Grave of Kevin 'Chuck' Connors- San Fernando, CA - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

Connors realized that he would not make a career in professional sports, so he decided to become an actor. Playing baseball near Hollywood proved to be fortunate, as he was spotted by an MGM casting director and signed for the 1952 Tracy-Hepburn film Pat and Mike. In 1953, he starred opposite Burt Lancaster, playing a rebellious Marine private in the film South Sea Woman. Connors starred in 1957's Old Yeller as Mr. Sanderson. That same year he co-starred in The Hired Gun. Although he was in feature films, such as The Big Country and Soylent Green, with Charlton Heston, Connors was best known for his television work. He appeared in a 1957 episode of Adventures of Superman titled Flight to the North, in which he played a good-natured (and very strong) backwoodsman named Sylvester J. Superman. He was featured in an episode of the syndicated crime drama, City Detective starring Rod Cameron, a segment of CBS's fantasy drama, The Millionaire, and on the short-live Peter Lawford sitcom, Dear Phoebe. In 1956, he appeared with Regis Toomey in the episode "The Nevada Nightingale" of the NBC anthology series, The Joseph Cotten Show. He portrayed George As well in the 1960 episode "Trial by Fear" of CBS's anthology series, The DuPont Show with June Allyson. He achieved stardom when cast as "Lucas McCain" in the ABC television Western series The Rifleman (1958–1963), with Johnny Crawford as his son, Mark. Connors portrayed a veteran of Berdan's Sharpshooters, a special unit of marksmen in the Civil War, who used a Winchester carbine with an enlarged trigger guard (like that of Rooster Cogburn, in the 1970 film True Grit) to serve up justice to lawbreakers in every episode, helping Marshal Micah Torrence (actor Paul Fix) as part of his civic duty. The Rifleman was a creation of Dick Powell's Four Star Television. In 1963, Connors appeared in the film Flipper. Connors next starred in NBC's post-Civil War-era series Branded (1965–1966) And the 1967-1968 ABC series Cowboy in Africa, alongside British actor Ronald Howard and Tom Nardini. In 1973 and 1974 he hosted a television series called Thrill Seekers. He had a key role as a slaveowner in the 1977 miniseries Roots. The actor achieved notoriety for an incident on an NBC prime-time baseball telecast in the 1970s. The network regularly invited a celebrity commentator to join the regular play-by-play crew in the broadcast booth. Connors accidentally said the "f-word" during the live national telecast, stunning both the announcers and the audience. Connors hosted a number of episodes of Family Theater on the Mutual Radio Network. In 1991, Connors was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. Connors died in Los Angeles at the age of 71, of pneumonia stemming from lung cancer. He had been married three times and was survived by his four sons.