In this offbeat memoir, Nikki Nash tells the story of an obsession that starts with a young girl’s movie-star fantasy.
From behind the scenes in the 1960s and 1970s, in a childhood shaped by a musician father and politically active mother, Nikki Nash chronicles an unusual and intimate series of events that have brought her gracefully into old age. Growing up in Hollywood gave Nash proximity and access to a nearly unfathomable array of industry luminaries.
Early in life, while other girls were fixated on musical pop icons like Davey Jones and Paul McCartney, Nash had her eyes set on a more mature movie idol nearly twenty years her senior: Warren Beatty. Her father, Dick Nash, was an up-and-coming musician who eventually collaborated with the likes of Henry Mancini. Living in the Valley gave the family the opportunity to socialize with Vic Morrow, John(ny) Williams, and Bob Altman before they became household names. During the period when Altman and Beatty worked together, Nikki has a chance meeting with the movie star in a kitchen, looking for a glass. Presciently, despite her infatuation, she pretends she hardly notices the handsome features and silky voice that transfixed her on the silver screen. She is too young, and it’s too soon, so she resigns herself to the fact that she has to grow up before anything can happen with Warren. It sounds like the stuff of fairy tales, at least until one realizes that Beatty was romantically linked with a bevy of high-powered Hollywood women, including Julie Christie, Diane Keaton, Madonna, and others, until he finally and improbably settled down with Annette Bening. The two remain married with four children.
During the sixties and seventies, Nikki’s intelligent mother, Barbara, began hanging around political activists tangentially associated with the Black Panthers and Malcolm X, another mind-expanding aspect of her youth. The relationships are yet another window into the era, with revolution in the air, brewing in both politics and the film industry.
As a means of hatching her plan to meet the object of her fascination on her own terms, Nikki manages to nail down a job as a hostess at a restaurant called The Old World, where Beatty was reputed to dine alone with some frequency. Now older, years later, Nikki meets Warren again and slides into a casual relationship with the actor like a comfortable old shoe. They become confidants and periodic lovers. Happily, Nash understands the reality of the situation: that she is but one of many regular distractions Beatty surrounds himself with.
Among the most interesting elements of the memoir is the three-way relationship between Nash, Beatty, and Jack Nicholson. Reading about Nash palling around with Beatty and Nicholson and their co-dependency makes for dishy gossip indeed. For a while, each sort of served as a stand-in when one of the other three was away on a movie set or some project. It’s a captivating dynamic that offers a glimpse into the insecurities of people who seem beyond the trivial concerns of regular folks like us.
As Nikki continues her voyage into middle age, family issues inevitably intervene. Barbara’s early death from throat cancer, the product of years of smoking unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes, brings to a close Nikki’s uneasy relationship with her mother. Her father, Dick, is still living and happily remarried when the book went to print. Her brothers Bill and Ted (yes, really) are doing well also, with the three children engaging in politically incorrect humor about good old dad.
Along her journey in the L.A. scene, Nash took on roles such as associate director, writer, comic, and actress, and engaged in many of the edgy, ritual activities one might expect of the time period. She manages to elude more than one skirmish with the casting couches, with entreaties from the likes of Robert Evans shamelessly and matter-of-factly brazen. “Collateral Stardust” has the feel of an immersive reporting assignment that covers a lifetime, relating the tale of an ordinary person surrounded by and interacting with oceans of celebrities for decades, almost effortlessly.
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