Chuck Connors Biography

Kevin Joseph Aloysius "Chuck"? Connors (April 10, 1921 - November 10, 1992) was an American actor, writer and professional basketball and baseball player. He is one of only 12 athletes in the history of American professional sports to have played both Major League Baseball and in the National Basketball Association. With a 40-year film and television career, he is best known for his five-year role as Lucas McCain in the highly rated ABC series The Rifleman (1958-63).

Early life

Connors was born Kevin Joseph Aloysius Connors on April 10, 1921 in Brooklyn, New York, the elder child of two children born to Marcella (ne Londrigan) and Alban Francis "Allan" Connors, immigrants of Irish descent from Newfoundland and Labrador. He had one sibling, his younger sister, Gloria, two years his junior, According to the federal census of 1930, his father and mother and both sets of his grandparents were natives of Newfoundland.

That same census also records that his father became a citizen of the United States in 1914 and was working in Brooklyn in 1930 as a longshoreman. His mother had also attained her U.S. citizenship in 1917. Raised Roman Catholic, he served as an altar boy at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Brooklyn.

Connors was a devoted, avid fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers despite their losing record during the 1930s, and he hoped to join the team one day. A gifted athlete, he earned a scholarship to the Adelphi Academy, a preparatory school in Brooklyn, where he graduated in 1939. He received additional offers for athletic scholarships from more than two dozen colleges and universities.

From those offers he chose to attend Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. There he played both basketball and baseball for the school, and it was there too where he changed his name. Since childhood Connors had disliked his first name Kevin, and he had sought another one. He tried using "Lefty" and "Stretch" before finally settling on "Chuck". The name derived from his time as a player on Seton Hall's baseball team. He would repeatedly yell to the pitcher from his position on first base, "Chuck it to me, baby, chuck it to me!" The rest of his teammates and spectators at the university's games soon caught on, and the nickname stuck.

Connors, though, left Seton Hall after two years to accept a contract to play professional baseball. He played on two minor league teams (see below) in 1940 and 1942, then joined the United States Army following America's entrance into World War II. During most of the war, he served as a tank-warfare instructor at Fort Campbell, located on the Kentucky-Tennessee border, and later at West Point in New York.

Sports career

In 1940, following his departure from college, Connors played four baseball games with the Brooklyn Dodgers' minor league team, the Newport Dodgers (Northeast Arkansas League). Released, he sat out the 1941 season, then signed with the New York Yankees' farm team, the Norfolk Tars (Piedmont League), where he played 72 games before enlisting in the Army at Fort Knox, Kentucky at the end of the season, on October 10, 1942. During his Army service, Connors moonlighted as a professional basketball player, joining the Rochester Royals and helping to lead them to the 1946 National Basketball League championship. Following his military discharge in 1946, he joined the newly formed Boston Celtics of the Basketball Association of America, becoming the first professional basketball player to be credited with breaking a backboard. Connors took a shot that caught the front of the rim of an improperly installed glass backboard during the Celtics' warmup at Boston Arena on November 5, 1946.

Connors left the team for spring training with Major League Baseball's Brooklyn Dodgers. He played for numerous minor league teams before joining the Dodgers in 1949, for whom he played in only one game. He joined the Chicago Cubs in 1951, playing in 66 games as a first baseman and occasional pinch hitter. In 1952, he was sent to the minor leagues again to play for the Cubs' top farm team, the Los Angeles Angels.

He was drafted into American Football by the NFL's Chicago Bears, but never suited up for the team.

In 1966, Connors played an off-field role by helping to end the celebrated holdout (see Reserve clause) by Los Angeles Dodgers pitchers Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax when he acted as an intermediary during negotiations between management and the players. Connors can be seen in the Associated Press photo with Drysdale, Koufax and Dodgers general manager Buzzie Bavasi announcing the pitchers' new contracts.

Connors was listed as 6 foot 5 inches when he played baseball, and 6 foot 6 inches when he played basketball.

Acting career

Connors realized that he would not make a career in professional sports, so he decided to pursue an acting career. Playing baseball near Hollywood proved fortunate, as he was spotted by an MGM casting director and subsequently signed for the 1952 Tracy–Hepburn film Pat and Mike. In 1953, he starred opposite Burt Lancaster as a rebellious Marine private in the film South Sea Woman and opposite John Wayne in Trouble Along the Way as a football coach.

Television roles

Connors had a rare comedic role in a 1955 episode ("Flight to the North") of Adventures of Superman. He portrayed Sylvester J. Superman, a lanky rustic yokel who shared the same name as the title character of the series.

Connors was cast as Lou Brissie, a former professional baseball player wounded during World War II, in the 1956 episode "The Comeback" of the religion anthology series Crossroads. Don DeFore portrayed the Reverend C. E. "Stoney" Jackson, who offered the spiritual insight to assist Brissie's recovery so that he could return to the game. Grant Withers was cast as Coach Whitey Martin; Crossroads regular Robert Carson also played a coach in this episode. Edd Byrnes, Rhys Williams, and Robert Fuller played former soldiers. X Brands is cast as a baseball player.

In 1957, Connors was cast in the Walt Disney film Old Yeller in the role of Burn Sanderson. That same year, he co-starred in The Hired Gun.

Character actor

Connors acted in feature films including The Big Country with Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston, Move Over Darling with Doris Day and James Garner, Soylent Green with Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson, and Airplane II: The Sequel.

He also became a lovable television character actor, guest-starring in dozens of shows. His guest-starring debut was on an episode of NBC's Dear Phoebe. He played in two episodes, one as the bandit Sam Bass, on Dale Robertson's NBC western Tales of Wells Fargo.

Other television appearances were on Hey, Jeannie!, The Loretta Young Show, Schlitz Playhouse, Screen Directors Playhouse, Four Star Playhouse, Matinee Theatre, Cavalcade of America, Gunsmoke, The Gale Storm Show, The West Point Story, The Millionaire, General Electric Theater hosted by Ronald Reagan, Wagon Train, The Restless Gun with John Payne, Murder, She Wrote, Date with the Angels with Betty White, The DuPont Show with June Allyson, The Virginian, Night Gallery hosted by Rod Serling, Here's Lucy with Lucille Ball, and many others.

The Rifleman

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Connors beat 40 other actors for the lead in The Rifleman, portraying Lucas McCain, a widowed rancher known for his skill with a customized Winchester rifle. This ABC Western series, which aired from 1958 to 1963, was also the first show to feature a widowed father raising a young child. Connors said in a 1959 interview with TV Guide that the producers of Four Star Television (Dick Powell, Charles Boyer, Ida Lupino and David Niven) must have been looking at 40-50 thirty-something males. At the time, the producers offered a certain amount of money to do 39 episodes for the 1958-59 season. The offer turned out to be less than Connors was making doing freelance acting, so he turned it down. A few days later, the producers of The Rifleman took their own children to watch Old Yeller in which Connors played a strong father figure. After the producers watched him in the movie, they decided they should cast Connors in the role of Lucas McCain and make him a better offer, including a five-percent ownership of the show.

The Rifleman was an immediate hit, ranking No. 4 in the Nielsen ratings in 1958-59, behind three other Westerns - Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, and Have Gun - Will Travel. Johnny Crawford, an unfamiliar actor at the time, former Mousketeer, baseball fan and Western buff, beat 40 other young stars to play the role of Lucas's son, Mark. Crawford remained on the series from 1958 until its cancellation in 1963. The Rifleman landed high in the Nielsen ratings until the last season in 1962-63, when it was opposite the highly rated return to television of Lucille Ball on The Lucy Show and ratings began to drop. The show was cancelled in 1963 after five seasons and 168 episodes.

Johnny Crawford said of his relationship with Connors: "I was very fond of Chuck, and we were very good friends right from the start. I admired him tremendously." Crawford also said about the same sport that Connors had played: "I was a big baseball fan when we started the show, and when I found out that Chuck had been a professional baseball player, I was especially in awe of him. I would bring my baseball and a bat and a couple of gloves whenever we went on location, and at lunchtime I would get a baseball game going, hoping that Chuck would join us. And he did, but after he came to bat, we would always have trouble finding the ball. It would be out in the brush somewhere or in a ravine, and so that would end the game."

Crawford stayed in touch with Connors until his death in 1992. "We remained friends throughout the rest of his life. He was always interested in what I was doing and ready with advice, and anxious to help in any way that he could ... He was a great guy, a lot of fun, great sense of humor, bigger than life, and he absolutely loved people. He was very gregarious and friendly, and not at all bashful ... I learned a great deal from him about acting, and he was a tremendous influence on me. He was just my hero." He and Connors reprised their roles as the McCains in a television western movie, The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw.

The rifle

There were three rifles made for the show. Two identical 44-40 Winchester model 1892 rifles, one that was used on the show and one for backup, and a Spanish version called an El Tigre used in the saddle holster. The rifle levers were modified from the round type to more "D" shaped in later episodes.

Two rifles were made for Chuck Connors personally by Maurice "Moe" Hunt that were never used on the show. He was a fan of the show and gave them to Connors. Arnold Palmer, a friend and Honorary Chairman of the annual Chuck Connors charity golf event, was given one of the personal rifles by Connors and it was on display at The World Golf Hall of Fame.

The popularity of the show led to tie-in products, such as toy models of the Rifleman's rifle, with the twirl-around-the-trigger lever-action that made the customized rifle a match for any six-shooter hand-gun used by villains. Also a Milton Bradley board game, called The Rifleman Game, had two players each competing to move their herd of cattle from a Start to a Finish, across a prairie landscape, with a river-crossing and other hazards. The cattle were represented by die-cut cardboard cattle-pieces mounted in plastic counters, red or blue for either player.

Typecasting/other TV roles

In 1963, Connors appeared in the film Flipper. He also appeared opposite James Garner and Doris Day in the comedy Move Over, Darling in the role earlier played by Randolph Scott in the original 1940 Irene Dunne/Cary Grant version entitled My Favorite Wife.

As Connors was strongly typecast for playing the firearmed rancher-turned-single-father, he then starred in several short-lived series, including: ABC's Arrest and Trial (1963-64), an early forerunner of Law and Order featuring two young actors Ben Gazzara and Don Galloway, NBC's post-Civil War-era series Branded (1965-1966) and the 1967-1968 ABC series Cowboy in Africa, alongside British actor Ronald Howard and Tom Nardini. Connors guest-starred in a last-season episode of Night Gallery titled "The Ring With the Red Velvet Ropes". In 1973 and 1974 he hosted a television series called Thrill Seekers.

He had a key role against type as a slave owner in the 1977 miniseries Roots, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for his performance.

Connors hosted a number of episodes of Family Theater on the Mutual Radio Network. This series was aimed at promoting prayer as a path to world peace and stronger families, with the motto, "The family which prays together stays together."

In 1983, Connors joined Sam Elliott, Cybill Shepherd, Ken Curtis and Noah Beery, Jr. in the short-lived NBC series The Yellow Rose, about a modern Texas ranching family. In 1985, he guest-starred as "King Powers" in the ABC TV series Spenser: For Hire, starring Robert Urich. In 1987, he co-starred in the Fox series Werewolf, as drifter Janos Skorzeny. In 1988, he guest-starred as "Gideon" in the TV series Paradise, starring Lee Horsley.

In 1991, Connors was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.

Personal life

Connors was married three times. He met his first wife, Elizabeth Jane Riddell Connors, at one of his baseball games, and married her on October 1, 1948. They had four sons, Michael (1950-2017), Jeffrey (1952-2014), Stephen (born 1953), and Kevin (1956-2005), but divorced in 1961.

Connors married Kamala Devi (1963) the year after co-starring with her in Geronimo. She also acted with Connors in Branded, Broken Sabre and Cowboy in Africa. They were divorced in 1973.

Connors played in Soylent Green (1973), as Tab Fielding, and Faith Quabius played an attendant. They were married in 1977 and divorced in 1979.

Connors was a supporter of the Republican Party and attended several fundraisers for campaigns for U.S. President Richard M. Nixon. He campaigned for Ronald Reagan, a personal friend, and marched in support of the Vietnam War in 1967.

Connors was introduced to Leonid Brezhnev, the leader of the Soviet Union, at a party given by Nixon at the Western White House in San Clemente, California, in June 1973. Connors presented Brezhnev with a pair of Colt Single Action Army "Six-Shooters" (revolvers) which Brezhnev liked greatly. Upon boarding his airplane bound for Moscow, Brezhnev noticed Connors in the crowd and went back to him to shake hands, and jokingly jumped up into Connors' towering hug. The Rifleman was one of the few American shows allowed on Russian television at that time; that was because it was Brezhnev's favorite. Connors and Brezhnev got along so well that Connors traveled to the Soviet Union in December 1973. In 1982, Connors expressed an interest in traveling to the Soviet Union for Brezhnev's funeral, but the U.S. government would not allow him to be part of the official delegation.

Charity

Connors hosted the annual Chuck Connors Charitable Invitational Golf Tournament, through the Chuck Connors Charitable Foundation, at the Canyon Country Club in Palm Springs, California. Proceeds went directly to the Angel View Crippled Children's Foundation and over $400,000.00 was raised.

Death

Connors had started smoking in 1940. For many years, he smoked three packs of Camel cigarettes a day until he quit the habit in the mid-1970s, though he occasionally resumed smoking afterwards. He died on November 10, 1992 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles at the age of 71 of pneumonia stemming from lung cancer. At the time of his death, his companion was Rose Mary Grumley. His body was interred in the San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1952	Pat and Mike	Police Captain
1953	Trouble Along the Way	Stan Schwegler
1953	Code Two	Deputy Sheriff	Uncredited
1953	South Sea Woman	Pvt. Davey White
1954	Dragonfly Squadron	Captain Warnowski
1954	The Human Jungle	Earl Swados
1954	Naked Alibi	Capt. Owen Kincaide
1955	Target Zero	Pvt. Moose
1955	Good Morning, Miss Dove	Bill Holloway
1955	Three Stripes in the Sun	Idaho Johnson
1956	Walk the Dark Street	Frank Garrick
1956	Hot Rod Girl	Det. Ben Merrill
1956	Hold Back the Night	Sgt. Ekland
1957	Tomahawk Trail	Sgt. Wade McCoy
1957	Designing Woman	Johnnie O
1957	Death in Small Doses	Mink Reynolds
1957	The Hired Gun	Judd Farrow
1957	Old Yeller	Burn Sanderson
1958	The Lady Takes a Flyer	Phil Donahoe
1958	The Big Country	Buck Hannassey
1962	Geronimo	Geronimo
1963	Flipper	Porter Ricks
1963	Move Over, Darling	Stephen 'Adam' Burkett
1965	Synanon	Ben
1966	Ride Beyond Vengeance	Jonas Trapp
1968	Kill Them All and Come Back Alone	Clyde McKay
1969	Captain Nemo and the Underwater City	Senator Robert Fraser
1971	The Deserter	Chaplain Reynolds
1971	The Birdmen	Colonel Morgan Crawford
1971	Support Your Local Gunfighter	Swifty Morgan	Uncredited
1972	Embassy	Kesten
1972	The Proud and Damned	Will Hansen
1972	Pancho Villa	Col. Wilcox
1973	The Mad Bomber	William Dorn
1973	Soylent Green	Tab Fielding
1974	99 and 44/100% Dead	Marvin "Claw" Zuckerman
1975	Legend of the Sea Wolf	Wolf Larsen
1979	Tourist Trap	Mr. Slausen
1979	Day of the Assassin	Fleming
1980	Virus	Captain McCloud
1981	Bordello	Jonathan
1982	Hit Man	Sam Fisher
1982	Airplane II: The Sequel	The Sarge
1982	There Was a Little Girl
1983	The Vals	Trish's Father
1983	Balboa	Alabama Dern
1983	Afghanistan pourquoi?	Soviet Colonel
1987	Hell's Heroes	Senator Morris
1987	Sakura Killers	The Colonel
1987	Summer Camp Nightmare	Mr. Warren
1987	Maniac Killer	Professor Roger Osborne
1988	Once Upon A Texas Train	Nash Crawford
1988	Terror Squad	Chief Rawlings
1988	Taxi Killer
1989	Trained to Kill	Ed Cooper
1989	Skinheads	Mr. Huston
1990	Last Flight to Hell	Red Farley
1990	Face the Edge	Buddy
1991	Salmonberries	Bingo Chuck
1992	Three Days to a Kill	Capt. Damian Wright
2001	A Man Who Fell from the Sky	Narrator and host

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1953	Your Jeweler's Showcase		Episode: "Three and One Half Musketeers"
1954	Dear Phoebe	Rocky	Episode: "Billy Gets a Job"
1954	Big Town		Episode: "Semper Fi"
1954	Four Star Playhouse	Mervyn/Stan	Two episodes
1954-1957	General Electric Theater	Soldier/Long Jack	Two episodes
1955	Letter to Loretta	Jess Hayes	Episode: "The Girl Who Knew"
1955	City Detective	Sam	Episode: "Trouble in Toyland"
1955	TV Reader's Digest	Charlie Masters	Episode: "The Manufactured Clue"
1955	Private Secretary	Mr. Neanderthal	Episode: "Mr. Neanderthal"
1955	Schlitz Playhouse of Stars	Stanley O'Connor	Episode: "O'Connor and the Blue-Eyed Felon"
1955	Adventures of Superman	Sylvester J. Superman	Episode: "Flight to the North"
1955	Screen Directors Playhouse	Art Shirley	Episode: "The Brush Roper"
1955-1956	The Star and the Story		Three episodes
1955	Matinee Theatre		Episode: "O'Toole from Moscow"
1955	Cavalcade of America	Harry	Episode: "Barbed Wire Christmas"
1956	Fireside Theatre	Officer Handley	Episode: "The Thread"
1956	Frontier	Thorpe Henderson	Episode: "The Assassin"
1956	Gunsmoke	Sam Keeler	Episode: "The Preacher"
1956	Climax!		Episode: "Fear is the Hunter"
1956	The Joseph Cotten Show	Andy	Episode: "The Nevada Nightingale"
1956	Crossroads	Lou Brissie	Episode: "The Comeback"
1956	The West Point Story	Maj. Nielson	Two episodes
1956	The Gale Storm Show	Ooma	Episode: "The Witch Doctor"
1957	The Millionaire	Hub Grimes	Episode: "The Hub Grimes Story"
1957	Tales of Wells Fargo	Sam Bass/Button Smith	Two episodes
1957	The Silent Service	Lt. Jim Liddell	Episode: "The Story of the U.S.S. Flier"
1957	Wagon Train	Private John Sumter	Episode: "The Charles Avery Story"
1957	The Restless Gun	Toby Yeager	Episode: "Silver Threads"
1958	Hey, Jeannie!	Buck Matthews	Episode: "The Bet"
1958	Date with the Angels	Stacey L. Stacey	Episode: "Double Trouble"
1958	Love That Jill	Cliff	Episode: "They Went Thataway"
1958	Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre	Lucas McCain	Episode: "The Sharpshooter"
1958	The Adventures of Jim Bowie	Cephas K. Ham	Two episodes
1958-1963	The Rifleman	Lucas McCain	Lead role 168 episodes
1960	The DuPont Show with June Allyson	George Aswell	Episode: "Trial by Fear"
1963-1964	Arrest and Trial	John Egan	Lead role 30 episodes
1965-1966	Branded	Jason McCord	Lead role 48 episodes
1967-1968	Cowboy in Africa	Jim Sinclair	Lead role 26 episodes
1971	The Virginian	Gustaveson	Episode: "The Animal"
1971	The Name of the Game	Governor Brill	Episode: "The Broken Puzzle"
1971	The Birdmen	Colonel Morgan Crawford	TV movie
1972	Night of Terror	Brian DiPaulo	TV movie
1972	Night Gallery	Roderick Blanco	Episode: "The Ring with the Red Velvet Ropes"
1973	Set This Town on Fire	Buddy Bates	TV movie
1973	The Horror at 37,000 Feet	Captain Ernie Slade	TV movie
1973	Here's Lucy	Himself	Episode: "Lucy and Chuck Connors Have a Surprise Slumber Party"
1973-1976	Police Story	Various	Four episodes
1975	The Six Million Dollar Man	Niles Lingstrom	Episode: "The Price of Liberty"
1976	Banjo Hackett: Roamin' Free	Sam Ivory	TV movie
1976	Nightmare in Badham County	Sherriff Slim Danen	TV movie
1977	Roots	Tom Moore	Miniseries
1977	The Night They Took Miss Beautiful	Mike O'Toole	TV movie
1978	Standing Tall	Major Roland Hartline	TV movie
1980	Stone	Tom Lettleman	Episode: "Case Number HM-89428, Homicide"
1981	Walking Tall	Theo Brewster	Episode: "Kidnapped"
1982	Best of the West		Episode: "Frog's First Gunfight"
1982	The Capture of Grizzly Adams	Frank Briggs	TV movie
1982	Fantasy Island	Frank Barton	Episode: "Sitting Duck/Sweet Suzi Swann"
1983	Lone Star	Jake Farrell	TV movie
1983	Kelsey's Son	Boone Kelsey	TV movie
1983	The Love Boat	Roy	Episode: "Bricker's Boy/Lotions of Love/The Hustlers"
1983	Matt Houston	Castanos	Episode: "Get Houston"
1983-1984	The Yellow Rose	Jeb Hollister	Main cast 21 episodes
1985	Spenser: For Hire	King Powers	Two episodes
1985-1989	Murder, She Wrote	Fred Keller/Tyler Morgan	Two episodes
1985	The All-American Cowboy		TV movie
1987	Werewolf	Captain Janos Skorzeny	Recurring role Five episodes
1988	Once Upon a Texas Train	Nash Crawford	TV movie
1988	Wolf		Episode: "Pilot"
1989	High Desert Kill	Stan Brown	TV movie
1989-1990	Paradise	Gideon McKay	Three episodes
1991	The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw	Lucas McCain	TV movie