While at San Francisco Polytechnic High School,[1] he joined a science fiction fan club, where he met Forrest J Ackerman.
He drifted through a series of short-lived jobs, and ended up running four revival movie theaters in Los Angeles with Joseph Moritz in 1944.
Nicholson and Arkoff became friends and eventually decided to form American Releasing Corporation, a film distribution company, in 1954, in association with Moritz.
His movie sense, combined with Arkoff's business savvy, led to AIP's long string of successful films aimed squarely at teenaged audiences.
The films were mostly completed on low budgets, with shooting done in two or three weeks (and sometimes only a few days) on rented stages at the Chaplin Studio, and nearly all of them turned profits.
AIP continued for several more years before Arkoff, having lost interest in the movie business, allowed himself to be bought out by Filmways for $4.3 million.