Marriage and Children
Adams married former child actress Carol Nugent in 1959. Nugent had appeared in an episode of The Rebel. They had two children, Allyson Lee Adams (1960) and Jeb Stuart Adams (1961) who both later pursued careers in the film industry.
Sometimes acrimonious marital problems reportedly interfered with his ability to get lucrative acting parts after 1963. While promoting Young Dillinger during a television appearance on The Les Crane Show in early 1965, Adams "shocked" the viewing audience with an announcement he was leaving his wife—seemingly without telling her first. The couple publicly announced a reconciliation a week later but his career and personal life following this episode have been characterized as a "tragic freefall".
Adams and actress Kumi Mizuno may have had a short affair while he was working in Japan. "That's one of the reasons my parents were divorced", his daughter, playwright Allyson Lee Adams, later said. "My dad had a penchant for becoming infatuated with his leading ladies. It was a way for him to take on the role he was playing at the time."
By July 1965 they were legally separated and Carol filed for divorce in September. The following month, while Adams was in Japan, Carol was granted a divorce and custody of the children. In January 1966 Nick and Carol announced another reconciliation on a local television show, Bill John's Hollywood Star Notebook. However in November 1966 Carol 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." On January 20, 1967 Adams was waiting for a court hearing to start when he was served with a $110,000 defamation suit by Carol's boyfriend, Paul Rapp, who later married Carol. Nevertheless, nine days later he was granted temporary custody of the children. His son Jeb Adams later recalled, "He saw it as a competition, basically, more than anything of getting custody of us. But, a matter of a week or two later, he gave us back to my mom" and Carol later regained legal custody of the children.
Read more about this topic: Nick Adams (actor)
Famous quotes containing the words marriage and/or children:
“Why don’t you go home to your wife? I’ll tell you what. I’ll go home to your wife and outside of the improvements, you’ll never know the difference. Pull over to the side of the road there and let me see your marriage license.”
—S.J. Perelman, U.S. screenwriter, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, and Norman Z. McLeod. Groucho Marx, Horsefeathers, a wisecrack made to Huxley College’s outgoing president (1932)
“Productive collaborations between family and school, therefore, will demand that parents and teachers recognize the critical importance of each other’s participation in the life of the child. This mutuality of knowledge, understanding, and empathy comes not only with a recognition of the child as the central purpose for the collaboration but also with a recognition of the need to maintain roles and relationships with children that are comprehensive, dynamic, and differentiated.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)