page_title: Chuck Connors
section_title: Typecasting & other TV roles
hierarchical_section_title: Chuck Connors / Acting career / Typecasting & other TV roles
caption_attribution_description: Photo of Chuck Connors as John Egan and guest star Broderick Crawford (star of Highway Patrol) from the television program Arrest and Trial.
context_page_description: Kevin Joseph Aloysius "Chuck" Connors 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 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.
context_section_description: In 1963, Connors appeared in the film Flipper. He also appeared opposite James Garner and Doris Day in the comedy Move Over, Darling in the role earlier played by Randolph Scott in the original 1940 Irene Dunne/Cary Grant version entitled My Favorite Wife.
  As Connors was strongly typecast for playing the firearmed rancher-turned-single-father, he then starred in several short-lived series, including: ABC's Arrest and Trial (1963–1964), an early forerunner of Law and Order featuring two young actors Ben Gazzara and Don Galloway, 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. Connors guest-starred in a last-season episode of Night Gallery titled "The Ring With the Red Velvet Ropes". In 1973 and 1974 he hosted a television series called Thrill Seekers.
  He had a key role against type as a slave owner in the 1977 miniseries Roots, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for his performance.
  Connors hosted a number of episodes of Family Theater on the Mutual Radio Network. This series was aimed at promoting prayer as a path to world peace and stronger families, with the motto, "The family which prays together stays together."
  In 1983, Connors joined Sam Elliott, Cybill Shepherd, Ken Curtis and Noah Beery, Jr. in the short-lived NBC series The Yellow Rose, about a modern Texas ranching family. In 1985, he guest-starred as "King Powers" in the ABC TV series Spenser: For Hire, starring Robert Urich. In 1987, he co-starred in the Fox series Werewolf, as drifter Janos Skorzeny. In 1988, he guest-starred as "Gideon" in the TV series Paradise, starring Lee Horsley.
  In 1991, Connors was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
caption: Connors opposite Broderick Crawford in Arrest and Trial, 1963
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