Chuck Connors photographs

Actor and professional athlete Chuck Connors was born Kevin Joseph Connors in Brooklyn, N.Y. on April 10, 1921. Gifted athletically, Connors won a scholarship to attend Adelphi Academy, a private college preparatory high school in Brooklyn, and graduated in 1939. Concurrently, Connors played for the Bay Ridge Celtics, a local Brooklyn baseball team. After attending Seton Hall University in New Jersey for a short time, Connors left to enlist in the U.S. Army during WWII. After serving in the Army, Connors pursued a professional athletic career, first joining the newly established Boston Celtics basketball team in 1946 before leaving basketball for baseball. Connors played for minor league teams and farms teams until he was brought up to the major league to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1949. A first baseman, Connors only played one game for the Dodgers. In 1951, Connors went to the Chicago Cubs where he played 66 games as first baseman for the Cubs. In 1952, Connors returned to the minor league, playing for the Cubs farm team, the Los Angeles Angels. It was while playing for the Angels that Connors was "discovered" by a movie studio employee and was signed to do his first film. From 1952 to 1991, Connors spent nearly 40 years as a character actor in both film and television, including his first role in George Cukor's film Pat and Mike starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy and his lead role in the television western, The Rifleman, from 1958 to 1963. Connors died in Los Angeles in 1991.