In an AllMovie synopsis for Adams's last film, 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.

[3] Adamshock's earliest reported paid acting job in Los Angeles under the name "Nick Adams" was a stage role at the Las Palmas Theater in a comedy called Mr. Big Shot.

"[citation needed] 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 Jack Palance in The Silver Tassie in New York.

[5] About two 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.

[6] Adams spent three years in the 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 (Hopper), and the others would go out together — almost like the gang we portrayed — but Jimmy and Corey Allen ... were not a part of that.

[12] 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.

[24] In 1959, Adams starred in the ABC 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.

Guest stars appearing on the series during its two-year run included Dan Blocker, Johnny Cash, Leonard Nimoy, Tex Ritter, and Robert Vaughn.

Adams went back to TV and film work, along with a role in the short-lived but critically successful television series Saints and Sinners.

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[citation needed], and he lost to Melvyn Douglas.

In 1965, after publicly insisting he would never work in films produced outside the U.S., Adams began accepting parts in Japanese science fiction monster movies (kaiju eiga).

Adams next starred in the sixth Godzilla film, Invasion of Astro-Monster (known in the U.S. as Monster Zero), in which he played Astronaut Glenn, journeying to the newly discovered Planet X.

The most interesting aspect of this film, is that Adams actually performed his own fights scenes using Kenpo, a style he had been learning under Senior Grand Master Ed Parker in the States.

In early 1967, Disney released Mosby's Marauders, a Civil War drama told from a southern perspective with Adams in the role of a cruel Union army sergeant.

While promoting Young Dillinger during a television appearance on The Les Crane Show in early 1965, Adams "shocked" the viewing audience with an announcement that he was leaving his wife, seemingly without telling her first.

However, in November 1966, Nugent 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.

[citation needed] After finishing Los Asesinos (1968), produced by Luis Enrique Vergara and filmed in Mexico, Adams bought a plane ticket with his own money and flew to Rome, Italy, to co-star with Aldo Ray in a science fiction/horror movie called Murder in the Third Dimension, but when he got there, he 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.

[33] On the night of February 7, 1968, his lawyer and friend, ex-LAPD officer Ervin Roeder, drove to the actor's house at 2126 El Roble Lane in Beverly Hills to check on him after a missed dinner appointment.

The death of Nick Adams has been cited in articles and books about Hollywood's unsolved mysteries along with speculation by a few of his acquaintances that he was murdered (according to author David Kulczyk, Adams was apparently planning to write a tell-all book revealing many sexual secrets of Hollywood names) 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.

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's body was discovered.

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 judgment and caused him to blame Carol.

[39] It is uncertain whether James Dean and Adams met before his service in the United States Coast Guard (1952–1955) and subsequent role in Rebel Without a Cause (1955).

"[40] Journalist, screenwriter and author of books about Hollywood, John Gregory Dunne wrote that "James Dean was bisexual, as were Nick Adams and Sal Mineo.

"[41] According to Eric Braun, "Elvis was attracted by Adams' outgoing personality and the young actors caused quite a stir, cruising round Los Angeles with Natalie Wood, Russ Tamblyn and others on their Hondas.

"[45] 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.

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.

"[48] Moreover, there are neither court documents (such as from the long and drawn-out divorce and child custody proceedings between him and his wife), nor personal letters from Adams, nor directly attributable statements by any alleged male lovers, to support the assertions.