Kevin Joseph Aloysius "Chuck" Connors

(April 10, 1921 - November 10, 1992)

Connors 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" (1958-1963).
During most of WW2, he served as a tank-warfare instructor at Fort Campbell, located on the Kentucky-Tennessee border, and later at West Point in New York. He had played one year for the New York Yankees prior to his enlistment. 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. In 1949 Connors became the first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Later he was traded to the Chicago Cubs.
In 1957 Connors beat 40 other actors for the lead on "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. The boy in the series was Mark, played by Johnny Crawford.
After "The Rifleman", the studios decided he made a great bad-man and in subsequent films played his new role to the hilt.

For "The Rifleman" Connors rode the horse -Razor-.