Profile of Nick Adams on Famous Like Me

Nick Adams was also the name of a Hemingway protagonist.

Nick Adams (born Nicholas Aloysius Adamschock July 10, 1931 in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania - died February 7, 1968 in Beverly Hills, California) was an American actor and screenwriter.

Early life

The son of a Lithuanian coal miner, he is said to have made money as a teenager by hustling pool games and working as a bat boy for a local baseball team. He was later offered a playing position in minor league baseball but turned it down because he was uninterested in the low pay.

Hollywood career

While trying to get a role in the play Mister Roberts in New York he had a brief encounter with Henry Fonda, who advised him to get some training as an actor. Eventually hitchhiking to Los Angeles he worked at various jobs (and was reportedly fired from one as a theater usher after putting his name on display as a publicity stunt). After serving in the US Coast Guard, following much persistence and creativity Adams appeared in the 1955 film version of Mister Roberts. In Rebel Without a Cause (1955), starring James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, Adams had a supporting role, reportedly gaining a reputation as both a prankster and a scene-stealer on the set. Following the death of James Dean, Adams became one of the actors used to promote the film for the studio and for a time dated co-star Natalie Wood.

Adams made another appearance in the widely popular film adaptation of Picnic (1955) which was mostly filmed on location in Kansas. He was not perceived by casting directors as tall or handsome enough for leading roles but during the late 1950s he had supporting roles in several successful films.

Nick Adams' friendship with Elvis Presley, widely publicized at the time, began in 1956. In his book Last Train to Memphis, American popular music historian Peter Guralnick says on page 328 about Elvis Presley: "On his second day of filming on the set of Love Me Tender he met twenty-five-year-old Nick Adams, a Hollywood hustler who had originally brazened his way into the cast of Mister Roberts two years before by doing impressions of the star, Jimmy Cagney, for director John Ford." On page 330 Guralnick says that at the time Nick Adams was Dennis Hopper's roomate and when Presley's filming sessions were over the three of them hung out together.

In her 1985 book "Elvis and Gladys" Elaine Dundy wrote that when Presley arrived in Hollywood to make his first film in 1956 he was encouraged by studio executives to be seen with some of the "hip" new young actors there. However, Colonel Tom Parker became concerned Elvis' new Hollywood acquaintances might influence his rising superstar and even tell Presley what they were paying for manager/agent's fees (which was usually a fraction of what Parker was getting). Dundy wrote (on p. 250) that one of the actors Presley became friends with was Nick Adams who in the author's words was a:

...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 called Colonel 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 keep a check on Elvis' movements.

In 1959, Nick Adams starred in the television series The Rebel, playing the character Johnny Yuma, an ex-confederate, journal-keeping "trouble-shooter" in the old American west, which ran on ABC. Along with Bruce Geller and others Adams also wrote scripts for the show. After the series was cancelled in 1961 Adams went back to film work, along with a role in the short-lived television series Saints and Sinners.

He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the film Twilight of Honor (1963). 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.

By 1964 his career seems to have stalled. He had high hopes his performance in Young Dillinger (with Robert Conrad) would be critically acclaimed but the project had low production values and both critics and audiences rejected the film. Adams took bit parts in various low budget Japanese science-fiction movies (including a role as "astronaut Glenn" in 1965's Monster Zero) but these were not commercial or critical successes.

Marriage, divorce and death

His marriage to former child actor Carol Nugent, who had also appeared in an episode of The Rebel, produced two children (Allyson Lee Adams in 1960 and Jeb Stewart Adams in 1962, both of whom later pursued acting careers). An acrimonious and expensive divorce reportedly interfered with his ability to get lucrative acting parts after 1963.

Adams' career seemed to be on the verge of an upswing when on the night of Feb 7, 1968 his lawyer and friend 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 against a wall and wearing a shirt, blue jeans and boots, his eyes open in a blank stare, dead. He was 36. 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, with the notation accident; suicide; undetermined. His remains were buried in Berwick, Pennsylvania.

Rumors

Adams' death at a young age, his claims to a friendship with James Dean (a cultural icon who also died tragically young), his divorce and reported drug consumption have made his private life the subject of various tabloid reports and rumours even decades later.

Adams' death has been cited in articles and books on Hollywood's unsolved mysteries along with allegations that Adams was murdered, including claims that no trace of the liquid sedative paraldehyde (one of two drugs Adams died from) was ever found in his home, but a story in The Los Angeles Times reported that stoppered bottles with prescription labels were found in the medicine cabinet near the upstairs bedroom where Adams' body was discovered. Actor Robert Conrad (his best friend) has consistently maintained Adams' death was accidental.

Quotes

I dreamed all my life of being a movie star. Movies were my life. You had to have an escape when you were raised in a basement. I saw all the James Cagney, Humphery Bogart and John Garfield pictures. Odds against the world... that was my meat.

I will never make a picture abroad. (1963, two years before he started doing so)

Trivia

• Adams, who had a talent for voice impersonations, overdubbed some of James Dean's lines for the film Giant after Dean died during production.

• Following Dean's death, Adam's tried to capitalize on his friend's fame through various publicity stunts, including a claim he was being stalked by a crazed female Dean fan. 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." However, the offers for light comedy roles continued.

• The theme song for The Rebel was recorded by Johnny Cash, who made it a hit.

• Adams is reported to have consulted with John Wayne for tips on how to play his role in The Rebel.

• He is one of four actors typically named in connection with the Rebel Without a Cause Curse, a widely repeated urban legend.

Partial Filmography

• Mister Roberts (1955)
• Picnic (1955)
• Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
• Our Miss Brooks (1956)
• No Time for Sergeants (1958)
• Pillow Talk (1959)
• Twilight of Honor (1963)
• The Young Lovers (1964)
• Young Dillinger (1965)
• Monster Zero (1965)
• Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965)
• Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965)
• Mission Mars (1968)

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