Alex Nicol

Alexander Livingston Nicol Jr. was born on January 20, 1916, in Ossining, New York, where his father worked as the arms keeper at Sing Sing prison. He trained at the Feagin School of Dramatic Art before joining Maurice Evans' theatrical company, which brought him to Broadway for the first time in 1939 with a walk-on role in Henry IV, Part 1. His stage career was interrupted by five years of military service, during which he served with the 101st Cavalry and reached the rank of Technical Sergeant.

Following his discharge, Nicol returned to the stage in a 1946 revival of Clifford Odets' pro-union drama Waiting for Lefty. He was subsequently admitted to The Actors Studio, where he worked with co-founder Elia Kazan, and appeared in the Studio's 1948 production of Sundown Beach, which Kazan staged. Nicol then appeared in Forward the Heart before joining the original cast of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific in 1949, playing one of the marines. After a few weeks in that production, he successfully auditioned to replace Ralph Meeker as Mannion in Mister Roberts, and was additionally made understudy to the show's star, Henry Fonda. Though Nicol was dressed and prepared to go on at least once when Fonda appeared to be absent — including on the night Fonda's wife died — Fonda never missed a performance during the entire run. While appearing in Mister Roberts, Nicol was spotted by Universal Studios director George Sherman, who was in New York filming The Sleeping City (1950) and cast him as a young doctor, launching his film career.

Nicol's Broadway work continued into the mid-1950s. In 1956, after concluding that his Hollywood career had stalled, he returned to the stage to replace Ben Gazzara in the lead role of Brick in Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Elia Kazan. When the Broadway run concluded, Nicol starred in the subsequent touring production. He also appeared on Broadway in Return Engagement, and in 1958 starred alongside Shelley Winters in the play Saturday Night Kid. His Broadway activity spanned from 1939 to 1955 in the database record, with the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof replacement occurring in 1956. When promoting his film work, Nicol had quietly adjusted his birth year from 1916 to 1919, later acknowledging he had done so because he was older than some of the other performers under contract at Universal.

His film career encompassed more than forty features. Early Universal pictures included Tomahawk (1951), in which he played a cavalry officer, and small roles in Target Unknown (1951) and Air Cadet (1951). He co-starred with Frank Sinatra and Shelley Winters in Meet Danny Wilson (1952) and appeared opposite Maureen O'Hara in The Redhead from Wyoming (1953). After going freelance, he worked with director Daniel Mann on About Mrs. Leslie (1953), starring Shirley Booth and Robert Ryan, and made three films in England, including Face the Music (1954) and Ken Hughes' The House Across the Lake (1954). Anthony Mann directed him in Strategic Air Command (1955) and then cast him in what became his most recognized screen role: the psychopathic son of a ranching patriarch, played by Donald Crisp, who menaces James Stewart in The Man from Laramie (1955).

Nicol also pursued directing, making his debut behind the camera with The Screaming Skull (1958), in which he also acted. Director Martin Ritt brought him to Italy for Five Branded Women (1959), and Nicol and his family remained in Europe for approximately two years, working on multiple productions with Italian and Yugoslavian financing. While there he also directed, produced, and co-starred in Then There Were Three, a World War II combat film also known as Three Came Back, alongside Frank Latimore. Back in the United States, his acting credits included the 1962 Twilight Zone episode "Young Man's Fancy," the westerns The Savage Guns (1962) and Gunfighters of Casa Grande (1964), Roger Corman's Bloody Mama (1969), and the religious horror film The Night God Screamed (1971), in which he was second-billed to Jeanne Crain, portraying her husband, a small-time evangelist whose death by crucifixion occurs at the film's midpoint. His final acting role was in the independently produced A*P*E (1976).

As a television director, Nicol helmed episodes of Daniel Boone (1966), Tarzan (1966), and The Wild Wild West (1967), among many other series. He retired in the late 1980s. Nicol died of natural causes on July 29, 2001, in Montecito, California, survived by his wife Jean and three children: Lisa Nicol, Alexander Nicol III, and Eric Nicol.