Chuck Connors

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 13 athletes in the history of American professional sports to have played in both Major League Baseball (Brooklyn Dodgers 1949, Chicago Cubs, 1951) and the National Basketball Association (Boston Celtics 1946–48). 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 and education Connors was born on April 10, 1921, in Brooklyn, New York City, the elder of two children born to Marcella 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.