Chuck Connors Sketch...
by Teresa Trotter
Title
Chuck Connors Sketch...
Artist
Teresa Trotter
Medium
Drawing
Description
In 1940, following his departure from college, Connors played four baseball games with the Brooklyn Dodgers' minor league team, the Newport Dodgers (Northeast Arkansas League).
Following his military discharge in 1946, the 6' 6" Connors joined the newly formed Boston Celtics of the Basketball Association of America. He played 53 games for Boston before leaving the team early in the 1947–48 season.
Connors is one of 13 athletes to have played in both the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball. The twelve others to have played are: Danny Ainge, Frank Baumholtz, Gene Conley, Dave DeBusschere, Johnny Gee, Dick Groat, Steve Hamilton, Mark Hendrickson, Cotton Nash, Ron Reed, Dick Ricketts, and Howie Schultz.
Connors attended spring training in 1948 with Major League Baseball's Brooklyn Dodgers but did not make the squad. He played two seasons for the Dodgers' AAA team, the Montreal Royals before playing one game with the Dodgers in 1949. After two more seasons with Montreal, Connors joined the Chicago Cubs in 1951, playing in 66 games as a first baseman and occasional pinch hitter. In 1952, he was sent to the minor leagues again to play for the Cubs' top farm team, the Los Angeles Angels.
Released, he sat out the 1941 season, then signed with the New York Yankees' farm team, the Norfolk Tars (Piedmont League), where he played 72 games before enlisting in the Army at Fort Knox, Kentucky at the end of the season, on October 10, 1942.
Connors beat 40 other actors for the lead in 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. Connors said in a 1959 interview with TV Guide that the producers of Four Star Television (Dick Powell, Charles Boyer, Ida Lupino, and David Niven) must have been looking at 40–50 thirty-something males. At the time, the producers offered a certain amount of money to do 39 episodes for the 1958–59 season. The offer turned out to be less than Connors was making doing freelance acting, so he turned it down. A few days later, the producers of The Rifleman took their own children to watch Old Yeller in which Connors played a strong father figure. After the producers watched him in the movie, they decided they should cast Connors in the role of Lucas McCain and make him a better offer, including a five-percent ownership of the show.
The Rifleman was an immediate hit, ranking No. 4 in the Nielsen ratings in 1958–59, behind three other Westerns – Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, and Have Gun – Will Travel. Johnny Crawford, an unfamiliar actor at the time, former Mousketeer, baseball fan and Western buff, beat 40 other young stars to play the role of Lucas's son, Mark. Crawford remained on the series from 1958 until its cancellation in 1963. The Rifleman landed high in the Nielsen ratings until the last season in 1962–63, when it was opposite the highly rated return to television of Lucille Ball on The Lucy Show and ratings began to drop. The show was cancelled in 1963 after five seasons and 168 episodes.
Sketch drawing created by Teresa Trotter.
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April 2nd, 2021
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