1955). Also that year Adams played the role of "Bomber" the paper boy in the widely popular film adaptation of Picnic (1955) which was mostly filmed on location in Kansas
and starred William Holden
, Kim Novak
and Susan Strasberg
. He was not perceived by casting directors as tall or handsome enough for leading roles but during the late 1950s Adams had supporting roles in several successful television productions including one episode of Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958) starring Steve McQueen
and films such as Our Miss Brooks
(1956), No Time for Sergeants
(1958), Teacher's Pet
(1958) and Pillow Talk (1959).
in December 1950 while jitterbugging for a soft drink commercial filmed at Griffith Park
. Adams spent three years in the US Coast Guard between the time this commercial was shot in late 1950 and the start of filming for Rebel Without a Cause in March 1955. Actor Jack Grinnage, who played Moose, recalled, "Off the set, Nick, Dennis
, and the others would go out together--almost like the gang we portrayed--but Jimmy and Corey Allen
... were not a part of that." They became friends during filming. During breaks, Dean and Adams entertained cast and crew with impersonations of Marlon Brando
and Elia Kazan
(who had directed Dean in East of Eden). A 1955 Warner Brothers press release quoted Dean as saying, "I shall be busy for the rest of 1955, and Nick will be doing film work for the next six months. Come 1956, however, I wouldn't be surprised to find myself with Adams doing a two-a-night nightclub routine--or acting in a comedy by William Shakespeare." When production was wrapped, Dean said in another press release, "I now regard Natalie, Nick and Sal as co-workers; I regard them as friends... about the only friends I have in this town. And I hope we all work together again soon." Following Dean's 1955 death in an automobile accident, Adams overdubbed some of James Dean's lines for the film Giant (these are in Jett Rink's speech at the hotel) and dated co-star Natalie Wood
. Adams tried to capitalize on Dean's fame through various publicity stunts, including a claim he was being stalked by a crazed female Dean fan, allowing himself to be photographed at Dean's grave in a contemplative pose, holding flowers and surrounded by mourning, teenaged female fans along with writing articles and doing interviews about Dean for fan magazines. He also claimed to have developed Dean's affection for fast cars, later telling a reporter, "I became a highway delinquent. I was arrested nine times in one year. They put me on probation, but I kept on racing... nowhere."
began in 1956 on the set of Presley's film Love Me Tender
during the second day of shooting. Presley had admired James Dean and when the singer arrived in Hollywood he was encouraged by studio executives to be seen with some of the "hip" new young actors there. Meanwhile his manager Colonel Tom Parker
was worried Elvis' new Hollywood acquaintances might influence Presley and even tell him what they were paying their managers and agents (usually a fraction of what Parker was getting). Elaine Dundy
called Parker a "master manipulator" who used Nick Adams and others in the entourage (including Parker's own brother-in-law Bitsy Mott) to counter possible subversion against him and control Elvis' movements. She later wrote a scathing characterization of Adams:
Dundy also wrote, "Of all Elvis' new friends, Nick Adams, by background and temperament the most insecure, was also his closest." Adams was Dennis Hopper's
roommate during this period and the three reportedly socialized together, with Presley "...hanging out more and more with Nick and his friends" and glad his manager "liked Nick." Decades later, Kathleen Tracy recalled Adams often met Presley backstage or at Graceland
, where Elvis often asked Adams "to stay over on nights": "He and Elvis would go motorcycle riding late at night and stay up until all hours talking about the pain of celebrity" and enjoying prescription drugs.
Almost forty years later, writer Peter Guaralnick wrote that Presley found it "good running around with Nick ... – there was always something happening, and the hotel suite was like a private clubhouse where you needed to know the secret password to get in and he got to change the password every day." Presley's girlfriend June Juanico
complained the singer was always talking about his friend Adams and James Dean. She was also upset that Adams had started inviting himself to see Elvis, and Juanico felt that she was trying compete for Elvis' attention. Adams would talk often about Natalie Wood
to Elvis, constantly discussing her figure and her beauty, something else that caused Juanico to feel that she would soon lose Elvis to the glitz of Hollywood. Presley's own mother even commented about Adams, "He sure is a pushy little fellow".
As with Dean, Adams capitalized on his association with Presley, publishing an account of their friendship in May 1957. In August 1958 after Elvis' mother Gladys died, Parker wrote in a letter, "Nicky came out to be with Elvis last Week was so very kind of him to be there with his friend."
television series The Rebel
playing the character Johnny Yuma, a wandering, ex-Confederate, journal-keeping, sawed-off shotgun toting "trouble-shooter" in the old American west. He is credited as a co-creator of The Rebel but had no role in writing the pilot or any of the series' episodes. Adams had asked his friend Andrew J. Fenady to write the pilot as a starring vehicle for him. The series' only recurring character, publicized as a "Reconstruction beatnik", was played by Adams. He reportedly consulted with John Wayne
for tips on how to play the role. Adams wanted Presley to sing the theme song for The Rebel but the show's producer wanted Johnny Cash
, who made it a hit. Guest stars appearing on the series during its two year run included Dan Blocker
, Johnny Cash, Leonard Nimoy
, Tex Ritter
and Robert Vaughn
. 76 half-hour episodes were filmed before the series was cancelled in 1961. Reruns were syndicated for several years. Adams went back to TV and film work, along with a role in the short-lived but critically successful television series Saints and Sinners.
for his performance as an unlikeable murder suspect in the film Twilight of Honor
(1963) which featured the film debuts of both Linda Evans
and Joey Heatherton
. He campaigned heavily for the award, spending over $8,000 on ads in trade magazines but many of his strongest scenes had been cut from the movie and he lost to Melvyn Douglas
.
in an episode (Fun and Games) of The Outer Limits
television series. A review of this episode written over three decades later would characterize him as an "underrated actor." By this time Adams' career was stalling. He had high hopes his co-starring performance with Robert Conrad
in Young Dillinger (1964) would be critically acclaimed but the project had low production values and both critics and audiences rejected the film. Also that year Adams guest starred in an episode of the short-lived CBS drama
The Reporter
.
In 1965, after publicly insisting he would never work in films produced outside the US, Adams began accepting parts in Japanese science fiction
monster movies (kaiju eiga
). He landed major roles in two science fiction epics from Toho Studios in Chiyoda, Tokyo
. His first Japanese movie was Frankenstein Conquers the World
, in which he played Dr. James Bowen, a radiologist working in Hiroshima who encounters a new incarnation of the Frankenstein monster. Adams next starred in the sixth Godzilla
film, Invasion of Astro-Monster
(known in the U.S. as Monster Zero), in which he played Astronaut Glenn, journeying to the newly discovered Planet X. In both film plots his character had a love interest with characters portrayed by actress Kumi Mizuno. Actors at Toho Studios later fondly remembered Adams as a "team player". On the set of Monster Zero Adams and co-star Yoshio Tsuchiya
(who played the villainous Controller of Planet X) reportedly got along well and played jokes on each other. Adams made four films in Japan during 1965 and 1966. During this time he also co-starred with Boris Karloff
in Die, Monster, Die! (1965), a gothic horror–sci fi movie filmed in England.
In early 1967 Disney released Mosby's Marauders, a now mostly forgotten but successful Civil War drama told from a southern perspective with Adams in the role of a cruel Union army sergeant. Adams guest-starred in five episodes of four TV series that year, including an installment of his friend Robert Conrad
's The Wild Wild West
, an appearance in Combat! and two episodes of Hondo
(a short-lived western which also had an ex-Confederate theme). Throughout 1967 and early 1968 he also worked in three low budget films. One of these was Mission Mars (1968) which, having been released the same year as Stanley Kubrick
's widely praised 2001: A Space Odyssey
, has been described as "rarely seen, and utterly dreadful." Adams' costume for this movie included an off-the-shelf motorcycle helmet. Reacting to Mission Mars over 30 years later, SciFi reviewer Gary Westfahl wrote, "The only quality that Adams could persuasively project on film was a desperate desire to be popular, to be liked.... which helps to explain why Adams got his foot in many doors..." Adams' last US production was a more solid B picture, a stock car movie filmed in Iowa
called Fever Heat. His last film appearance was in the little seen Spanish-language western Los Asesinos filmed in Mexico City
, Mexico.
Adams married former child actor Carol Nugent
in 1959. Nugent had appeared in an episode of The Rebel. They had two children, Allyson Lee Adams (1960) and Jeb Stuart Adams (1961) who both later pursued careers in the film industry.
Sometimes acrimonious marital problems reportedly interfered with his ability to get lucrative acting parts after 1963. While promoting Young Dillinger during a television appearance on The Les Crane Show
in early 1965, Adams "shocked" the viewing audience with an announcement he was leaving his wife—seemingly without telling her first. The couple publicly announced a reconciliation a week later but his career and personal life following this episode have been characterized as a "tragic freefall".
Adams and actress Kumi Mizuno
may have had a short affair while he was working in Japan. "That's one of the reasons my parents were divorced", his daughter, playwright Allyson Lee Adams later said. "My dad had a penchant for becoming infatuated with his leading ladies. It was a way for him to take on the role he was playing at the time."
By July 1965 they were legally separated and Carol filed for divorce in September. The following month, while Adams was in Japan, Carol was granted a divorce and custody of the children. In January 1966 Nick and Carol announced another reconciliation on a local television show, Bill John's Hollywood Star Notebook. However in November 1966 Carol resumed the divorce proceedings and obtained a restraining order against him, alleging Adams was "prone to fits of temper" and in an affidavit charged he had "choked her, struck her and threatened to kill her during the past few weeks." On January 20, 1967 Adams was waiting for a court hearing to start when he was served with an $110,000 defamation suit by Carol's boyfriend, Paul Rapp, who later married Carol. Nevertheless, nine days later he was granted temporary custody of the children. His son Jeb Adams later recalled, "He saw it as a competition, basically, more than anything of getting custody of us. But, a matter of a week or two later, he gave us back to my mom" and Carol later regained legal custody of the children.
After finishing Los Asesinos (1968) in Mexico Adams bought a plane ticket with his own money and flew to Rome to co-star with Aldo Ray
in a SciFi horror movie called Murder in the Third Dimension, but when he got there, he found the project had been dropped. Susan Strasberg
, who had worked with him 13 years earlier on the hit film Picnic and was living in Italy, encountered a thoroughly demoralized Adams in a Rome bar. On the night of February 7, 1968 his lawyer and friend, ex-LAPD
officer Erwin Roeder, drove to the actor's house at 2126 El Roble Lane in Beverly Hills to check on him after a missed dinner appointment. Seeing a light on and his car in the garage, Roeder broke through a window and discovered Adams in his upstairs bedroom, slumped dead against a wall.
During the autopsy Dr. Thomas Noguchi
found enough paraldehyde
, sedatives and other drugs in the body "to cause instant unconsciousness." The death certificate lists "paraldehyde and promazine
intoxication" as the immediate cause of death along with the notation accident; suicide
; undetermined. During the 1960s drug interaction warnings were not so prominent as they later would be and the American Medical Association
has subsequently warned these two types of drugs should never be taken together.
The death of Nick Adams has been cited in articles and books about Hollywood's unsolved mysteries along with speculation by a few of Adams' acquaintances he was murdered (but apparently with no motive ever offered) and claims no trace of paraldehyde
(a liquid sedative
often given to alcoholics at the time and one of two drugs attributed to his death) was ever found in his home. However, Adams' brother Andrew had become a medical doctor and prescribed the sedative to him. Moreover, a story in The Los Angeles Times
reported stoppered bottles with prescription
labels were found in the medicine cabinet near the upstairs bedroom where Adams' body was discovered. Through the years Adams' children offered speculation ranging from murder to accidental death, the latter perhaps caused by Raeder while trying to calm the actor's nerves with an unintentionally lethal combination of alcohol and prescription drugs (although the autopsy found no alcohol in Adams' blood). Adams' best friend, actor Robert Conrad
, has consistently maintained the death was accidental.
Carol Adams is listed as Adams' spouse on his death certificate, evidence the divorce had not become final when the actor died. She and the children were living only a few blocks from Adams' recently-rented house on Roble Lane.
Nick Adams' remains were buried in Berwick, Pennsylvania
. He appeared in over 150 television series episodes and feature films throughout a 20 year career. Half of these were episodes of The Rebel. The back of his gravestone bears a silhouette
of Adams in the civil-war era cap from his TV series and reads Nick Adams - the rebel - actor of hollywood screens.
and Elvis Presley
along with his reported drug consumption made his private life the subject of many reports and assertions by some writers who have claimed Adams may have been gay
or bisexual and may have had intimate relationships with both Dean and Presley. One of the earliest published mentions on this overall topic was made by gossip columnist Rona Barrett
in her 1974 autobiography, in which she made no assertion Adams was homosexual or bisexual but claimed Adams had told her, along with a "whole roomful of people -- that he wasn't making it because no one in Hollywood's upper stratosphere would accept his wife." Barret wrote, "This was untrue. She was one of the most refreshing wives in the entire community", and went on to say Adams "had become the companion to a group of salacious homosexuals" who flattered the actor, which affected his judgment and caused him to blame Carol. Hollywood biographer Lawrence J. Quirk
claimed Mike Connolly (a gay gossip columnist for the Hollywood Reporter from 1951 to 1966) "would put the make on the most prominent young actors, including Robert Francis, Guy Madison
, Anthony Perkins
, Nick Adams, and James Dean
." According to American Film (1986), "Nick Adams, who was ... gay, was the butt of anti-gay humor in Pillow Talk.
Some writers later called Adams a "Hollywood hustler" or a "street hustler" but one journalist also refers to Adams as a pool hustler who made money in pool halls when he was a teenager in New Jersey and later while struggling to make ends meet during his early years in Hollywood .
claimed actor Sal Mineo
told him in 1972, "I didn't hear it from Jimmy (James Dean), who was sort of awesome to me when we did Rebel. But Nick told me they had a big affair." Journalist, screenwriter and author of books about Hollywood, John Gregory Dunne
wrote that "James Dean was bisexual, as were Nick Adams and Sal Mineo." In his book Elvis (1981) Albert Goldman
wrote, "Nick Adams ingratiated himself with James Dean precisely as he would do a year or so later with Elvis. He offered himself to the shy, emotionally contorted and rebellious Dean, as a friend, a guide, a boon companion, a homosexual lover -- whatever role or service Dean required." According to Eric Braun, "Elvis was attracted by Adams' outgoing personality and the young actors caused quite a stir, cruising round Los Angeles with Natalie Wood
, Russ Tamblyn
and others on their Hondas." In 2005 Byron Raphael and Presley biographer Alanna Nash
claimed Adams may have "swung both ways" like "Adams' good pal (and Elvis' idol) James Dean. Tongues wagged that Elvis and Adams were getting it on."
were widely publicized in fan magazines. Modern Screen wrote at the time "their relationship has been mostly for fun" and they shared "a tendency toward moodiness and unpredictability." The magazine also reported they had given joint interviews "in which they admitted they adored each other" and "they even came terribly close to getting married" in Las Vegas
. The same article also remarked that on one of their trips they "posed for innumerable publicity photographs - that was the real reason for the trip - " and "Right now, both Nick and Natalie are inclined to deny the whole Las Vegas episode." In his 2004 biography Natalie Wood: A Life biographer and screenwriter Gavin Lambert
wrote in passing, Wood's "first studio-arranged date with a gay or bisexual actor had been with Nick Adams." In his biography of gay Hollywood agent Henry Willson
, Robert Hofler deals with the rise of the studio star system, in which several actors spent time on the homosexual casting couch and dated girls or even entered into sham marriages in order to cover their homosexuality. "In the Henry Willson date pool", the author says, "Nick Adams was one client, among many, who glommed on to Natalie Wood to get his picture taken." Suzanne Finstad
cites actor Jack Grinnage, one of the gang members in Rebel Without a Cause
, about Nick Adams's and Dennis Hopper
's reasons "for getting close to Natalie. 'I remember being in Dennis' dressing room with Nick and Natalie ... I don't know which one of them said this - it was Nick or Dennis - but he said, "We're gonna hang on to her bra straps." Meaning up the career ladder.' Natalie's tutor, who knew Hopper and Adams off set, said, 'Both of those two guys were all over her ... because they could see that this movie was going to be a big thing for Natalie ... they were game for anything in order to be noticed and to get ahead in the business.' "
Actress Olive Sturgess relates: "When Nick and I went out, it was a casual thing – no great love or anything like that. ... I thought he was very troubled ... You could feel he was troubled. It was the manner he had – that was the way he was in real life, always brooding. ... When we went out, it was never on his motorcycle! That's one trick he couldn't pull on me. We always went in a car!"
." Moreover there are neither any court documents (such as from the long and drawn out divorce and child custody proceedings between him and his wife), personal letters from Adams nor directly attributable statements by any alleged male lovers to support the assertions.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and television actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
. He has been noted for his supporting roles in successful Hollywood films during the 1950s and 1960s along with his starring role in the ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
television series The Rebel
The Rebel (TV series)
The Rebel is an American Western television series that ran originally on the ABC network from 1959 to 1961. The program was produced by Goodson-Todman Productions, marking one of their few non-game show ventures...
(1959). Decades after Adams' death from a prescription drug overdose at the age of 36, his widely publicized friendships with James Dean
James Dean
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...
and Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
would stir speculation about both his private life and the circumstances of his death. In an Allmovie synopsis for Adams' last film, reviewer Dan Pavlides wrote, "Plagued by personal excesses, he will be remembered just as much for what he could have done in cinema as what he left behind."
Early life
Adams was born Nicholas Aloysius Adamshock in Nanticoke, PennsylvaniaNanticoke, Pennsylvania
Nanticoke is a city in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 10,465 at the 2010 census.-History:The name Nanticoke was derived from Nantego, the Indian tidewater people who moved here when their Maryland lands were spoiled for hunting by the colonial settlement in...
to Peter Adamshock and Catherine Kutz. His father was a Ukrainian-born
Ukrainians
Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...
anthracite coal miner. In 1958 he told columnist Hedda Hopper
Hedda Hopper
Hedda Hopper was an American actress and gossip columnist, whose long-running feud with friend turned arch-rival Louella Parsons became at least as notorious as many of Hopper's columns.-Early life:...
, "We lived in those little company houses -- they were terrible. We had to buy from the company store and were always in debt and could never leave."
The family did leave when he was five years old, after Adams' uncle was killed in a mining accident. "My father piled all our belongings into an old jalopy, with our bedding on top", Adams recalled. "We didn't know where we were going. He started driving, and ran out of gas and money in Jersey City, New Jersey
Jersey City, New Jersey
Jersey City is the seat of Hudson County, New Jersey, United States.Part of the New York metropolitan area, Jersey City lies between the Hudson River and Upper New York Bay across from Lower Manhattan and the Hackensack River and Newark Bay...
at Audubon Park. A man came over and started talking to us, a Mr. Cohn. He said to my father 'You look like you need a job,' and my father said 'I do'." Adams' father was given a job as janitor
Janitor
A janitor or custodian is a professional who takes care of buildings, such as hospitals and schools. Janitors are responsible primarily for cleaning, and often some maintenance and security...
of an apartment
Apartment
An apartment or flat is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building...
building along with living quarters in the basement. Eventually, they moved to Van Nostrand Avenue between Ocean Avenue and Rutgers Avenue. His mother worked for Western Electric in Kearny, New Jersey.
While still in high school Adams was offered a playing position in minor league baseball
Minor league baseball
Minor league baseball is a hierarchy of professional baseball leagues in the Americas that compete at levels below Major League Baseball and provide opportunities for player development. All of the minor leagues are operated as independent businesses...
with the St. Louis Cardinals
St. Louis Cardinals
The St. Louis Cardinals are a professional baseball team based in St. Louis, Missouri. They are members of the Central Division in the National League of Major League Baseball. The Cardinals have won eleven World Series championships, the most of any National League team, and second overall only to...
but turned it down because he was uninterested in the low pay. He briefly worked as a bat boy for the Jersey City Giants
Jersey City Giants
The Jersey City Giants was the name of a high-level American minor league baseball franchise that played in Jersey City, New Jersey, as the top farm system affiliate of the New York Giants from 1937 through 1950. The Jersey City club played in the International League...
, a local minor league team. Some sources recount Adams made money as a teenager by hustling pool
Billiards
Cue sports , also known as billiard sports, are a wide variety of games of skill generally played with a cue stick which is used to strike billiard balls, moving them around a cloth-covered billiards table bounded by rubber .Historically, the umbrella term was billiards...
games.
Early acting in New York
In 1948, while visiting New York, 17-year-old Nick Adamshock wandered into an audition for a play called The Silver Tassie and met Jack PalanceJack Palance
Jack Palance , was an American actor. During half a century of film and television appearances, Palance was nominated for three Academy Awards, all as Best Actor in a Supporting Role, winning in 1991 for his role in City Slickers.-Early life:Palance, one of five children, was born Volodymyr...
(who was understudying for Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
in A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...
). When Palance, whose father was also a Ukrainian
Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine* The Ukrainians, people from Ukraine or of Ukrainian descent.* Something relating to Ukrainian culture....
coal miner, asked why he wanted to act Adams replied, "For the money." Palance introduced him to the director of The Silver Tassie as Nick Adams. After the director declined to hire him as an extra Palance sent Adams to a nearby junior theater group where he got his first acting job playing the role of Muff Potter in Tom Sawyer
Tom Sawyer
Thomas "Tom" Sawyer is the title character of the Mark Twain novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer . He appears in three other novels by Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , Tom Sawyer Abroad , and Tom Sawyer, Detective .Sawyer also appears in at least three unfinished Twain works, Huck and Tom...
. While trying to get a role in the play Mister Roberts
Mister Roberts (play)
Mister Roberts is a 1948 play based on the 1946 Thomas Heggen novel of the same name.The novel began as a collection of short stories about Heggen's experiences aboard the USS Virgo in the South Pacific during World War II...
Adams had a brief encounter with Henry Fonda
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...
who advised him to get some training as an actor.
Adams' friends teased him about his acting ambitions. "Everybody thought I was crazy", he recalled. "My father said, 'Nick, get a trade, be a barber or something.' I said, 'But Pop, I want to do something where I can make lots of money. You can't make lots of money with just a trade.'"
After a year of unpaid acting in New York, Adams hitchiked to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
.
Struggling actor
Adams was an avid reader of fan magazines and came to believe he could meet agents and directors by being seen at the Warners Theater in Beverly Hills. He got a job there as doorman, usher and maintenance man, which included changing the notices on the theater marquee. He was fired after he put his own name up as a publicity stunt.Adams' earliest reported paid acting job in Los Angeles was a stage role at the Las Palmas Theater in a comedy called Mr. Big Shot. Although he was paid about $60 a week Adams had to pay $175 for membership in Actors Equity. He also earned $25 one night at the Mocambo
Mocambo
The Mocambo was a nightclub in West Hollywood, California, at 8588 Sunset Boulevard on the Sunset Strip. It was owned by Charlie Morrison and Felix Young.-History:...
nightclub, filling in for Pearl Bailey
Pearl Bailey
Pearl Mae Bailey was an American actress and singer. After appearing in vaudeville, she made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman in 1946. She won a Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly! in 1968...
who had fallen ill. Eight years later Hedda Hopper
Hedda Hopper
Hedda Hopper was an American actress and gossip columnist, whose long-running feud with friend turned arch-rival Louella Parsons became at least as notorious as many of Hopper's columns.-Early life:...
told Adams she recalled writing about him at the time and he replied by reciting back to her, "Nick Adams, gas station attendant from New Jersey, did an impersonation of Jimmy Cagney and a scene from Glass Menagerie."
After three years of struggle and optimistic self-promotion, his first film role came in 1951, an uncredited one-liner as a Western Union
Western Union
The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters is in Englewood, Colorado. Up until 2006, Western Union was the best-known U.S...
delivery boy in George Seaton
George Seaton
George Seaton was an American screenwriter, playwright, film director and producer, and theatre director.Born George Stenius in South Bend, Indiana, Seaton moved to Detroit after graduating from college to work as an actor on radio station WXYZ. John L...
's Somebody Loves Me
Somebody Loves Me
"Somebody Loves Me" is a popular song, with music written by George Gershwin, and lyrics by Ballard MacDonald and Buddy DeSylva. This is not to be confused with the Southern gospel song written by W.F. & Marjorie Crumley. The song was published in 1924 and featured in George White's Scandals of...
(1952). This allowed him to join the Screen Actors Guild
Screen Actors Guild
The Screen Actors Guild is an American labor union representing over 200,000 film and television principal performers and background performers worldwide...
, but he was unable to find steady acting work, even when "creatively" claiming he had appeared with Palance in The Silver Tassie in New York. Undaunted, Adams joined a theater workshop run by Arthur Kennedy
Arthur Kennedy (actor)
Arthur Kennedy was an American stage and film actor known for his versatility in supporting film roles and his ability to create "an exceptional honesty and naturalness on stage" especially in the original casts of Arthur Miller plays on Broadway.- Early life and education :Kennedy was born John...
. In January 1952 Adams was drafted into the United States Coast Guard
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard is a branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven U.S. uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency...
.
Supporting actor
Two and a half years later, in June 1954 his ship docked in Long Beach harborPort of Long Beach
The Port of Long Beach, also known as Long Beach’s Harbor Department, is the 2nd busiest container port in the USA. It adjoins the separate Port of Los Angeles. Acting as a major gateway for U.S.-Asian trade, the port occupies of land with of waterfront in the city of Long Beach, California...
and after a brash audition for director John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
during which Adams did impressions of James Cagney
James Cagney
James Francis Cagney, Jr. was an American actor, first on stage, then in film, where he had his greatest impact. Although he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances, he is best remembered for playing "tough guys." In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth...
and other celebrities while dressed in his Coast Guard uniform, he took his accumulated leave and appeared as Seaman Reber in the 1955 film version of Mister Roberts. Adams then completed his military service, returned to Los Angeles and at the age of 23, based on his work in the hit film Mr Roberts, was able to secure a powerful agent and signed with Warner Brothers.
Adams had a small role (as Chick) in Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers. Directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social commentary and an alternative to previous films depicting delinquents in urban slum environments...
(1955). Also that year Adams played the role of "Bomber" the paper boy in the widely popular film adaptation of Picnic (1955) which was mostly filmed on location in Kansas
Kansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
and starred William Holden
William Holden
William Holden was an American actor. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1954 and the Emmy Award for Best Actor in 1974...
, Kim Novak
Kim Novak
Kim Novak is an American film and television actress. She began her career with her roles in Pushover and Phffft! but achieved greater prominence in the 1955 film Picnic...
and Susan Strasberg
Susan Strasberg
Susan Elizabeth Strasberg was an American film and stage actress.-Background and career:Strasberg was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of theatre director and drama coach Lee Strasberg of the Actors Studio and former actress Paula Strasberg...
. He was not perceived by casting directors as tall or handsome enough for leading roles but during the late 1950s Adams had supporting roles in several successful television productions including one episode of Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958) starring Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen
Terrence Steven "Steve" McQueen was an American movie actor. He was nicknamed "The King of Cool." His "anti-hero" persona, which he developed at the height of the Vietnam counterculture, made him one of the top box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s. McQueen received an Academy Award nomination...
and films such as Our Miss Brooks
Our Miss Brooks
Our Miss Brooks is an American situation comedy starring Eve Arden as a sardonic high school English teacher. It began as a radio show broadcast on CBS from 1948 to 1957. When the show was adapted to television , it became one of the medium's earliest hits...
(1956), No Time for Sergeants
No Time for Sergeants
No Time for Sergeants is a 1954 best-selling novel by Mac Hyman, which was later adapted into a teleplay on The United States Steel Hour, a popular Broadway play and 1958 motion picture, as well as a 1964 television series. The book chronicles the misadventures of a country bumpkin named Will...
(1958), Teacher's Pet
Teacher's Pet (1958 film)
Teacher's Pet is a 1958 romantic comedy film starring Clark Gable and Doris Day. It was directed by George Seaton and co-starred Gig Young and Mamie Van Doren-Characters:The main characters include:...
(1958) and Pillow Talk (1959).
James Dean
Adams may have first met James DeanJames Dean
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...
in December 1950 while jitterbugging for a soft drink commercial filmed at Griffith Park
Griffith Park
Griffith Park is a large municipal park at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The park covers of land, making it one of the largest urban parks in North America...
. Adams spent three years in the US Coast Guard between the time this commercial was shot in late 1950 and the start of filming for Rebel Without a Cause in March 1955. Actor Jack Grinnage, who played Moose, recalled, "Off the set, Nick, Dennis
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...
, and the others would go out together--almost like the gang we portrayed--but Jimmy and Corey Allen
Corey Allen
Corey Allen was an American film and television director, writer, producer, and actor. He began his career as an actor but eventually became a television director. He may be best known for playing the character Buzz Gunderson in Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause...
... were not a part of that." They became friends during filming. During breaks, Dean and Adams entertained cast and crew with impersonations of Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
and Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...
(who had directed Dean in East of Eden). A 1955 Warner Brothers press release quoted Dean as saying, "I shall be busy for the rest of 1955, and Nick will be doing film work for the next six months. Come 1956, however, I wouldn't be surprised to find myself with Adams doing a two-a-night nightclub routine--or acting in a comedy by William Shakespeare." When production was wrapped, Dean said in another press release, "I now regard Natalie, Nick and Sal as co-workers; I regard them as friends... about the only friends I have in this town. And I hope we all work together again soon." Following Dean's 1955 death in an automobile accident, Adams overdubbed some of James Dean's lines for the film Giant (these are in Jett Rink's speech at the hotel) and dated co-star Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko was an American film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.Wood began acting in movies at the...
. Adams tried to capitalize on Dean's fame through various publicity stunts, including a claim he was being stalked by a crazed female Dean fan, allowing himself to be photographed at Dean's grave in a contemplative pose, holding flowers and surrounded by mourning, teenaged female fans along with writing articles and doing interviews about Dean for fan magazines. He also claimed to have developed Dean's affection for fast cars, later telling a reporter, "I became a highway delinquent. I was arrested nine times in one year. They put me on probation, but I kept on racing... nowhere."
Elvis Presley
Nick Adams' widely publicized friendship with Elvis PresleyElvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
began in 1956 on the set of Presley's film Love Me Tender
Love Me Tender (1956 film)
Love Me Tender is a 1956 American black-and-white CinemaScope motion picture directed by Robert D. Webb, and released by 20th Century Fox on November 21, 1956. The film, named after the song, stars Richard Egan, Debra Paget, and Elvis Presley in his film debut. It is in the Western genre with...
during the second day of shooting. Presley had admired James Dean and when the singer arrived in Hollywood he was encouraged by studio executives to be seen with some of the "hip" new young actors there. Meanwhile his manager Colonel Tom Parker
Colonel Tom Parker
"Colonel" Thomas Andrew "Tom" Parker born Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk, was a Dutch-born entertainment impresario known best as the manager of Elvis Presley...
was worried Elvis' new Hollywood acquaintances might influence Presley and even tell him what they were paying their managers and agents (usually a fraction of what Parker was getting). Elaine Dundy
Elaine Dundy
Elaine Dundy was an American novelist, biographer, journalist, actress and playwright.-Early life:Born Elaine Rita Brimberg in New York City, of Latvian maternal descent, her Polish father was an office furniture manufacturer and a violent bully...
called Parker a "master manipulator" who used Nick Adams and others in the entourage (including Parker's own brother-in-law Bitsy Mott) to counter possible subversion against him and control Elvis' movements. She later wrote a scathing characterization of Adams:
...brash struggling young actor whose main scheme to further his career was to hitch his wagon to a star, the first being James Dean, about whose friendship he was noisily boastful... this made it easy for Parker to suggest that Nick be invited to join Elvis' growing entourage of paid companions, and for Nick to accept... following Adams' hiring, there appeared a newspaper item stating that Nick and Parker were writing a book on Elvis together.
Dundy also wrote, "Of all Elvis' new friends, Nick Adams, by background and temperament the most insecure, was also his closest." Adams was Dennis Hopper's
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...
roommate during this period and the three reportedly socialized together, with Presley "...hanging out more and more with Nick and his friends" and glad his manager "liked Nick." Decades later, Kathleen Tracy recalled Adams often met Presley backstage or at Graceland
Graceland
Graceland is a large white-columned mansion and estate that was home to Elvis Presley in Memphis, Tennessee. It is located at 3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard in the vast Whitehaven community about 9 miles from Downtown and less than four miles north of the Mississippi border. It currently serves as...
, where Elvis often asked Adams "to stay over on nights": "He and Elvis would go motorcycle riding late at night and stay up until all hours talking about the pain of celebrity" and enjoying prescription drugs.
Almost forty years later, writer Peter Guaralnick wrote that Presley found it "good running around with Nick ... – there was always something happening, and the hotel suite was like a private clubhouse where you needed to know the secret password to get in and he got to change the password every day." Presley's girlfriend June Juanico
June Juanico
June Juanico is a former beauty queen and an Elvis Presley fan from Biloxi, Mississippi, whom the famous rock 'n' roll singer dated in 1955 and 1956, for instance, when he took three weeks of vacation after having recorded his songs "Hound Dog" and "Don't Be Cruel" in the studio in Memphis,...
complained the singer was always talking about his friend Adams and James Dean. She was also upset that Adams had started inviting himself to see Elvis, and Juanico felt that she was trying compete for Elvis' attention. Adams would talk often about Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko was an American film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.Wood began acting in movies at the...
to Elvis, constantly discussing her figure and her beauty, something else that caused Juanico to feel that she would soon lose Elvis to the glitz of Hollywood. Presley's own mother even commented about Adams, "He sure is a pushy little fellow".
As with Dean, Adams capitalized on his association with Presley, publishing an account of their friendship in May 1957. In August 1958 after Elvis' mother Gladys died, Parker wrote in a letter, "Nicky came out to be with Elvis last Week was so very kind of him to be there with his friend."
The Rebel
In 1959 Adams starred in the ABCAmerican Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
television series The Rebel
The Rebel (TV series)
The Rebel is an American Western television series that ran originally on the ABC network from 1959 to 1961. The program was produced by Goodson-Todman Productions, marking one of their few non-game show ventures...
playing the character Johnny Yuma, a wandering, ex-Confederate, journal-keeping, sawed-off shotgun toting "trouble-shooter" in the old American west. He is credited as a co-creator of The Rebel but had no role in writing the pilot or any of the series' episodes. Adams had asked his friend Andrew J. Fenady to write the pilot as a starring vehicle for him. The series' only recurring character, publicized as a "Reconstruction beatnik", was played by Adams. He reportedly consulted with John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...
for tips on how to play the role. Adams wanted Presley to sing the theme song for The Rebel but the show's producer wanted Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash
John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...
, who made it a hit. Guest stars appearing on the series during its two year run included Dan Blocker
Dan Blocker
Dan Blocker was an American actor best remembered for his role as Eric "Hoss" Cartwright in the NBC western television series Bonanza.-Early life:...
, Johnny Cash, Leonard Nimoy
Leonard Nimoy
Leonard Simon Nimoy is an American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer. Nimoy's most famous role is that of Spock in the original Star Trek series , multiple films, television and video game sequels....
, Tex Ritter
Tex Ritter
Woodward Maurice Ritter , better known as Tex Ritter, was an American country music singer and movie actor popular from the mid-1930s into the 1960s, and the patriarch of the Ritter family in acting...
and Robert Vaughn
Robert Vaughn
Robert Francis Vaughn, , is an American actor noted for stage, film and television work. His best known roles include the suave spy Napoleon Solo in the 1960s television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., wealthy detective Harry Rule in the 1970s television series The Protectors, Albert Stroller in...
. 76 half-hour episodes were filmed before the series was cancelled in 1961. Reruns were syndicated for several years. Adams went back to TV and film work, along with a role in the short-lived but critically successful television series Saints and Sinners.
Twilight of Honor
Adams was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting ActorAcademy Award for Best Supporting Actor
Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
for his performance as an unlikeable murder suspect in the film Twilight of Honor
Twilight of Honor
Twilight of Honor is a 1963 film starring Richard Chamberlain, Nick Adams, Claude Rains, and featuring Joey Heatherton and Linda Evans in their film debuts. Twilight of Honor is a courtroom drama based on Al Dewlen's novel, with a screenplay by Henry Denker...
(1963) which featured the film debuts of both Linda Evans
Linda Evans
Linda Evans is an American actress. She is known primarily for her roles on television, and rose to fame playing Audra Barkley in the 1960s Western TV series, The Big Valley...
and Joey Heatherton
Joey Heatherton
Joey Heatherton is an American actress, dancer, and singer.-Early life:Christened Davenie Johanna Heatherton and nicknamed "Joey," she was raised in Rockville Centre, New York, a suburb of New York City. There she attended St. Agnes Cathedral School, a Catholic grade and high school...
. He campaigned heavily for the award, spending over $8,000 on ads in trade magazines but many of his strongest scenes had been cut from the movie and he lost to Melvyn Douglas
Melvyn Douglas
Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg , better known as Melvyn Douglas, was an American actor.Coming to prominence in the 1930s as a suave leading man , Douglas later transitioned into more mature and fatherly roles as in his Academy Award-winning performances in Hud...
.
Toho Studios
In 1964, Adams had a leading role opposite Nancy MaloneNancy Malone
Nancy Malone is an American television actress, principally in guest roles from the 1950s to 1970s, who moved into producing and directing in the 1980s and 1990s....
in an episode (Fun and Games) of The Outer Limits
The Outer Limits (1963 TV series)
The Outer Limits is an American television series that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1965. The series is similar in style to the earlier The Twilight Zone, but with a greater emphasis on science fiction, rather than fantasy stories...
television series. A review of this episode written over three decades later would characterize him as an "underrated actor." By this time Adams' career was stalling. He had high hopes his co-starring performance with Robert Conrad
Robert Conrad
Robert Conrad is an American actor. He is best known for his role in the 1965 CBS television series The Wild Wild West, in which he played the sophisticated Secret Service agent James T. West, and his portrayal of World War II ace Pappy Boyington in the television series Baa Baa Black Sheep...
in Young Dillinger (1964) would be critically acclaimed but the project had low production values and both critics and audiences rejected the film. Also that year Adams guest starred in an episode of the short-lived CBS drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
The Reporter
The Reporter (TV series)
The Reporter is an American drama series that aired on CBS from September 25 to December 18, 1964. The series was created by Jerome Weidman and developed by executive producers Keefe Brasselle and John Simon.-Synopsis:...
.
In 1965, after publicly insisting he would never work in films produced outside the US, Adams began accepting parts in Japanese science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
monster movies (kaiju eiga
Kaiju
is a Japanese word that means "strange beast," but often translated in English as "monster". Specifically, it is used to refer to a genre of tokusatsu entertainment....
). He landed major roles in two science fiction epics from Toho Studios in Chiyoda, Tokyo
Chiyoda, Tokyo
is one of the 23 special wards in central Tokyo, Japan. In English, it is called Chiyoda ward. As of October 2007, the ward has an estimated population of 45,543 and a population density of 3,912 people per km², making it by far the least populated of the special wards...
. His first Japanese movie was Frankenstein Conquers the World
Frankenstein Conquers the World
Frankenstein Conquers the World, released in Japan as , with Toho's official English title being Frankenstein vs. Baragon, is a kaiju film produced in 1965 by Toho Company Ltd...
, in which he played Dr. James Bowen, a radiologist working in Hiroshima who encounters a new incarnation of the Frankenstein monster. Adams next starred in the sixth Godzilla
Godzilla
is a daikaijū, a Japanese movie monster, first appearing in Ishirō Honda's 1954 film Godzilla. Since then, Godzilla has gone on to become a worldwide pop culture icon starring in 28 films produced by Toho Co., Ltd. The monster has appeared in numerous other media incarnations including video games,...
film, Invasion of Astro-Monster
Invasion of Astro-Monster
Invasion of Astro-Monster is a Science Fiction kaiju film released in 1965 as a direct sequel to Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster...
(known in the U.S. as Monster Zero), in which he played Astronaut Glenn, journeying to the newly discovered Planet X. In both film plots his character had a love interest with characters portrayed by actress Kumi Mizuno. Actors at Toho Studios later fondly remembered Adams as a "team player". On the set of Monster Zero Adams and co-star Yoshio Tsuchiya
Yoshio Tsuchiya
is a Japanese actor who has appeared in such films as Toshio Matsumoto's surreal masterpiece "Bara No Soretsu" and Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and Red Beard, and Kihachi Okamoto's Kill!. He has a long-standing interest in UFOs and had written several books on the subject...
(who played the villainous Controller of Planet X) reportedly got along well and played jokes on each other. Adams made four films in Japan during 1965 and 1966. During this time he also co-starred with Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff
William Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...
in Die, Monster, Die! (1965), a gothic horror–sci fi movie filmed in England.
1967: TV episodes and low budget films
Robert Conrad
Robert Conrad is an American actor. He is best known for his role in the 1965 CBS television series The Wild Wild West, in which he played the sophisticated Secret Service agent James T. West, and his portrayal of World War II ace Pappy Boyington in the television series Baa Baa Black Sheep...
's The Wild Wild West
The Wild Wild West
The Wild Wild West is an American television series that ran on CBS for four seasons from September 17, 1965 to April 4, 1969....
, an appearance in Combat! and two episodes of Hondo
Hondo (TV series)
Hondo is a Western television series starring Ralph Taeger, that aired in the United States on ABC during the 1967 fall season.-Overview:Hondo was based on the film of the same name starring John Wayne, which was in turn based on an early Louis L'Amour novel...
(a short-lived western which also had an ex-Confederate theme). Throughout 1967 and early 1968 he also worked in three low budget films. One of these was Mission Mars (1968) which, having been released the same year as Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
's widely praised 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...
, has been described as "rarely seen, and utterly dreadful." Adams' costume for this movie included an off-the-shelf motorcycle helmet. Reacting to Mission Mars over 30 years later, SciFi reviewer Gary Westfahl wrote, "The only quality that Adams could persuasively project on film was a desperate desire to be popular, to be liked.... which helps to explain why Adams got his foot in many doors..." Adams' last US production was a more solid B picture, a stock car movie filmed in Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
called Fever Heat. His last film appearance was in the little seen Spanish-language western Los Asesinos filmed in Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
, Mexico.
Marriage and children
Carol Nugent
Carol Lou Nugent is an American actress who began her career as a child. Nugent appeared in over 20 feature films and 11 television programs during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Her 1959 marriage to actor Nick Adams was widely publicized until his death in 1968.-Early life:Nugent was born in Los...
in 1959. Nugent had appeared in an episode of The Rebel. They had two children, Allyson Lee Adams (1960) and Jeb Stuart Adams (1961) who both later pursued careers in the film industry.
Sometimes acrimonious marital problems reportedly interfered with his ability to get lucrative acting parts after 1963. While promoting Young Dillinger during a television appearance on The Les Crane Show
Les Crane
Les Crane , born Lesley Stein, was a radio announcer and television talk show host, a pioneer in interactive broadcasting who also scored a spoken word hit with his 1971 recording of the poem Desiderata, winning a "Best Spoken Word" Grammy.Born in Long Beach, New York , Crane...
in early 1965, Adams "shocked" the viewing audience with an announcement he was leaving his wife—seemingly without telling her first. The couple publicly announced a reconciliation a week later but his career and personal life following this episode have been characterized as a "tragic freefall".
Adams and actress Kumi Mizuno
Kumi Mizuno
is a Japanese actress most famous for appearing in several Toho Kaiju films of the 1960s and early 1970s....
may have had a short affair while he was working in Japan. "That's one of the reasons my parents were divorced", his daughter, playwright Allyson Lee Adams later said. "My dad had a penchant for becoming infatuated with his leading ladies. It was a way for him to take on the role he was playing at the time."
By July 1965 they were legally separated and Carol filed for divorce in September. The following month, while Adams was in Japan, Carol was granted a divorce and custody of the children. In January 1966 Nick and Carol announced another reconciliation on a local television show, Bill John's Hollywood Star Notebook. However in November 1966 Carol resumed the divorce proceedings and obtained a restraining order against him, alleging Adams was "prone to fits of temper" and in an affidavit charged he had "choked her, struck her and threatened to kill her during the past few weeks." On January 20, 1967 Adams was waiting for a court hearing to start when he was served with an $110,000 defamation suit by Carol's boyfriend, Paul Rapp, who later married Carol. Nevertheless, nine days later he was granted temporary custody of the children. His son Jeb Adams later recalled, "He saw it as a competition, basically, more than anything of getting custody of us. But, a matter of a week or two later, he gave us back to my mom" and Carol later regained legal custody of the children.
Death
Aldo Ray
Aldo Ray was an American actor.-Life and career:Ray was born in Pen Argyl, PA, to an Italian family of five brothers and one sister. His brother Mario lettered in football at USC in the years 1952-54...
in a SciFi horror movie called Murder in the Third Dimension, but when he got there, he found the project had been dropped. Susan Strasberg
Susan Strasberg
Susan Elizabeth Strasberg was an American film and stage actress.-Background and career:Strasberg was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of theatre director and drama coach Lee Strasberg of the Actors Studio and former actress Paula Strasberg...
, who had worked with him 13 years earlier on the hit film Picnic and was living in Italy, encountered a thoroughly demoralized Adams in a Rome bar. On the night of February 7, 1968 his lawyer and friend, ex-LAPD
Los Angeles Police Department
The Los Angeles Police Department is the police department of the city of Los Angeles, California. With just under 10,000 officers and more than 3,000 civilian staff, covering an area of with a population of more than 4.1 million people, it is the third largest local law enforcement agency in...
officer Erwin Roeder, drove to the actor's house at 2126 El Roble Lane in Beverly Hills to check on him after a missed dinner appointment. Seeing a light on and his car in the garage, Roeder broke through a window and discovered Adams in his upstairs bedroom, slumped dead against a wall.
During the autopsy Dr. Thomas Noguchi
Thomas Noguchi
is a former Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner for the County of Los Angeles, who served in that position from 1967 to 1982. Known as the "coroner to the stars", he determined the cause of death in many high profile cases. He is most famous for performing autopsies on Marilyn Monroe, Robert F...
found enough paraldehyde
Paraldehyde
Paraldehyde is the cyclic trimer of acetaldehyde molecules. Formally, it is a derivative of 1,3,5-trioxane. The corresponding tetramer is metaldehyde. A colourless liquid, it is sparingly soluble in water and highly soluble in alcohol. Paraldehyde slowly oxidizes in air, turning brown and producing...
, sedatives and other drugs in the body "to cause instant unconsciousness." The death certificate lists "paraldehyde and promazine
Promazine
Promazine is a medication that belongs to the phenothiazine class of antipsychotics. An older medication used to treat schizophrenia, it is still prescribed, alongside newer agents such as olanzapine and quetiapine...
intoxication" as the immediate cause of death along with the notation accident; suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
; undetermined. During the 1960s drug interaction warnings were not so prominent as they later would be and the American Medical Association
American Medical Association
The American Medical Association , founded in 1847 and incorporated in 1897, is the largest association of medical doctors and medical students in the United States.-Scope and operations:...
has subsequently warned these two types of drugs should never be taken together.
The death of Nick Adams has been cited in articles and books about Hollywood's unsolved mysteries along with speculation by a few of Adams' acquaintances he was murdered (but apparently with no motive ever offered) and claims no trace of paraldehyde
Paraldehyde
Paraldehyde is the cyclic trimer of acetaldehyde molecules. Formally, it is a derivative of 1,3,5-trioxane. The corresponding tetramer is metaldehyde. A colourless liquid, it is sparingly soluble in water and highly soluble in alcohol. Paraldehyde slowly oxidizes in air, turning brown and producing...
(a liquid sedative
Sedative
A sedative or tranquilizer is a substance that induces sedation by reducing irritability or excitement....
often given to alcoholics at the time and one of two drugs attributed to his death) was ever found in his home. However, Adams' brother Andrew had become a medical doctor and prescribed the sedative to him. Moreover, a story in The Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
reported stoppered bottles with prescription
Prescription drug
A prescription medication is a licensed medicine that is regulated by legislation to require a medical prescription before it can be obtained. The term is used to distinguish it from over-the-counter drugs which can be obtained without a prescription...
labels were found in the medicine cabinet near the upstairs bedroom where Adams' body was discovered. Through the years Adams' children offered speculation ranging from murder to accidental death, the latter perhaps caused by Raeder while trying to calm the actor's nerves with an unintentionally lethal combination of alcohol and prescription drugs (although the autopsy found no alcohol in Adams' blood). Adams' best friend, actor Robert Conrad
Robert Conrad
Robert Conrad is an American actor. He is best known for his role in the 1965 CBS television series The Wild Wild West, in which he played the sophisticated Secret Service agent James T. West, and his portrayal of World War II ace Pappy Boyington in the television series Baa Baa Black Sheep...
, has consistently maintained the death was accidental.
Carol Adams is listed as Adams' spouse on his death certificate, evidence the divorce had not become final when the actor died. She and the children were living only a few blocks from Adams' recently-rented house on Roble Lane.
Nick Adams' remains were buried in Berwick, Pennsylvania
Berwick, Pennsylvania
Berwick is a borough in Columbia County, Pennsylvania, 22.6 miles southwest of Wilkes Barre. Berwick is one of two principal cities of the Bloomsburg–Berwick Micropolitan Statistical Area, a micropolitan area that covers Columbia and Montour counties and had a combined population of 82,387...
. He appeared in over 150 television series episodes and feature films throughout a 20 year career. Half of these were episodes of The Rebel. The back of his gravestone bears a silhouette
Silhouette
A silhouette is the image of a person, an object or scene consisting of the outline and a basically featureless interior, with the silhouetted object usually being black. Although the art form has been popular since the mid-18th century, the term “silhouette” was seldom used until the early decades...
of Adams in the civil-war era cap from his TV series and reads Nick Adams - the rebel - actor of hollywood screens.
Adams's sexuality
Decades later, Adams' highly publicized life and death at a young age and his friendships with cultural icons such as James DeanJames Dean
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...
and Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
along with his reported drug consumption made his private life the subject of many reports and assertions by some writers who have claimed Adams may have been gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
or bisexual and may have had intimate relationships with both Dean and Presley. One of the earliest published mentions on this overall topic was made by gossip columnist Rona Barrett
Rona Barrett
Rona Barrett is an American gossip columnist and businesswoman. She currently runs the Rona Barrett Foundation, a non-profit organization in Santa Ynez, California, dedicated to the aid and support of senior citizens in need.-Career and personal life:As a teenager, Barrett overcame a degenerative...
in her 1974 autobiography, in which she made no assertion Adams was homosexual or bisexual but claimed Adams had told her, along with a "whole roomful of people -- that he wasn't making it because no one in Hollywood's upper stratosphere would accept his wife." Barret wrote, "This was untrue. She was one of the most refreshing wives in the entire community", and went on to say Adams "had become the companion to a group of salacious homosexuals" who flattered the actor, which affected his judgment and caused him to blame Carol. Hollywood biographer Lawrence J. Quirk
Lawrence J. Quirk
Lawrence J. Quirk is an American writer, Hollywood reporter and film historian.-Career:Lawrence J. Quirk is the nephew of James R. Quirk, former editor and publisher of the now-defunct Photoplay magazine. He was an Army sergeant in Korea, a reporter for the Hearst papers, and a film magazine...
claimed Mike Connolly (a gay gossip columnist for the Hollywood Reporter from 1951 to 1966) "would put the make on the most prominent young actors, including Robert Francis, Guy Madison
Guy Madison
Guy Madison was an American film and television actor.-Early life:Born Robert Ozell Moseley in Pumpkin Center, California, Madison attended Bakersfield College, a junior college, for two years and then worked briefly as a telephone lineman before joining the United States Coast Guard in...
, Anthony Perkins
Anthony Perkins
Anthony Perkins was an American actor, best known for his Oscar-nominated role in Friendly Persuasion and as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho , and its three sequels.-Early life:...
, Nick Adams, and James Dean
James Dean
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...
." According to American Film (1986), "Nick Adams, who was ... gay, was the butt of anti-gay humor in Pillow Talk.
Some writers later called Adams a "Hollywood hustler" or a "street hustler" but one journalist also refers to Adams as a pool hustler who made money in pool halls when he was a teenager in New Jersey and later while struggling to make ends meet during his early years in Hollywood .
Friendship with Dean and Presley
It is uncertain whether James Dean and Adams met before his service in the US Coast Guard (1952–1955) and subsequent role in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). In his 1986 gossip book about gay Hollywood, Conversations With My Elders, Boze HadleighBoze Hadleigh
Boze Hadleigh aka George Hadley-Garcia is an American journalist writer of celebrity gossip and entertainment.-Biography:...
claimed actor Sal Mineo
Sal Mineo
Salvatore "Sal" Mineo, Jr. , was an American film and theatre actor, best known for his performance as John "Plato" Crawford opposite James Dean in the film Rebel Without a Cause...
told him in 1972, "I didn't hear it from Jimmy (James Dean), who was sort of awesome to me when we did Rebel. But Nick told me they had a big affair." Journalist, screenwriter and author of books about Hollywood, John Gregory Dunne
John Gregory Dunne
John Gregory Dunne was an American novelist, screenwriter and literary critic.-Life:He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was a younger brother of author Dominick Dunne. He suffered from a severe stutter and took up writing to express himself. Eventually he learned to speak normally by...
wrote that "James Dean was bisexual, as were Nick Adams and Sal Mineo." In his book Elvis (1981) Albert Goldman
Albert Goldman
Albert Harry Goldman was an American professor and author.Born in Dormont, Pennsylvania, Albert Goldman wrote about the culture and personalities of the American music industry both in books and as a contributor to magazines...
wrote, "Nick Adams ingratiated himself with James Dean precisely as he would do a year or so later with Elvis. He offered himself to the shy, emotionally contorted and rebellious Dean, as a friend, a guide, a boon companion, a homosexual lover -- whatever role or service Dean required." According to Eric Braun, "Elvis was attracted by Adams' outgoing personality and the young actors caused quite a stir, cruising round Los Angeles with Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko was an American film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.Wood began acting in movies at the...
, Russ Tamblyn
Russ Tamblyn
Russell Irving "Russ" Tamblyn is an American film and television actor, who is arguably best known for his performance in the 1961 movie musical West Side Story as Riff, the leader of the Jets gang....
and others on their Hondas." In 2005 Byron Raphael and Presley biographer Alanna Nash
Alanna Nash
Alanna Nash is an American journalist and biographer.Nash holds a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is the author of several acclaimed books...
claimed Adams may have "swung both ways" like "Adams' good pal (and Elvis' idol) James Dean. Tongues wagged that Elvis and Adams were getting it on."
Studio-arranged dates
Adams regularly dated actresses with whom he made movies. During the mid-1950s photographs of him with actress Natalie WoodNatalie Wood
Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko was an American film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.Wood began acting in movies at the...
were widely publicized in fan magazines. Modern Screen wrote at the time "their relationship has been mostly for fun" and they shared "a tendency toward moodiness and unpredictability." The magazine also reported they had given joint interviews "in which they admitted they adored each other" and "they even came terribly close to getting married" in Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
. The same article also remarked that on one of their trips they "posed for innumerable publicity photographs - that was the real reason for the trip - " and "Right now, both Nick and Natalie are inclined to deny the whole Las Vegas episode." In his 2004 biography Natalie Wood: A Life biographer and screenwriter Gavin Lambert
Gavin Lambert
Gavin Lambert was a British-born screenwriter, novelist and biographer who lived for part of his life in Hollywood...
wrote in passing, Wood's "first studio-arranged date with a gay or bisexual actor had been with Nick Adams." In his biography of gay Hollywood agent Henry Willson
Henry Willson
Henry Willson was an American Hollywood talent agent who played a large role in popularizing the beefcake craze of the 1950s. He was known for his stable of young, attractive clients, including Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Robert Wagner, Nick Adams, Guy Madison, Troy Donahue, Rory Calhoun, Clint...
, Robert Hofler deals with the rise of the studio star system, in which several actors spent time on the homosexual casting couch and dated girls or even entered into sham marriages in order to cover their homosexuality. "In the Henry Willson date pool", the author says, "Nick Adams was one client, among many, who glommed on to Natalie Wood to get his picture taken." Suzanne Finstad
Suzanne Finstad
Suzanne Finstad Bestselling American author, biographer, journalist, producer, and lawyer born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. .-Work pre-1990:Finstad received the Frank Wardlaw Prize in 1984 for literary excellence for her first book, Heir Not Apparent , drawn from her experiences as a young law clerk...
cites actor Jack Grinnage, one of the gang members in Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers. Directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social commentary and an alternative to previous films depicting delinquents in urban slum environments...
, about Nick Adams's and Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...
's reasons "for getting close to Natalie. 'I remember being in Dennis' dressing room with Nick and Natalie ... I don't know which one of them said this - it was Nick or Dennis - but he said, "We're gonna hang on to her bra straps." Meaning up the career ladder.' Natalie's tutor, who knew Hopper and Adams off set, said, 'Both of those two guys were all over her ... because they could see that this movie was going to be a big thing for Natalie ... they were game for anything in order to be noticed and to get ahead in the business.' "
Actress Olive Sturgess relates: "When Nick and I went out, it was a casual thing – no great love or anything like that. ... I thought he was very troubled ... You could feel he was troubled. It was the manner he had – that was the way he was in real life, always brooding. ... When we went out, it was never on his motorcycle! That's one trick he couldn't pull on me. We always went in a car!"
Lack of confirmation
Because of morality clauses in studio contracts along with practical marketing concerns, most homosexual actors during the 1950s and 1960s were discreet about their sexuality. However, Adams was known in Hollywood for embellishing and inventing stories about his show business experiences and long tried to capitalize on his associations with James Dean and Elvis Presley. In a brief biographical article journalist Bill Kelly wrote Adams "became James Dean's closest pal, although Nick was straight and Dean was bisexualBisexuality
Bisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
." Moreover there are neither any court documents (such as from the long and drawn out divorce and child custody proceedings between him and his wife), personal letters from Adams nor directly attributable statements by any alleged male lovers to support the assertions.
Quotes
Filmography
| Year | Film | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1952 | Somebody Loves Me Somebody Loves Me "Somebody Loves Me" is a popular song, with music written by George Gershwin, and lyrics by Ballard MacDonald and Buddy DeSylva. This is not to be confused with the Southern gospel song written by W.F. & Marjorie Crumley. The song was published in 1924 and featured in George White's Scandals of... |
Western Union boy | Uncredited |
| 1955 | Strange Lady in Town | Billy the Kid Billy the Kid William H. Bonney William H. Bonney William H. Bonney (born William Henry McCarty, Jr. est. November 23, 1859 – c. July 14, 1881, better known as Billy the Kid but also known as Henry Antrim, was a 19th-century American gunman who participated in the Lincoln County War and became a frontier... |
|
| Mister Roberts | Reber | ||
| Rebel Without a Cause Rebel Without a Cause Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers. Directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social commentary and an alternative to previous films depicting delinquents in urban slum environments... |
Chick | ||
| I Died a Thousand Times I Died a Thousand Times I Died a Thousand Times is a color film noir directed by Stuart Heisler. The drama features Jack Palance as paroled bank robber Roy Earle, with Shelley Winters, Lee Marvin, Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez, and Lon Chaney, Jr.... |
Bell Boy | Uncredited | |
| Picnic | Bomber | ||
| 1956 | Our Miss Brooks Our Miss Brooks Our Miss Brooks is an American situation comedy starring Eve Arden as a sardonic high school English teacher. It began as a radio show broadcast on CBS from 1948 to 1957. When the show was adapted to television , it became one of the medium's earliest hits... |
Gary Nolan | |
| A Strange Adventure | Phil Davis | Alternative title: White Nightmare | |
| The Last Wagon | Ridge | ||
| Giant | Jett Rink (Voice) | Uncredited | |
| 1957 | Fury at Showdown | Tracy Mitchell | |
| Sweet Smell of Success Sweet Smell of Success Sweet Smell of Success is a 1957 American film noir made by Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions and released by United Artists. It was directed by Alexander Mackendrick and stars Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison and Martin Milner. The screenplay was written by Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman... |
Hot-Dog Stand Customer | Uncredited | |
| Playhouse 90 Playhouse 90 Playhouse 90 is an American television anthology series that was telecast on CBS from 1956 to 1960 for a total of 133 episodes. It originated from CBS Television City in Los Angeles, California... |
Sandy | TV, 1 episode | |
| 1958 | Sing, Boy, Sing Sing, Boy, Sing Sing, Boy, Sing is a 1958 musical-drama film, released by 20th Century Fox. The feature starred two newcomers Tommy Sands and Lili Gentle.-Background:... |
C.K. Judd | |
| Richard Diamond, Private Detective Richard Diamond, Private Detective Richard Diamond, Private Detective is an American detective drama which aired on radio from 1949 to 1953, and on television from 1957 to 1960.-Radio:... |
Mickey Houseman | TV, 1 episode | |
| Teacher's Pet Teacher's Pet (1958 film) Teacher's Pet is a 1958 romantic comedy film starring Clark Gable and Doris Day. It was directed by George Seaton and co-starred Gig Young and Mamie Van Doren-Characters:The main characters include:... |
Barney Kovac | ||
| No Time for Sergeants | Pvt. Benjamin B. Whitledge | ||
| Wanted: Dead or Alive | Andy Martin | TV, 1 episode | |
| Cimarron City | John Hartman, Jr. | TV, 1 episode | |
| Letter to Loretta | Chip Davidson | TV, 1 episode | |
| Steve Canyon | Sgt. Korman | TV, 1 episode | |
| 1958–1959 | Zane Grey Theater Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre, sometimes simply called Zane Grey Theatre, is an American Western anthology series which ran on CBS from 1956 to 1961.-Overview:Zane Grey Theatre was created by Luke Short and Charles A. Wallace... |
George Pelletti | TV, 2 episodes |
| Trackdown Trackdown Trackdown is an American Western television series starring Robert Culp that aired on CBS between 1957 and 1959. The series offered more than seventy episodes and was produced by Dick Powell's Four Star Television and filmed at the Desilu-Culver Studio... |
Deal Jackford | TV, 3 episodes | |
| 1958–1961 | Wagon Train Wagon Train Wagon Train is an American Western series that ran on NBC from 1957–62 and then on ABC from 1962–65... |
Sam Upton | TV, 2 episodes |
| 1959 | Yancy Derringer Yancy Derringer Yancy Derringer is an American Western series that ran on CBS from 1958 to 1959, with Jock Mahoney in the title role. It was produced by Derringer Productions and filmed in Hollywood by Desilu Productions... |
Duke Alexis | TV, 1 episode |
| Tales of Wells Fargo Tales of Wells Fargo Tales of Wells Fargo is an American Western television series that ran from March 18, 1957 to June 2, 1962 on NBC. Produced by Revue Productions, the series aired in a half-hour format until its final season when it expanded to an hour.-Synopsis:... |
Ira Watkins | TV, 1 episode | |
| The David Niven Show | TV, 1 episode | ||
| Pillow Talk | Tony Walters | ||
| The FBI Story The FBI Story The FBI Story is a 1959 American drama film produced and directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The screenplay by Richard L. Breen and John Twist is based on a book by Don Whitehead.-Plot:... |
John Gilbert "Jack" Graham | ||
| 1959–1961 | The Rebel The Rebel (TV series) The Rebel is an American Western television series that ran originally on the ABC network from 1959 to 1961. The program was produced by Goodson-Todman Productions, marking one of their few non-game show ventures... |
Johnny Yuma | TV, 76 episodes, wrote 38 episodes, credited as creator |
| 1961–1962 | The Dick Powell Show The Dick Powell Show The Dick Powell Show is an American anthology series that ran on NBC from 1961- 1963, primarily sponsored by the Reynolds Metals Company. It was hosted by longtime film star Dick Powell until his death from lymphatic cancer on January 2, 1963, then by a series of guest hosts until the series ended... |
Nick Phillips/George Townsend | TV, 2 episodes |
| General Electric Theater General Electric Theater General Electric Theater is an American anthology series hosted by Ronald W. Reagan that was broadcast on CBS radio and television. The series was sponsored by General Electric's Department of Public Relations.-Radio:... |
Paul Madsen | TV, 2 episodes | |
| 1962 | Checkmate Checkmate (TV series) Checkmate is an American detective television series starring Anthony George, Sebastian Cabot, and Doug McClure. The show aired on CBS Television from 1960 to 1962 for a total of 70 episodes and was produced by Jack Benny's production company, "JaMco Productions" in co-operation with Revue... |
Weiler aka "Kid" | TV, 1 episode |
| Hell is for Heroes Hell Is for Heroes (film) Hell Is for Heroes is a 1962 war film directed by Don Siegel and starring Steve McQueen. It tells the story of a squad of American soldiers, who in the fall of 1944 must hold off an entire German company for approximately 48 hours along the Siegfried Line until reinforcements reach them.-Plot:Squad... |
Homer | ||
| The Interns | Dr. Sid Lackland | ||
| A Girl Named Tamiko | |||
| 1962–1963 | Saints and Sinners | Nick Alexander | TV, 3 episodes |
| 1963 | The Hook The Hook (1963 film) The Hook is a 1963 Korean War war film directed by George Seaton based on the 1957 novel L'Hamecon by Vahé Katcha. The film's title comes from the translation of the title of the original novel rather than the Battle of the Hook... |
Pvt. V.R. Hackett | |
| Twilight of Honor Twilight of Honor Twilight of Honor is a 1963 film starring Richard Chamberlain, Nick Adams, Claude Rains, and featuring Joey Heatherton and Linda Evans in their film debuts. Twilight of Honor is a courtroom drama based on Al Dewlen's novel, with a screenplay by Henry Denker... |
Ben Brown | Alternative title: The Charge is Murder, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the... |
|
| 77 Sunset Strip 77 Sunset Strip 77 Sunset Strip is an hour-length American television private detective series created by Roy Huggins and starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Roger Smith, and Edd Byrnes.... |
Max Dent | TV, 1 episode | |
| 1963–1965 | Burke's Law Burke's Law Burke's Law is a detective series that ran on ABC from 1963 to 1965 and was revived on CBS in the 1990s. The show starred Gene Barry as Amos Burke, millionaire captain of Los Angeles police homicide division, who was chauffeured around to solve crimes in his Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud... |
Various roles | TV, 5 episodes |
| 1963–1967 | Combat! | Pvt. Mick Hellar/Cpl. Marty Roberts | TV, 2 episodes |
| 1964 | Arrest and Trial Arrest and Trial Arrest and Trial is a 90-minute American Police procedural/legal drama that ran during the 1963-64 season on ABC, airing Sundays from 8:30-10 p.m. Eastern.The majority of episodes consisted of two segments... |
Ronnie Blake | TV, 1 episode |
| The Outer Limits episode "Fun and Games" The Outer Limits (1963 TV series) The Outer Limits is an American television series that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1965. The series is similar in style to the earlier The Twilight Zone, but with a greater emphasis on science fiction, rather than fantasy stories... |
Mike Benson | TV, 1 episode | |
| The Reporter The Reporter (TV series) The Reporter is an American drama series that aired on CBS from September 25 to December 18, 1964. The series was created by Jerome Weidman and developed by executive producers Keefe Brasselle and John Simon.-Synopsis:... |
Roger | TV, 1 episode | |
| Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (TV series) Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is a 1960s American science fiction television series based on the 1961 film of the same name. Both were created by Irwin Allen, which enabled the movie's sets, costumes, props, special effects models, and sometimes footage, to be used in the production of the... |
Jason Kemp | TV, 1 episode | |
| The Young Lovers | Tarragoo | ||
| Rawhide Rawhide (TV series) Rawhide is an American Western series that aired for eight seasons on the CBS network on Friday nights, from January 9, 1959 to September 3, 1965, before moving to Tuesday nights from September 14, 1965 until January 4, 1966, with a total of 217 black-and-white episodes... |
Corporal Dasovik | TV, 1 episode | |
| 1965 | Ben Casey Ben Casey Ben Casey is an American medical drama series which ran on ABC from 1961 to 1966. The show was known for its opening titles, which consisted of a hand drawing the symbols "♂, ♀, *, †, ∞" on a chalkboard, as cast member Sam Jaffe intoned, "Man, woman, birth, death, infinity." Neurosurgeon Joseph... |
Orin Reid | TV, 1 episode |
| Young Dillinger | John Dillinger John Dillinger John Herbert Dillinger, Jr. was an American bank robber in Depression-era United States. He was charged with, but never convicted of, the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana police officer during a shoot-out. This was his only alleged homicide. His gang robbed two dozen banks and four police stations... |
||
| Frankenstein Conquers the World Frankenstein Conquers the World Frankenstein Conquers the World, released in Japan as , with Toho's official English title being Frankenstein vs. Baragon, is a kaiju film produced in 1965 by Toho Company Ltd... |
Dr. James Bowen | ||
| Die, Monster, Die! | Stephen Reinhart | Alternative titles: Monster of Terror & The House at the End of the World | |
| Invasion of Astro-Monster Invasion of Astro-Monster Invasion of Astro-Monster is a Science Fiction kaiju film released in 1965 as a direct sequel to Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster... |
Astronaut Glenn | Alternative titles: Godzilla vs. Monster Zero & Invasion of the Astros | |
| 1966 | Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title | KEB agent | Uncredited |
| 1966–1968 | The Wild Wild West The Wild Wild West The Wild Wild West is an American television series that ran on CBS for four seasons from September 17, 1965 to April 4, 1969.... |
Prince/Sheriff Dave Cord | TV, 2 episodes |
| 1967 | The Wonderful World of Disney | Sergeant Gregg | TV, 2 episodes |
| The Monroes The Monroes (1966 TV series) The Monroes is a 26-segment Western television series which ran on ABC during the 1966-1967 season – the story of five orphans trying to survive as a family on the frontier in the area about what is now Grand Teton National Park near Jackson in northwestern Wyoming.Michael Anderson, Jr., then 24,... |
Dave | TV, 1 episode | |
| The Killing Bottle | John Carter | Alternative titles: International Secret Police: Driven to the Wall & Zettai zatsumi | |
| Hondo Hondo (TV series) Hondo is a Western television series starring Ralph Taeger, that aired in the United States on ABC during the 1967 fall season.-Overview:Hondo was based on the film of the same name starring John Wayne, which was in turn based on an early Louis L'Amour novel... |
Apache Kid | TV, 2 episodes | |
| 1968 | Fever Heat | Ace Jones | |
| Mission Mars | Nick Grant | ||
| Los Asesinos | Shannon |