Alex Nicol

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For the Wisconsin politician, see Alex L. Nicol.

Alex Nicol
Ossining, New York, U.S.
DiedJuly 29, 2001(2001-07-29) (aged 85)
Montecito, California
, U.S.
Occupation(s)Actor, film and television director
Years active1950–1976
SpouseJean Fleming (1948-his death) (3 children)

Alexander Livingston Nicol Jr. (January 20, 1916 – July 29, 2001) was an American actor and film director. Nicol appeared in many Westerns including The Man from Laramie (1955). He appeared in more than forty feature films as well as directing many television shows including The Wild Wild West (1967), Tarzan (1966), and Daniel Boone (1966). He also played many roles on Broadway.

Biography

Nicol was born in Ossining, New York, in 1916. When his movie career started thirty-four years later he adjusted the year to 1919. "I was a little older than some of the other people under contract so I thought, 'Well, I'll cure that right now'," he later confessed. His father was the arms keeper at Sing Sing. He studied at the Feagin School of Dramatic Art before joining Maurice Evans' theatrical company, with whom he made his Broadway debut with a walk-on in Henry IV, Part 1 (1939).[1] Later a member of The Actors Studio,[2] Nicol would play Brick in Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, under the direction of Studio co-founder Elia Kazan.

However, it was as a

Technical Sergeant
.

Upon

marines, but after a few weeks in the show he successfully auditioned to replace Ralph Meeker as Mannion in Mister Roberts, and was also made understudy to the play's star Henry Fonda
.

But I never made it! He never missed a performance! And Henry's wife at the time died during the run of Mr. Roberts, but he still didn't miss the performance the night she died. He didn't show up, and the stage manager finally said to me, 'Okay, Alex, get dressed'. So I had the outfit on, and then the stage manager looked at his watch and said, 'All right, two more minutes, and we go up'. And we were one minute away from curtain time, and Fonda walked in, in costume, and he just walked right out, hit his mark, and he played the performance as though nothing had happened.[3]

While acting in Mister Roberts, Nicol was seen by the

Universal Studios director George Sherman, who was in New York City to film The Sleeping City (1950). He cast Nicol as a young doctor. Nicol was given a contract by Universal, and Sherman also directed his second film, Tomahawk (1951), in which he played a cavalry officer with a hatred of Indians
.

Small roles as a

Air Cadet (1951) preceded Nicol's first major part, co-starring with Frank Sinatra and Shelley Winters in the musical drama Meet Danny Wilson (1952). In his next film he was an antagonist again, causing Loretta Young to be wrongly sent to prison in Because of You (1952). He played a troublesome sergeant in Red Ball Express (1952), directed by Budd Boetticher
.

Nicol's first lead role was opposite Maureen O'Hara in The Redhead from Wyoming (1953) directed by Lee Sholem.

"Roll 'Em Sholem" they used to call him. All he would say before every scene was "Roll 'Em!" And then when you got to the end of the scene he'd say "Cut!" and then he'd look at the script clerk and say, "Did they say all the words?", and if so that was it. When the picture was over I went to the front office at Universal and asked to be released from my contract. They thought I was crazy. But I thought, "If this is my big break, then I'm not going very far."

Going

freelance, Nicol was directed by Daniel Mann in About Mrs. Leslie (1953) starring Shirley Booth and Robert Ryan. Nicol returned to Universal (at a much larger salary than he had been getting as a contract player) to appear in two George Sherman films, The Lone Hand (1953) and Dawn at Socorro (1954). Nicol then made three films in England, including the lead role in Face the Music (1954), and Ken Hughes' The House Across the Lake
(1954).

It was a great script, and Sidney James, a wonderful actor, was in it, along with Hillary Brooke. Eventually I got back to the United States and I was glad to come back. Those British pictures kept me working, but they were really fast.

rancher (Donald Crisp) who menaced Jimmy Stewart
in The Man from Laramie (1955).

After a supporting role in Jacques Tourneur's Great Day in the Morning (1956) Nicol believed his Hollywood career was not progressing. In 1956 he returned to Broadway to replace Ben Gazzara in the lead role of Brick, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. When the Broadway run ended Nicol starred in the tour.

Poster for Nicol's directorial debut, The Screaming Skull

Nicol starred with Shelley Winters in the play

Saturday Night Kid (1958). He then returned to Hollywood where he made his first film as a director, The Screaming Skull
(1958), in which he also acted.

I wasn't doing the kind of films as an actor that I wanted to do, so I thought, "Well, I'll try directing." We shot the picture in six weeks and it did very well, so I was happy with that.

Nicol traveled to Italy when director Martin Ritt gave him a role in Five Branded Women (1959). While there he was offered parts in other movies. He and his family remained in Europe for two years.

We lived in Rome; God, it was beautiful. We did a lot of films very quickly, with backing from Italian and Yugoslavian finance sources. It was one of the happiest times of my life.

One of his last assignments in Italy was another directorial credit,

Three Came Back, a World War II combat and spy actioner, which he also produced and was one of the co-stars, along with Frank Latimore. Returning to the United States in 1961, he played Paul Anka's father in the thriller Look in Any Window (1961), with subsequent acting roles including The Twilight Zone episode "Young Man's Fancy" in 1962; two westerns, The Savage Guns (1962) and Gunfighters of Casa Grande (1964); Brandy (1964), Roger Corman's Bloody Mama (1969), based on the life of Ma Barker, and the independently mede religious horror The Night God Screamed. Second-billed to star Jeanne Crain, he portrayed her husband, a small-time evangelist whose death at film's midpoint occurs through crucifixion by religious fanatics led by a charismatic guru styled upon Charles Manson
, whose 1969 cult murders were still fresh in the public's mind during the film's production in 1971.

Nicol later worked as a director in television and did episodes of Daniel Boone, Wild Wild West, and many episodes for Tarzan starring

A*P*E
(1976), an independent movie made by a friend of the actor. He retired in the late 1980s and died of natural causes in Montecito, California in 2001.

Alex Nicol was survived by his wife, Jean and his three children, Lisa Nicol, Alexander Nicol III, and Eric Nicol.[4][5]

Selected filmography

References

  1. ISBN 978-0-8093-2417-0
    .
  2. ISBN 0-02-542650-8
    .
  3. ISBN 978-0-8093-2407-1
    .
  4. ^ "Alex Nicol: Obituary". The Independent on Sunday. August 20, 2001. Archived from the original on June 14, 2011. Retrieved November 23, 2008.
  5. ^ Alex Nicol at AllMovie

External links

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