Nick Adams

 Nick Adams, born Nicholas Aloysius Adamshock (July 10, 1931 – February 7, 1968)

In 1959, Adams starred in the television 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. He was also in the movie Rebel Without a Cause (1955) with Natalie Wood, James Dean, and Sal Mineo. Adams also had supporting roles in several successful television productions including one episode of Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958) starring Steve McQueen and films such as Our Miss Brooks (1956), No Time for Sergeants (1958), Teacher's Pet (1958), and Pillow Talk (1959). His accidental death added to list of premature ends for the cast of that movie. On the night of February 7, 1968 his lawyer and friend, ex-LAPD officer Erwin Roeder, drove to the actor's house at 2126 El Roble Lane in Beverly Hills to check on him after a missed dinner appointment. Roeder broke through a window and discovered Adams in his upstairs bedroom, slumped dead against a wall. During the autopsy, the famous Dr. Thomas Noguchi found enough paraldehyde, sedatives and other drugs in the body "to cause instant unconsciousness." The death certificate lists "paraldehyde and promazine intoxication" as the immediate cause of death. At the time consequences of drug interactions weren't widely known, or warned about. Nick Adams is buried at Saints Cyril and Methodius Ukrainian Cemetery in Berwick, Pennsylvania.