Topic: Chuck Connors

Chuck Connors (April 10, 1921 – November 10, 1992) was an American actor and a professional basketball and baseball player, best known for his starring role in the 1950s ABC hit western series The Rifleman.

Connors was born Kevin Joseph Aloysius Connors in Brooklyn, New York, a son of Allan and Marcella (Lundrigan) Connors, immigrants from the Dominion of Newfoundland. His father was a longshoreman and his mother a homemaker. He was reared Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Connors's athletic abilities earned him a scholarship to the private high school Adelphi Academy, and then to the Catholic college, Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. He left college after two years, and in 1942 enlisted in the Army at Fort Knox, Kentucky. He spent most of the war as a tank-warfare instructor, stationed at Camp Campbell, Kentucky, and later at West Point, New York.