Alex Nicol

Alex Nicol — Biography

American character actor Alex Nicol made his name playing menacing, unstable men in 1950s Westerns. His defining part came in Anthony Mann's The Man from Laramie (1955), where he played the weak, psychopathic son of a patriarch rancher and menaced James Stewart. He went on to appear in more than forty feature films and also worked behind the camera as a director.

His career began on the stage. After studying at the Feagin School of Dramatic Art he joined Maurice Evans's company and made his Broadway debut in 1939; a five-year army stint interrupted him, and on his return he entered The Actors Studio and worked with Elia Kazan. He was in the original cast of South Pacific, then became Henry Fonda's understudy in Mister Roberts. Signed by Universal, he appeared in Tomahawk, Meet Danny Wilson and The Redhead from Wyoming, and in 1956 he returned to Broadway to play Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

He turned director with The Screaming Skull (1958). He then settled in Rome for two years, acting in Italian productions such as Five Branded Women and Under Ten Flags. Back in the United States he directed television episodes of The Wild Wild West, Tarzan and Daniel Boone.