Anjelica Huston was Jack Nicholson‘s squeeze for more than a decade, so to say that she knows Jack pretty well is an understatement. In the memoirs she released last year, Huston went into great detail about her and Jack’s doomed relationship, but she also gave some interesting insight into his lifestyle. During Jack’s golden run of the ’70s (he was nominated several times for a Best Actor Oscar), the playboy used to carve Harry Dean Stanton’s initials into the film sets he worked on.
Huston writes about Nicholson’s nicknames for other people too, like Warren Beatty, “the Pro,” and Marlon Brando, whom he called “Marloon.” Nicholson referred to Art Garfunkel as the “the Old New G.” And Nicholson’s car, a magnificent Mercedes 600 the color of black cherries, was christened “Bing.” Huston also writes that Jack liked Harry Dean Stanton’s name so much that he wrote it somewhere in every film that he did. So, whether it was his initials on a prison wall in graffiti, or carved into a tree in a Western, if you look closely at this period of his movies, you’ll see “H.D.S.” somewhere.
Stanton and Nicholson used to be running buddies during the ’60s and ’70s, with Nicholson even rooming with his actor buddy for some time. Take in the above clues — a western, a prison — and let the scavenger hunt begin.
