Chuck Connors facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Chuck Connors
Born	April 10, 1921 Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Died	November 10, 1992(1992-11-10) (aged 71) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	actor / sports

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

Chuck Connors Brooklyn Dodgers

Connors was born on April 10, 1921, in Brooklyn, New York City, the elder of two children born to Marcella (née Londrigan) and Alban Francis "Allan" Connors, immigrants of Irish descent from Newfoundland and Labrador. He had one sibling, a sister, Gloria, who was two years his junior.

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

Sport and education

Connors was a devoted fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers despite their losing record during the 1930s, and he hoped to join the team one day. A talented athlete, he earned a scholarship to the Adelphi Academy, a preparatory school in Brooklyn, where he graduated in 1939. He received 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 name. 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 left Seton Hall after two years to accept a contract to play professional baseball. He played on two minor league teams 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, Kentucky, and later at West Point in New York.

Following his military discharge in 1946, the 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m) Connors joined the Rochester Royals (now the Sacramento Kings) of the National Basketball League for their 1945-1946 championship season. For the 1946-1947 season he joined the newly formed Boston Celtics of the Basketball Association of America. During his tenure with Celtics in 1946, Connors became the first professional basketball player to break a backboard. He did so during pre-game practice before the Celtics' first home game of their inaugural season with a shot and not a slam dunk, which is what typically breaks a backboard in modern basketball. He played 53 games for Boston before leaving the team early in the 1947–48 season.

Connors is one of 13 athletes to have played in both the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball. The twelve others to have played are: Danny Ainge, Frank Baumholtz, Hank Biasatti, Gene Conley, Dave DeBusschere, Dick Groat, Steve Hamilton, Mark Hendrickson, Cotton Nash, Ron Reed, Dick Ricketts, and Howie Schultz.

Connors attended spring training in 1948 with Major League Baseball's Brooklyn Dodgers but did not make the squad He played two seasons for the Dodgers' AAA team, the Montreal Royals before playing one game with the Dodgers in 1949. After two more seasons with Montreal, Connors 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.

Actor career

Chuck Connors did both low-budget movies and big Hollywood productions. These included South Sea Woman (1953), with Burt Lancaster, and directed by Arthur Lubin, and William Wyler's western, The Big Country (1958), with Gregory Peck.

Among his best performances is the Indian warrior Geronimo, in Geronimo (1962). Other classic movies he was in are Flipper (1963), Captain Nemo and the Underwater City (1969), Soylent Green (1973), with Charlton Heston, and directed by Richard Fleischer.

Television

Publicity still of Connors for The Rifleman, 1962

His television career was very successful. he is remembered for playing the role of a widower Lucas McCain, in the ABC series The Rifleman (1958-1962). The Rifleman told the story of a widower and his son who live on a ranch in the Wild West. Connors played the role of Lucas McCain in 168 episodes of the series.

Rifle and Rifleman

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 a more "D" shaped in later episodes.

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.

Another of his successes was the western TV series Branded (1965-1966). He played Jason McCord, an army official being falsely accused of cowardice.

He also starred in a crime series Arrest and Trial (1962-1964), as attorney John Egan, and the adventure series Cowboy in Africa (1967-1968).

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

Connors in Branded, 1965

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. He was interred in the San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Filmography

Film

Television

Images for kids

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  With Pippa Scott in 1960

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  Connors during filming of a 1961 episode of The Rifleman

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  Connors with Johnny Crawford, 1960

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  Connors opposite Broderick Crawford in Arrest and Trial, 1963

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  Connors and son, Jeffrey, on The Rifleman set in 1959. Jeffrey had a role as Toby Halperin in the episode "Tension".

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  General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Leonid Brezhnev (left) and interpreter Viktor Sukhodrev meet Chuck Connors, 1973

See also

In Spanish: Chuck Connors para niños