Nick Adams (actor, born 1931)

Hollywood career

Adams' first paid acting job in Los Angeles was a stage role at the Las Palmas Theater in the comedy Mr. Big Shot, for which he was paid about $60 a week but had to pay $175 for Actors' Equity membership. He also earned $25 filling in for Pearl Bailey at the Mocambo nightclub. His first film role came in 1951 as an uncredited Western Union delivery boy in Somebody Loves Me (1952), which allowed him to join the Screen Actors Guild. In January 1952, he enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard during the Korean War, serving as an Electrician's Mate until 1955 and attaining the rank of Petty Officer Second Class.

After his ship docked in Long Beach in June 1954, he auditioned for John Ford in his Coast Guard uniform and appeared as Seaman Reber in the 1955 film Mister Roberts. Following his military service, he secured an agent and signed with Warner Bros. He played Chick in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Bomber the paper boy in Picnic (1955). During the late 1950s, he had supporting roles in television productions including an episode of Wanted Dead or Alive and films such as Our Miss Brooks, No Time for Sergeants, Teacher's Pet, and Pillow Talk.

Marriage and children

Adams married former child actress Carol Nugent in 1959, three weeks after meeting her. They had two children, Allyson Lee and Jeb Stuart. Jeb became a child actor and later a realtor; Allyson became a film director and later a costume designer and activist.

Marital problems reportedly interfered with his acting work after 1963. In early 1965, Adams announced on The Les Crane Show that he was leaving Nugent, though they publicly reconciled a week later. His daughter later said Adams may have had an affair with actress Kumi Mizuno while working in Japan, and that he had a tendency to become infatuated with his leading ladies.

By July 1965, the couple were legally separated; Nugent filed for divorce in September and was granted custody. They announced another reconciliation in January 1966, but in November 1966 Nugent resumed divorce proceedings and obtained a restraining order, alleging Adams had choked, struck, and threatened her. In January 1967, Adams was served with a defamation suit by Nugent's boyfriend, but was granted temporary custody of the children, which he soon relinquished.

Death

After finishing the film Los Asesinos in Mexico, Adams flew to Rome to co-star in Murder in the Third Dimension, but found the project had been dropped. On the night of February 7, 1968, his lawyer Ervin Roeder went to Adams' home in Beverly Hills after a missed dinner appointment and discovered him dead in his upstairs bedroom. Autopsy found enough paraldehyde, sedatives, and other drugs to cause instant unconsciousness; the death certificate listed paraldehyde and promazine intoxication as the cause, with the notation accident; suicide; undetermined. The American Medical Association later warned these two types of drugs should never be taken together.

Adams' death has been cited in articles about Hollywood's unsolved mysteries, with speculation by some acquaintances that he was murdered, possibly related to plans for a tell-all book. However, Adams' brother, a medical doctor, had prescribed the sedative, and the Los Angeles Times reported stoppered bottles with prescription labels were found in the medicine cabinet. His children offered speculation ranging from murder to accidental death, while actor Robert Conrad maintained the death was accidental.

Later published speculation

Decades after his death, Adams' friendships with James Dean and Elvis Presley, along with his drug use, led to assertions by some writers that he may have been gay or bisexual. Gossip columnist Rona Barrett wrote in her 1974 autobiography that Adams told a roomful of people he was not succeeding because Hollywood would not accept his wife, but she called that untrue and said he had become the companion of a group of salacious homosexuals.

Biographer Lawrence J. Quirk claimed gossip columnist Mike Connolly would make advances toward young actors including Adams and James Dean. American Film magazine stated in 1986 that Adams, who was gay, was the butt of anti-gay humor in Pillow Talk. Some writers later called Adams a Hollywood hustler or street hustler, and one journalist referred to him as a pool hustler who made money in pool halls as a teenager and during his early Hollywood years.

Did You Know?

• Adams was born Nicholas Aloysius Adamshock in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, to parents of Ukrainian ancestry.
• His son Jeb Adams was a child actor and later became a successful realtor in Ventura County, California.