Anecdotes

In November 1990, he was devastated to hear about Burt Lancaster's stroke. He tried calling his office one day, but his office wasn't releasing any information at that time. Connors sent a letter in support of David Fury's nomination of Lancaster to the Cowboy Hall of Fame and signed the petition which Fury sent to the American film Institute nominating Lancaster for the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991.

Connors wasn't the only baseball star to appear on The Rifleman (1958), a couple of former baseball stars appeared on that show were: Duke Snider and Don Drysdale.

Connors was one of only twelve athletes in history to have played for both Major League Baseball and in the NBA.

A longtime smoker, he was hospitalized with pneumonia three weeks before his death from lung cancer. He was interred at the San Fernando Mission Cemetery. His headstone has the logos of all three sports teams for which he played: Boston Celtics, Chicago Cubs, and Brooklyn Dodgers.

Chuck Connors hit only two home runs during his Major League Baseball career, but one of them came against Sal "The Barber" Maglie of the New York Giants during the 1951 season, one of Maglie's most successful: 23 wins (leading the National League), 6 losses, 2.93 ERA, and appearances in the All-Star game and World Series.

Before the 1940 baseball season, he was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers as an amateur free agent. On October 10, 1950, he was traded by the Brooklyn Dodgers -- with whom he had appeared with in one game in 1949 -- with Dee Fondy to the Chicago Cubs for Hank Edwards and cash. He spent part of the 1951 season with the Cubs. He also played professional basketball with the Boston Celtics. Playing for the Boston Celtics in 1946, Chuck Connors was the first NBA player to shatter a backboard, doing so during a pre-game warm-up in the Boston Garden.

He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Television at 6838 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on July 18, 1984.

Before he was an actor, he spent most of the war as a tank-warfare instructor in Camp Campbell, Kentucky, before West Point, New York.

Appeared on the front cover of TV Guide five times.

In a biography titled "The Man Behind the Rifle" (1997), author David Fury says that Chuck Connors acquired his nickname while an athlete playing first base. He had a habit of calling to the pitcher: "Chuck it to me, baby, chuck it to me!".

Was a film "enemy" of Charlton Heston at least twice -- as Buck Hannesey in Les grands espaces (1958) and as Tab Fielding in Soleil vert (1973).

He smoked three packs of Camel cigarettes a day until the 1970s. He fronted anti-smoking campaigns in the mid-1970s. In a 1987 interview he said he was still smoking, but claimed to ration himself to only one cigarette a day.

Lucas McCain, Connors' character on The Rifleman (1958), was ranked #32 in TV Guide's list of the "50 Greatest TV Dads of All Time" [20 June 2004 issue].

Connors graduated from Adelphi Academy, a private high school in Brooklyn, New York, in 1940. He was offered numerous scholarships but chose to attend Seton Hall College (now Seton Hall University) and played basketball, football & baseball. His college studies were interrupted when he was enlisted in the United States Army in 1942 in Fort Knox, Kentucky.

In June 1973, he befriended Soviet Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev in a meeting at the White House. Connors traveled to the Soviet Union in December 1973, and presented Brezhnev with two Colt revolvers. In 1982, he asked his friend President Ronald Reagan if he could attend Brezhnev's funeral service, but he was not allowed to be part of the official US delegation.

Actors David Cassidy, Kathy Garver, Clarence Gilyard Jr., and Bill Mumy, comedians Bill Rafferty and Vicki Lawrence, announcers Burton Richardson and Randy West, and talk show host turned billionaire entrepreneur, Oprah Winfrey, all described him as a childhood television hero.

Accepted the role of Mr. Slausen in Le motel de la terreur (1979) because he wanted to "become the Boris Karloff of the '80s".

According to an article on television westerns in Time magazine (March 30, 1959), Connors stood 6' 5" tall, weighed 215 pounds, and had chest-waist-hips measurements of 45-34-41.

Best remembered by the public for his starring role as Lucas McCain on The Rifleman (1958), which was canceled at the end of its fifth season, because Connors and his co-star, Johnny Crawford, had reportedly decided to move on to other projects. The two remained good friends both during the series' run and after it ended. Crawford later told an interviewer that when he was a little boy, he also was an avid baseball fan, as Connors had been, and Crawford would bring his baseball equipment on location during filming.

Years after The Rifleman (1958), he was a spokesperson for the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in the early 1970s.

Was an altar boy and parishioner at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

Inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum (1991).

His parents were Allan Connors, a longshoreman, and Marcella Lundrigan Connors, a housewife, both of Irish descent. His father was born in Dunville and his mother in St. Marys, Placentia Bay (both in the Dominion of Newfoundland, now part of Canada). Allan Connors died in 1966 and Marcella Connors died in 1971.

Was a member of the Sheriff's Advisory Board of Orange County, California.

He was a staunch supporter of the Republican Party as well as a frequent guest at the White House during the administration of his close friend President Richard Nixon.

He supported Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential election.

Suffered almost the same fate in each of his two television western series. In The Vaqueros (1961), he was stripped to the waist, tied to a tree, and left to die under a scorching sun by a group of Mexican bandits. In Fill No Glass for Me: Part 2 (1965), he was stripped to the waist, tied to a tree, and left to die under a scorching sun by a group of Indian warriors (In both cases, he survived.).

Almost one year before his death, his first wife, Elizabeth "Betty" Connors, died on February 27, 1992, after a long illness.

He campaigned for Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election.

At age 13, he remembered he was a lousy first baseman, and the man who made the biggest impact on his life was his coach on a team called the Celtics, a diminutive gent named John Flynn.

Retired NBA Player, Chuck Person is named after him.

He had 10 hobbies: golfing, riding horses, reading, swimming, fishing, poetry writing, spending time with his family, baseball, philanthropy and politics.

Took part in a parade in New York in support of the Vietnam War in 1967, and campaigned for his friend Ronald Reagan.

Resumed his sports career after the war had ended. Connors had no choice other than to play professional basketball, when he continued to play baseball.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives." Volume 3, 1991-1993, pp. 116-118. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons (2001).

On The Rifleman (1958), his character used a lot of rifles, and in real-life he owned rifles.