AllMovie

A graduate of St. Peter's College, Nick Adams made his screen-acting bow at age 20 with a bit in Somebody Loves Me (1952). Signed at Warner Bros. in 1955, Adams appeared with James Dean in Rebel without a Cause. An inveterate offscreen prankster, Adams enjoyed making Dean laugh by doing on-target impersonations of his co-stars; this talent came in handy when Adams was called upon to dub in several of James Dean's lines in Giant after Dean's fatal car accident. The best of Adams' 1950s movie assignments included the role of Andy Griffith's nerdish air force buddy in No Time for Sergeants (1957) and the would-be seducer of Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959). In 1959, Adams was cast as ex-Confederate soldier Johnny Yuma on the popular TV western The Rebel; less successful was his 1962 starring series Saints and Sinners. After an Oscar nomination for his performance as a surly murder suspect in Twilight of Honor (1963), Adams' career went into an eclipse. Nick Adams died in 1968, the result of an overdose of prescription drugs.