Nick Adams, the actor, was a friend of mine and a friend of Elvis' who came up to the parties at Elvis'. He was a serious, hard working actor, who had been THE REBEL in a 1959 television serious. He used to say that other people bet on horses, but he bet on himself.
Nick had been a friend of James Dean's - good friends - and as you can imagine, he was fascinated with me and all the James Dean connotations. Nick had spent a lot of time with Jimmy in Los Angeles and after Jimmy died in that car crash, he wrote about him for publication. I talked to Nick the way I talked with Jimmy's friend Christine White. I wanted to know everything about James Dean.
Maybe what made Elvis, Nick, and me friends, was that we all came from hardworking families who had lived impoverished. We didn't have to be reminded that we were living a life in Hollywood that wasn't just a dream - and that was ever more true as Elvis's parties were attended by some of the most beautiful women! Nick was the most reserved of our bunch when it came to the women, but he sure appreciated them!
While Elvis and I were southerners, Nick had grown up the son of Eastern European immigrants in the North.
By 1962 Nick's determination was bringing him closer to his ambitions to win an Oscar. Not to get ahead of our story here, but if you click on the title above, you'll get to a good bio of Nick, which mentions his eventual death as a murder mystery. (At the time we all believed it to be an accidental overdose of prescription drugs.)
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