Nicholas Aloysius Adamshock, better known as Nick Adams was born on July 10, 1931 in Nanticoke,
Pennsylvania, to Catherine (Kutz) and Peter Adamshock, a coal miner. His parents were
both of Ukrainian descent. When Adams was five the family moved to Garfield,
New Jersey. He played sports at Henry Snyder High School. While
in high school Adams was asked to play for a minor league baseball team, but he turned
it down because of the low pay. He went on to attend St. Peter's College, in Jersey City.
After school Adams attempted to get acting work in New York without much success. He
later made his way to Los Angeles. Nick Adams had always dreamed of being a movie star often
doing impressions of James Cagney and Marlon Brando.
After three years of unsuccessfully trying to become a famous actor, Adams enlisted in
the United States Coast Guard in 1952. In 1954 while still in the Coast guard Adams
audition for director John Ford and got a small part in the 1955 film Mister Roberts.
After he completed his Coast guard service, Adams returned to Los Angeles and, was able
to get a powerful agent. Adams had a small role in Rebel Without a
Cause and the movie Picnic in (1955). He appeared in several successful television
shows, including Wanted Dead or Alive in (1958) starring Steve McQueen, and other
films such as Our Miss Brooks in (1956) , No Time for Sergeants and Teacher’s pet
(in 1958), as well as Pillow Talk in (1959). Adams was friendly with other young actors of
the times, such as, James Dean, Dennis Hopper and Sal Mineo. He briefly dated Natalie wood.
Nick Adams also became friends with Elvis Presley when Elvis came to Hollywood to film
Love me tender. Adams was always a self promoter, making sure he was always seen and photographed
with other celebrities. In 1959 Adams starred in the ABC series The
Rebel playing the character Johnny Yuma, an ex-Confederate, wandering the old west.
After two seasons and 76 half-hour episodes were filmed the series was cancelled in 1961.
Adams was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance
as an unlikable murder suspect in the film Twilight of Honor in 1963. He campaigned heavily for
the award, spending thousands on ads in trade magazines, but he lost to Melvyn Douglas.
In 1964 Adams career started to falter and decline. He began working in lower budget
foreign films, such as Frankenstein vs. Baragon and Invasion of Astro-Monster both filmed
in Japan. He also co-starred with Boris Karloff in Die,
Monster, Die! (1965), a horror–sci fi movie filmed in England.
In early 1967, Disney released Mosby's Marauders, a Civil War drama with Adams in
the role of a cruel Union army sergeant. Adams guest-starred in four TV series that year,
including an episode of his friend Robert Conrad's The Wild Wild West, an appearance
in Combat! and two episodes of Hondo. Throughout 1967 and early 1968 he also worked in three
low-budget films. One of these was Mission Mars in( 1968). His last film appearance
was in a little-seen western filmed in Mexico.
Adams married actress Carol Nugent in 1959. Nugent had appeared in an episode of The
Rebel. They had two children, Allyson and Jeb Stuart Adams. Marital problems reportedly
interfered with his ability to get lucrative acting parts after 1963.
Sadly, on the night of February 7, 1968, his lawyer and friend, ex-LAPD officer Ervin
Roeder, drove to the actor's house 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. He was only 36
years old. During the autopsy Dr. Thomas Noguchi found
enough sedatives and other drugs in the body "to cause instant unconsciousness." The death
certificate indicated that he died accidentally or intentionally from excessive prescription
drug interactions. There was speculation that he may of been
murdered after it had been rumored that he was writing a Hollywood Tell-all book.
Actor Robert Conrad, Adams' best friend, had consistently maintained that the death
was accidental. Nick Adams is buried at Saints Cyril and Methodius
Ukrainian Cemetery in Berwick, Pennsylvania.