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 12 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 (1958–63).
Connors was born Kevin Joseph Aloysius Connors on April 10, 1921 in Brooklyn, New York, the elder child of two children born to Marcella (née Londrigan) and Alban Francis "Allan" Connors, immigrants of Irish descent from Newfoundland and Labrador. He had one sibling, his younger sister, Gloria, two years his junior, According to the federal census of 1930, his father and mother and both sets of his grandparents were natives of Newfoundland.