This is my Dad (left) with his marine buddy, Nick (right). They were stationed together in San Diego during WWII.
Nick came to visit us in Texas when I was born. My parents had given me two names that seemed too long for a little baby, Kathryn Deborah, and they were joking around about it with Nick.
“Call her Kay,” Nick said, and that’s been my name for the past seventy years. Mom said he stayed too long and she had to kick him out. “He was a bum,” said Mom, so I never got to meet Nick and never learned the full story until after Nick had died in 1995.
Nick spent the rest of his life in Hollywood, never returning to live in his home state of South Dakota after his stent in San Diego as a U.S. Marine. He found acting jobs under the stage name, Morgan Lane. His roles are listed on his page on IMDb.
He played with Walter Brennan in something, as evidenced by his photo below from my father’s archives. His major part appears to have been the character of Nick Popov in the 1957 movie, Journey to Freedom, that’s still available to watch for free on Amazon Prime. I believe it’s an anti-communist propaganda film. It’s a fascinating thing to watch and it shows you just how far we’ve come in the world of acting and filmography. Most of Nick’s performance occurs in the last 10 minutes of the film. He is the Russian spy who betrayed the main character and confessed in the end as he lay dying. “They made me do it. They made me do it.” were his final words.
He had small parts in two other movies and in some televisions shows that I’ve yet to see. He was married until death to an actress/musician, Rosa Linda, until death. I’m glad to see he had a long lasting, lifetime relationship and support. He feels like family to me even though he never returned for a visit again.
The last movie he appeared in was the very year that I was a teenage runaway on the streets of Hollywood. To think that I could have met him way back then. Too bad that the chance is gone forever now.
The photos that I have of Nick came from Dad’s storage. He kept good care of them over the years.
Oikos 