Actor Nick Adams, known for starring in the 1960s television western “The Rebel,” died on February 7, 1968, at his Beverly Hills home. He was 36 years old. The actor was discovered slumped against a wall in his upstairs bedroom by his lawyer and friend, former LAPD officer Ervin Roeder, who broke through a window after Adams missed a dinner appointment. Born Nicholas Aloysius Adamshock on July 10, 1931, in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, to Ukrainian immigrant parents, Adams grew up in Garfield, New Jersey.
His father worked as a coal miner. As a teenager, Adams was offered a spot on a minor league baseball team but turned it down because of the low pay. After attending St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of becoming a movie star.
For three years, Adams struggled to break into acting. In 1952, he enlisted in the United States Coast Guard. While serving, he auditioned for director John Ford and landed a small role in the 1955 film “Mister Roberts. ” After completing his service, Adams returned to Los Angeles, where he secured a powerful agent and began landing roles in films such as “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Picnic,” both released in 1955.
Adams was part of a rising generation of young Hollywood actors and was close with James Dean, Dennis Hopper, and Sal Mineo. He also briefly dated Natalie Wood. When Elvis Presley arrived in Hollywood to film “Love Me Tender,” Adams became close friends with the singer and spent time with him at Graceland. When Presley held a homecoming concert in Tupelo, Mississippi, Adams opened the show with impressions of celebrities like Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney.
In 1959, Adams landed the starring role in the ABC series “The Rebel,” playing Johnny Yuma, a former Confederate soldier wandering the Old West. The show ran for two seasons and produced 76 half-hour episodes before it was cancelled in 1961. In 1963, Adams was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as a murder suspect in “Twilight of Honor. ” He campaigned aggressively for the award, spending thousands of dollars on advertisements in trade magazines.
He lost to Melvyn Douglas in 1964. Following the nomination, Adams’s career began to decline. He turned to lower-budget and foreign films, including Japanese productions like “Frankenstein Conquers the World” and “Invasion of Astro-Monster. ” He also co-starred with Boris Karloff in the 1965 film “Die, Monster, Die!
” In 1967, Disney released “Mosby’s Marauders,” a Civil War drama in which Adams played a cruel Union Army sergeant. That same year, Adams guest-starred in four television series, including an episode of his friend Robert Conrad’s show “The Wild Wild West,” an appearance on “Combat! ” and two episodes of “Hondo. ” He continued working into 1968 on low-budget films, with his final appearance in a small Western shot in Mexico.
Adams married actress Carol Nugent in 1959. The couple had two children, Allison and Jeb Stuart Adams. Their marital problems reportedly interfered with Adams’s ability to land lucrative acting roles after 1963. During the autopsy, Los Angeles County coroner Dr.
Thomas Noguchi found enough sedatives and other drugs in Adams’s body to cause instant unconsciousness. The death certificate concluded that he died accidentally or intentionally from excessive prescription drug interactions. Speculation arose that Adams may have been murdered after rumors spread that he was writing a tell-all book about Hollywood. Robert Conrad, Adams’s best friend, consistently maintained that the death was accidental.
Nick Adams was buried at Saints Cyril and Methodius Ukrainian Cemetery in Berwick, Pennsylvania.
