A regular "good guy" and "bad guy" presence in sagebrush sagas and two-fisted film action during the early 1950s, brawny, blond-haired Alexander Livingston Nicol Jr. was born in 1916 in Ossining, New York, the son of a prison warden there at Sing Sing, and his wife, the matron of a detention center. Alex developed an early interest in acting and ...
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." AN -- after filming the movie Red Ball Express (1952) in 1952.
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Fact
1
Was part of the original cast of Rodgers and Hammerstein's hit Broadway musical "South Pacific" when it debuted in April of 1949. In the ensemble playing one of the marines, a short time later he successfully auditioned to replace Ralph Meeker as the sailor Mannion in the hit comedy play "Mister Roberts" and left the musical. Also the understudy to the play's star Henry Fonda, Alex never got to go on in the title role as Fonda never missed a performance.
2
Alex was born in 1916, but took off three years when he began his contract at Universal in 1950 because he was starting out there older than some of the other people under contract. Those reports that list his year of birth as 1919 are incorrect.
3
Broke his original contract with Universal in 1952 after only a couple of years because he felt no growth and freelanced for a time. Ironically, he returned frequently to film at Universal and at a much larger fee than he was getting when a contract player there.
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Gave a particular striking performance in The Man from Laramie (1955) in which he played a heavyweight "mama's boy." In it he hogtied and dragged James Stewart through a fire, burned his covered wagons, shot his mules and shot him point blank in the hand.
5
Children: sons Alexander L. Nicol III and Eric; daughter Lisa.
$1.3 Million
