Background
Robert Nicholas King was born in Sacramento, California.
Robert Nicholas King was born in Sacramento, California.
After graduating from high school in 1951, King began taking acting lessons at the Pasadena Playhouse. King had uncredited roles in The Long, Hot Summer and as a medic in The Young Lions. He had the role of Arnie in 1958"s Joy Ride and Georgie in The Threat.
He also had a recurring role in the television version of the National Broadcasting Company soap opera One Manitoba"s Family.
He opened a nursery and began grafting varieties of apple trees. King died in a Santa Rosa, California nursing home.
He had battled Lewy body dementia for several years prior to his death. In the late 1950s, King was working as an assistant to Hollywood photographer Bob Willoughby.
King expressed an interest in working with Cartwright to save the towers, and the two men traced ownership to Joseph Montoya, an employee of a local dairy.
King and Cartwright arranged a meeting with Montoya and asked if he would be interested in selling the towers. Montoya said "yes" and set a price of $3,000. "We wrote out a $20 check for the deposit right there, and we walked out of that building 15 feet off the ground.
We couldn"t get over it — we owned those damned things," King told The New Yorker in a 1965 interview.
"Nick.. "Without his participation, the towers would have been destroyed" under a demolition order issued by the City of Los Angeles after they had been declared a potential safety hazard.
Understood the international merit of the towers," said Jeanne Morgan, a charter member of the Committee for Simon Rodia"s Towers in Watts.