(6 of 9)
When not working in class, bolstering Kellerman, living the bachelor life with Towne, scuffling for the odd acting job in low-budget melodramas like The Little Shop of Horrors or TV shows like Divorce Court ("I was the most unabashed corespondent in town"), Nicholson found time to court Actress Sandra Knight. The couple got married in 1962. "We were very much in love, and I took the vows totally at ease," Nicholson says, confessing at the same time to a "secret inner pressure about monogamy." A year later, his only child Jennifer was born.
Sandra Knight surrendered her career to marriage, but Nicholson persisted in his. When a doubtful Corey admonished him to "show me some poetry," Jack's reply snapped back in a second: "Maybe, Jeff, you just don't see the poetry I'm showing you."
He began to pick up more or less steady, but decidedly unglamorous work in such Roger Corman quickies as The Terror, starring Boris Karloff, and The Raven, in which Jack played Peter Lorre's son. The only real satisfaction Nicholson was to get from any of these films, besides a salary, was the chance to insert a little underhanded humor. He once had the smallest running part in The St. Valentine's Day Massacre—a chauffeur. Nicholson ad-libbed a single line of dialogue to steal a scene. While a hoodlum rubs some foreign substance on the ammunition, Nicholson explains, "It's garlic. The bullets don't kill ya, ya die of blood poisoning."
Frustrated with his progress as an actor, Nicholson would periodically try other aspects of the business. He wrote a few scripts and co-produced two low-budget westerns, The Shooting, which he starred in, and Ride the Whirlwind, which he starred in and wrote as well. He also turned out to be a demon for efficiency and staying within budgets. When the movies were finished, he personally carried them to the Cannes Film Festival, searching for a distributor and trying to scratch up some contacts.
By this time Nicholson had discovered that the "secret inner pressure about monogamy" was too great for him to bear, and he ambled off into a series of casual affairs. He and Sandra separated while he was writing the script for an LSD epic called The Trip—under medical supervision, Sandra once had a bad acid experience and was spooked by the subject—and when Nicholson finished the assignment, they decided to split up for good.
Soon after, Bob Rafelson was involved with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in preparing a motorcycle movie. Rafelson thought there was a good part for Nicholson, but Hopper wanted Rip Torn. Nicholson was dispatched to the set as a sort of production watchdog. He quickly became the right man at the right time. Torn dropped out of the movie, Nicholson moved in. Easy Rider wound up making $35 million. It also got Nicholson an Oscar nomination. All the scuffling was finally starting to pay off.