John Gilbert
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born John Cecil Pringle
July 10, 1895(1895-07-10)
Logan, Utah
Died January 9, 1936 (aged 40)
Hollywood, California
Other name(s) Jack Gilbert
Spouse(s) Olivia Burwell
Leatrice Joy
Ina Claire
Virginia Bruce
John Gilbert (July 10, 1895 - January 9, 1936) was an actor and major star of the silent film era.
Known as "the great lover," he rivaled even the great Rudolph Valentino as a box office draw. Though he was often cited as one of the high profile examples of an actor who was unsuccessful in making the transition to talkies, his decline as a star in fact had as much to do with studio politics and money as did the sound of his screen voice.
Life and career
Born John Cecil Pringle in Logan, Utah to stock company actor parents, he struggled through a childhood of abuse and neglect before coming to Hollywood as a teenager. He first found work as an extra with the Thomas Ince Studios, and soon became a favorite of Maurice Tourneur, who also hired him to write and direct several pictures. He quickly rose through the ranks, building his reputation as an actor in such films as Heart o' the Hills opposite Mary Pickford. In 1921, Gilbert signed a three year contract with Fox Film Corporation, where he was cast as a romantic leading man.
In 1924, he moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he became a full-fledged star with such high-profile films as His Hour directed by King Vidor and written by Elinor Glyn; He Who Gets Slapped (1924), co-starring Lon Chaney, Sr. and Norma Shearer, and directed by Victor Sjöström; and The Merry Widow (1925) directed by Erich von Stroheim and co-starring Mae Murray. In 1925, Gilbert was once again directed by Vidor in the war epic The Big Parade, which became the second highest grossing silent film in cinema history. His performance in this film made him a major star. The following year, Vidor reunited Gilbert with two of his co-stars from that picture, Renée Adorée and Karl Dane, for the film La Bohème which also starred Lillian Gish.
Gilbert married the highly successful film actress Leatrice Joy in 1922. The union produced a daughter, Leatrice Gilbert Fountain, but the tempestuous marriage only lasted two years. The couple divorced in 1924, with Joy charging that Gilbert was a compulsive philanderer.
In 1926, Gilbert made Flesh and the Devil, his first film with Greta Garbo. They soon began a very public relationship, much to the delight of their fans. Gilbert planned to marry her, but Garbo changed her mind and never showed up for the ceremony. Despite their rocky off-screen relationship, they continued to generate box-office revenue for the studio, and MGM paired them in two more silents Love (1927), a modern adaptation of Anna Karenina, and A Woman of Affairs (1928). The former film was slyly advertised by MGM as "Garbo and Gilbert in Love."
Career Decline
Throughout his time at MGM, Gilbert frequently clashed with studio head Louis B. Mayer over creative, social and financial matters. One crucial event occurred on September 8, 1926. While guests were waiting for Garbo to show up for a proposed double wedding ceremony -- Garbo and Gilbert with the director King Vidor and his fiancee, actress Eleanor Boardman -- Mayer allegedly made a crude remark about Garbo to the distraught Gilbert that caused him to fly into a rage and he physically attacked the mogul. Rumor had it that after that event, Gilbert's career began its downward slide. This story has been disputed by some historians, despite its having been reported over a period of twenty years by one major eyewitness, the other bride, Eleanor Boardman who described Mayer's final look at Gilbert as "terrifying". Gilbert did have a powerful supporter in production head Irving Thalberg. The two were old friends and Thalberg made efforts to reinvigorate Gilbert's career, but Thalberg's failing health probably limited such efforts.
With the coming of sound, John Gilbert first spoke in the film His Glorious Night (1929), in which his voice allegedly recorded in a high-pitched tone that made audiences giggle. He spoke again in the all-talking musical Hollywood Revue of 1929, appearing in a Romeo and Juliet Technicolor sequence along with Norma Shearer in which they first played the part straight and then modernized it. Reviewers for the film did not note any problems with Gilbert's voice at this time and, in fact, some praised it. Gilbert's career faltered mainly due to the quality of the projects he was given -- though it is certainly true that his light tenor voice and precise stage diction did not match his dashing screen persona, or what his many fans had imagined him to sound like. A recent documentary, The Dawn of Sound: How the Movies Learned to Talk (2007), convincingly demonstrates that with improved recording equipment Gilbert's voice was suitably deep. In fact, noted film historian Leonard Maltin in a rare flash of almost-anger expresses outrage that in the "twenty-first century" people still believe the "rumor" that Gilbert's voice was deficient, and calls for killing that story once and for all.
According to film reviews of the day, audiences actually laughed at Gilbert's overly ardent love-making in His Glorious Night . Like a number of other romance-oriented early talkies, the dialogue was unintentionally ludicrous and the film played more like a comedy gone bad than a romantic drama. In one scene, Gilbert keeps kissing his leading lady (Catherine Dale Owen) while saying over and over again "I love you". This scene was famously later parodied in the MGM musical Singin' in the Rain (1952) where a preview of the fictional The Dueling Cavalier flops disastrously.
Although Gilbert was given better roles in his later films, his career never recovered from this disaster. The film was released throughout the country to laughing audiences and his image as a great lover was tarnished. His Glorious Night has never been shown on television by Turner Entertainment because MGM sold the rights to Paramount for a remake, and Universal -- which currently owns the rights to all pre-1948 Paramount films -- has not done anything with it.
In 1932 MGM made the film Downstairs from Gilbert's original story, in which Gilbert played against type as a scheming, blackmailing chauffeur. The film was well received by critics, but did nothing to restore Gilbert's popularity. Shortly after making the film he married co-star Virginia Bruce; the couple divorced in 1934.
Gilbert starred opposite Garbo for the last time in Queen Christina (1933) directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Garbo was top-billed and Gilbert's name beneath the title. Although his scenes with Garbo are excellent the picture failed to revive his career, with his next film, The Captain Hates the Sea, being his last.
By that point, alcoholism had severely damaged his health, and he died of a heart attack without ever regaining his former reputation. Towards the end of his life, Gilbert became involved with Marlene Dietrich, and at the time of his death he was slated to star opposite her in the film Desire.
On his passing in 1936, John Gilbert was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
He was married four times (including once to film and stage actress Ina Claire), and had two daughters. His daughter Leatrice Gilbert Fountain (from his marriage to silent film actress Leatrice Joy), wrote an acclaimed biography of her father's life published in 1985, and continues as a source of information on his life and career.
John Gilbert has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1755 Vine Street and in 1994, he was honored with his image on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.
David Brinkley
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David McClure Brinkley (July 10, 1920 - June 11, 2003) was a popular American television newscaster for NBC and later ABC in an unprecedented broadcast career from 1956-1997.
From 1956 through 1970, he co-anchored NBC's top rated nightly news program, The Huntley-Brinkley Report with Chet Huntley. In 1970, the broadcast was renamed NBC Nightly News, with Brinkley, John Chancellor, and Frank McGee co-anchoring. Later, in the 1980s and 1990s, Brinkley was host of the popular Sunday This Week with David Brinkley program, as well as a top commentator on election night coverage for ABC News.
Biography
Brinkley was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he began writing for a local newspaper, the Wilmington Morning Star, while still attending New Hanover High School. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Emory University, and Vanderbilt University, before entering service in the United States Army in 1941. Following his 1943 discharge, he moved to Washington, D.C., looking for a radio job at CBS News. Instead, he took a job at NBC News and became its first White House correspondent.
Career
The year 1952 had seen the birth of an electronic-journalism star when Walter Cronkite anchored CBS's coverage of the political conventions. In 1956, NBC News executives were looking for their own breakout newsman star. In NBC's efforts to determine which one of Brinkley and Huntley would make the better anchor for NBC's political-convention coverage, an impasse arose: half of the NBC news executives wanted Chet Huntley as solo anchor; the other half wanted Brinkley. Then came the suggestion to have two anchors instead of one. That insight led to Brinkley's pairing with Huntley to cover the Democratic and Republican national conventions.
The match worked so well that the two took over NBC's flagship nightly newscast, with Huntley in New York City and Brinkley in Washington, D.C., for the newly christened Huntley-Brinkley Report. Brinkley's dry wit offset the serious tone set by Huntley; and the program proved popular with audiences turned off by the incessantly serious tone of CBS's news broadcasts of that era. The Huntley-Brinkley Report was America's most popular television newscast until it was overtaken, at the end of the 1960s, by the CBS Evening News, anchored by Walter Cronkite.
David Brinkley covering the launch of the Apollo 11 rocket for NBC News on the morning of July 16, 1969.When Huntley retired from the anchor chair in 1970, the show was renamed NBC Nightly News, and Brinkley co-anchored the broadcast with John Chancellor and McGee. In 1971, Brinkley became the program's commentator, delivering three-minute perspectives several times a week under the title David Brinkley's Journal. By 1976, though, NBC decided to revive the dual-anchor format, and Brinkley once again anchored the Washington desk for the network, until October 1979. However, the early years of Nightly News never achieved the popularity Huntley-Brinkley Report had enjoyed. For its part, NBC attempted to launch several newsmagazine shows during the 1970s with Brinkley as anchor; none of them succeeded. An unhappy Brinkley left NBC in 1981; NBC Magazine was his last show for that network.
Almost immediately after leaving NBC, Brinkley was offered a job at ABC. ABC News President Roone Arledge was anxious to replace ABC's Sunday morning news program, Issues and Answers, which had always lagged far behind CBS's Face the Nation and NBC's Meet the Press. Brinkley was tapped for the job, and in 1981 began hosting This Week with David Brinkley. This Week revolutionized the Sunday morning news program format, featuring not only several correspondents interviewing guest newsmakers, but also following up with an opinionated roundtable of discussion. The format proved highly successful and was soon imitated by Brinkley's NBC and CBS rivals, as well as new programs which later came into existence.
Retirement
Days before his announced retirement from regular news coverage, Brinkley made a rare on-air mistake on election night 1996, at a moment when he thought they were on commercial break. One of his colleagues asked him what he thought of Bill Clinton's re-election. His answer was, "The next four years will be filled with pretty words, and pretty music, and a lot of goddamn nonsense!" One of his team pointed out that they were still on the air. Brinkley said, "Really? Well, I'm leaving anyway!" Brinkley worked this mistake into a chance for an apology as part of a one-on-one interview with Clinton that followed a week or so later.
Brinkley stepped down from hosting This Week on November 10, 1996, but continued to provide small commentary pieces for the show until 1997. He then fully retired from television. He had been an electronic journalist for over fifty years and had been anchor or host of a daily or weekly national television program for just over forty years, longer than anyone else. His career lasted from the beginning of broadcast news to the information age.
During his career, he won ten Emmy Awards and three George Foster Peabody Awards. In 1992, President George H. W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. Bush called him "the elder statesman of broadcast journalism"; but Brinkley was much more humble. In an interview in 1992, he said "Most of my life, I've simply been a reporter covering things, and writing and talking about it".
Brinkley was the father of the noted historian and Columbia University Provost, Alan Brinkley.
Brinkley died at the age of 82 at his home in Houston, Texas, from complications after a fall. His body is interred at Oakdale Cemetery, Wilmington, North Carolina.
Nick Adams
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born Nicholas Aloysius Adamshock
July 10, 1931(1931-07-10)
Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, United States
Died February 7, 1968 (aged 36)
Beverly Hills, California, United States
Spouse(s) Carol Nugent (2 children)
Awards won
Academy Awards
Nominated
1964 Twilight of Honor
Nick Adams (July 10, 1931 - February 7, 1968) 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' untimely 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 a synopsis for Adams' last film in the US All Movie Guide 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."[1]
Early life
Adams was born Nicholas Aloysius Adamshock in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania to Peter Adamshock and Catherine Kutz.[2] His father was a Ukrainian-born anthracite coal miner.[3] In 1958 he told colummnist 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."[cite this quote]
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 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.
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 Giants, a local minor league team. Some sources recount Adams made money as a teenager by hustling pool 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 Palance (who was understudying for Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire). When Palance, whose father was also a 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.[4]
Hollywood career
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 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.
Supporting actor
Two and a half years later, in June 1954 his ship docked in Long Beach harbor 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.[5]
Adams had a small role (as Chick) in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) which starred James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, reportedly gaining a reputation as both a prankster and a scene-stealer on the set. He is one of four actors typically named in connection with the Rebel Without a Cause Curse, a widely repeated (and discredited) urban legend.
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 and films such as Our Miss Brooks (1956), No Time for Sergeants (1958) and Pillow Talk (1959).
James Dean
Adams may have first met James Dean in December 1950 while jitterbugging for a soft drink commercial filmed at Griffith Park.[6] 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."[7] 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."[8] 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."[9] 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.[10][11][12] 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 Presley began in 1956 on the set of Presley's film Love Me Tender during the second day of shooting.[13] 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:
...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.[14]
Dundy also wrote, "Of all Elvis' new friends, Nick Adams, by background and temperament the most insecure, was also his closest."[15] 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."[16][17][18] 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.[19]
Almost forty years later, writer Peter Guaralnick wrote 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."[20] Presley's girlfriend June Juanico complained the singer was always talking about his friend Adams and James Dean.[21] As with Dean, Adams capitalized on his association with Presley, publishing an account of their friendship in May 1957.[22] In August 1958 after Elvis' mother Gladys died, Parker wrote in a letter, "Nicky Admas [sic] came out to be with Elvis last Week wich [sic] was so very kind of him to be there with his friend."[23]
The Rebel
In 1959 Adams starred in the ABC 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.[24] 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.[25] 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.
Twilight of Honor
Adams was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor 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.
Toho Studios
In 1964 Adams had a leading role 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."[26] 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.
In 1965, after publicly insisting he would never work in films produced outside the US, Adams began accepting parts in Japanese SciFi-monster movies. He landed major roles in two science fiction epics from Toho Studios in Chiyoda, Tokyo. His first Japanese movie was the sixth Godzilla film, Invasion of Astro-Monster (known in the U.S. at the time as Monster Zero), in which he played Astronaut Glenn, journeying to the newly discovered Planet X. In Frankenstein Conquers the World Adams played the role of Dr. Bowen. 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.[27] 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-SciFi movie filmed in England.
1967: TV episodes and low budget films
Nick Adams wears an off-the-shelf motorcycle helmet in Mission Mars (1968) shortly before his death.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..."[28] 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.
Marriage and children
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".[29]
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."[30]
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. 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
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 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.[31] 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 against a wall and wearing a shirt, blue jeans and boots, his eyes open in a blank stare, dead. He was 36 years old.
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).[32] 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.
Later speculation about Adams's sexuality
Decades later, Adams' highly publicized life and death at a young age and his friendships with cultural icons such as James Dean 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 judgement and caused him to blame Carol.[33] 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."[34]
Some writers later called Adams a "Hollywood hustler" or a "street hustler"[35] 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 .[36]
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 Hadleigh 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." Hollywood expert John Gregory Dunne confirms that "James Dean was bisexual, as were Nick Adams and Sal Mineo."[37] 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." In 2005 Byron Raphael and Presley biographer Alanna Nash claim 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."[38] Earl Greenwood, author and biographer David Bret, and Adams' former fan mail secretary Bill Dakota made similar statements.[39] However, in 2006, Kathleen Tracy noted, "It has since been speculated in Hollywood gossip that Presley and Adams may have shared some sort of intimate encounter. But there's no definitive evidence one way or another."[40]
Studio-arranged dates
Adams regularly dated actresses with whom he made movies. During the mid-1950s photographs of him with actress Natalie Wood 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."[41] 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."[42] 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.' "[43]
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!" [44]
Lack of confirmation
Because of morality clauses in studio contracts along with practical marketing concerns, most gay and lesbian 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 bisexual."[45] 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
" 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, Humphrey Bogart and John Garfield
pictures. Odds against the world... that was my meat. "
" I will never make a picture abroad. "
(1963, two years before Adams went to Japan and co-starred in Invasion of Astro-Monster, the sixth Godzilla movie produced by Toho Studios.)[46]
Sue Lyon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born Suellyn Lyon
July 10, 1946 (1946-07-10) (age 62)
Davenport, Iowa
Years active 1960 - 1980
Spouse(s) Hampton Fancher (1963-1965)
Roland Harrison (1971-1972)
Cotton Adamson (1973-1974)
Edward Weathers (1983-1984)
Richard Rudman (1985-2002)
Awards won
Golden Globe Awards
Most Promising Newcomer - Female
1963 Lolita
Sue Lyon (born July 10, 1946 in Davenport, Iowa) is a former Golden Globe winning American actress.
Film career
Lolita
Sue Lyon was fourteen years old when she was cast in the role of Dolores Haze, the sexually charged adolescent and the object of an older man's obsessions in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film, Lolita. She was chosen for the role partly because her curvy figure suggested an older adolescent. Based on the Vladimir Nabokov novel of the same name, Kubrick's Lolita, though a toned-down version of the book (Lolita is twelve in the novel), [1] was nonetheless one of the most controversial films of its day. Only fifteen when the film premiered, Lyon became an instant celebrity and won a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer - Female. When released, Lolita was Rated BBFC X by the British Board of Film Censors, meaning no one under sixteen years of age was permitted in theaters.[2]
Later films
At seventeen in 1963, Lyon was again cast as a seductive teen in John Huston's The Night of the Iguana (1964), competing for the affections of Richard Burton's defrocked alcoholic preacher against the likes of Deborah Kerr and Ava Gardner. Again, controversy surrounded her because of a provocative scene in the film in which Lyon is shown emerging from the water. In 1965, she played a mission worker in China in director John Ford's last feature film, 7 Women. Lyon played the female lead in the 1967 comedy The Flim-Flam Man and had a supporting role in 1967's Tony Rome which starred Frank Sinatra. She played the wife of daredevil Evel Knievel in the 1971 film Evel Knievel. [3]
Sue Lyon's stardom deteriorated rapidly and by the 1970s she was relegated to mainly secondary roles but continued to work in film and television until 1980.
Personal life
Divorced in 1965 after a brief marriage to Hampton Fancher, Lyon was married in 1970 to Roland Harrison, an African-American photographer. Racism caused the couple problems and they left the United States for a time to live in Spain. They had one child, but the marriage soon ended in divorce and she returned to the United States. After her return to the United States, Lyon met, married, and divorced her third husband, Gary ("Cotton") Adamson while he was incarcerated in the Colorado state penitentiary, convicted of second degree murder. [4] During her marriage to Adamson, Lyon campaigned for prison reform, specifically for prisoners' conjugal rights: "God said to procreate. The prison system is going against the Bible," she said. [5]
Lyon was married to radio engineer Richard Rudman from 1985 until their divorce in 2002.[6] She was diagnosed as a manic-depressive and was prescribed lithium. She later said she had struggled on and off with mental issues since she was a teenager.[7]
In recent years, Lyon has been bitter about Lolita, the film that made her a star at such a tender age. In 1998, speaking with the Reuters news service regarding Adrian Lyne's remake of the film, Lyon said, "I am appalled they should revive the film that caused my destruction as a person." [8]
A businessman enters a tavern, sits down at the bar, and orders a double martini on the rocks. After he finishes the drink, he peeks inside his shirt pocket, then orders the bartender to prepare another double martini. After he finishes that it, he again peeks inside his shirt pocket and orders the bartender to bring another double martini. The bartender says, "Look, buddy, I'll bring ya' martinis all night long - but you gotta tell me why you look inside your shirt pocket before you order a refill." The customer replies, "I'm peeking at a photo of my wife. When she starts to look good, I know it's time to go home."
John Gilbert was a handsome guy. It's too bad his career went into a decline.
And the Celeste Aida aria was just exquisite, Letty. And the quality of the audio was so good. I think "Joe Green" is going places.
Caruso and Pavarotti had completely different types of tenor voices, and both are such a pleasure to listen to.
Perhaps because I was thinking about The Weavers this morning, with Tzena, Tzena, Tzena, I also remembered this delightful ditty by the Kingston Trio. I think it's perfect as a salute to David Brinkley because the opening lines and the refrain sound like a news broadcast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8LsJKaYwkg&feature=related
firefly, that was hilarious. Love it. I tried my best to find a YouTube version of the song Dearie without much success. I rewrote that when I was in high school to read:
Dearie, do you remember when we stayed up all night to get,
Goodnight David, goodnight Chet. Had such fun doing those kinds of things.
Well, your trio's mention of Africa reminded me of this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmueY8N3Jrs
Ok, folks, firefly will have me up all night trying to recall that lovely melody of Proust's Search for Lost Time ala instrumental. Absolutely captivating, dear, and the tribute to the famous Hollywood women of an era is perfect.
Well, the best that I can so at the moment is a ballet inspired by Proust's Search for Lost time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf7iv9TImt4
Will return later, firefly, to check on your Sue, Lolita, and Frank.
Thank you so much for the ballet clip, Letty! What a treat to unexpectedly get to see some gorgeous dancing and beautiful choreography. I really enjoyed that, and the music as well.
And, yitwail, I couldn't agree more--it doesn't get much better than that.
Goodnight, dear firefly, and you are amazing with your knowledge of all the music--pop, jazz, opera, folk. Would you look at all the people who have done "The Way you Look Tonight?" That was my dad's favorite song.
Thank you, also, for Lolita's theme that covered Sue's film role. Nancy was great with her Tony Rome song, too.
Well, there's the big island man back in the company of jazz man Duke. Great, M.D.
Believe it or not, folks, this is going to be my goodnight song. I'll be awake anyway trying to remember Marcel Proust's instrumental version of the time thing.
O.K. Fats, go for it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shw6gL6tz_c
Nite you jumpin' folks
From Letty with love
