Richard Anderson

Richard Anderson appeared on several episodes of The Rifleman and he was sometimes a good guy and sometimes not.  He remembers the set had a pleasant, relaxed atmosphere - due in no small part to Chuck's sense of humor.   He said Chuck always knew his lines and was very generous in his scenes with Richard; Chuck was a good listener.  He also moved very well and was good with the props, especially the rifle. Later on, Chuck guest starred on The Six Million Dollar Man with Richard.  He told Richard he was looking for a part like this so he wouldn't have to work so hard.  A definite misconception on his part according to Richard.   Below is a scene from The Rifleman in the episode called Lariat.   
             
                                                           

Gregory Walcott


Gregory Walcott was actually in competition with Chuck for the role of Lucas McCain, and he was very disappointed when he didn't get the role.  However, he said after he saw Chuck in the role he knew it was perfect for Chuck.  Gregory guest starred in two episodes of The Rifleman: The Angry Gun and Tension.  He remembers that in The Angry Gun, he and Chuck had a fight scene where Chuck is knocked down a steep hill.  At the point of the fall, Chuck stood on the edge of the hill, ready to do the stunt himself.  The director yelled, "No, Chuck! We have a stuntman to do that!" Chuck shrugged, stepped back and let the stuntman take the fall.  The director yelled, "Cut and print."  Just about that time, Chuck jumped over the edge and rolled beautifully down the hill.  The director was exasperated, "Why did you do that?  You could have hurt yourself!"  Chuck shrugged nonchalantly, and said innocently, "It's no big deal."  Gregory feels that Chuck, in his good-natured way, allowed the stuntman to do the stunt so he could get a nice stunt pay.  Although Chuck appeared stern in the character of Lucas McCain, in real life he was quite playful and a jokester. Gregory remembers an amusing incident at the Golden Boot Awards.  A friend of his walked with his wife over to Chuck's table and the man said, "Chuck, my wife is in love with you..."  To which Chuck stood up, picked his wife up and said loudly, "Boy, do I love your wife!" Typical of Chuck, who was beloved by the crew and had many admirers.


             




Gigi Perreau

Gigi recalls that she was 16 years old when she read the script for Heller, an episode of The Rifleman and she wanted the role.  She did a great job in the show and this is what she remembers:

"I remember doing "Heller," because once I read the script, I HAD to do that role!  It was so dramatic.  Not a lot of juicy roles for 16 year old girls so I was eager to do it.  After we filmed it, I was very proud of the work.  I, of course, had a crush on Chuck - he was sooo gorgeous and sooo tall - I came up to his belt buckle!!  He was great to work with - totally professional and a very nice person."

                                  




Patrick Wayne

Chuck and Patrick Wayne co-starred in The Deserter, a 1971 movie that was filmed in Spain.  Patrick remembers that when production was halted due to two weeks of rain, it was Chuck who kept everyone's spirits up.

Kevin Keating

Kevin will be sharing a story of his friend, Chuck Connors, very soon.  This picture was taken over Labor Day weekend, 1992, when Kevin spent a few days at Chuck's ranch.



                                     




Jordan Rhodes

Jordan is a working actor and director and was Chuck's friend for many years.  He has many wonderful memories of his friend Chuck and has shared this one with us.                               


                                                                   

                                       



"Chuck and I were invited to the Cannes Film Festival in the early '80's to play in the Cannes Film Festival Golf Tournament as celebrity guests.  Of course, being in Cannes with Chuck, we were certainly partying the night before the tournament.

Bright and early the next morning, we had to be at the course where they wanted to do me to do an interview with Chuck.  It was at this point that Chuck discovered they wouldn't allow him to ride in a cart.  We had to walk with our caddies. Chuck pulled me aside and asked me to figure out a way to get him a cart because he was feeling the effects of the night before.   Well, I tried but the answer was still 'no.' He was still grumbling about this (good naturedly) as we proceeded to the first tee for the TV interview. 

As I was conducting the interview, I noticed that Chuck had spotted an absolutely beautiful young French woman standing in front of the crowd that had gathered.  We continued the interview as Chuck's eyes continued to wander to the beautiful French woman.  We concluded the interview and they asked us to tee off together so they could film it for the interview.  So with the cameras running,  Chuck approached the first tee.  As he went into his "backswing," of course, he saw the girl, and playing for the camera, he stopped his swing, looked at the girl, shook his head and began to "address" the ball once more. At the top of his backswing, once again he stopped and shook while looking at the girl

On his next attempt to hit the ball, he stopped again during his backswing.  This time he dropped the club, walked straight over to the French girl, grabbed her in his best movie tradition, took her into his arms and gave her a big kiss.  He broke the embrace, rushed over, picked up his club and drove the ball about 280 yards straight down the fairway.  Of course, the crowd erupted into applause.

After the game was over, Chuck had managed to arrange a date for both of us for dinner that evening.  He took the beautiful young French woman and I wound up with her mother, who thankfully, was also very beautiful.  And that story is Pure Chuck!"

The picture below is of Chuck with the lovely French woman who is the subject of this memory.



                          

Arnold Palmer

Arnold Palmer met Chuck at a Pro-Am golf event in 1968 and both men took a liking to the other right away.  As a matter of fact, Chuck gave Arnold one of the rifles he used on The Rifleman and Arnold still has that rifle today.  He was thrilled when he got it.  Here is what Arnold sent for the site:

"I knew Chuck Connors fairly well and have one of his famous rifles.  We were good friends and played a little golf together.  I continue to enjoy watching his movies when they appear on television."

479mickel - YouTube Subscriber

"Along with my dad, Chuck Connors was my childhood hero. "The Rifleman is still one of my favorite shows because of its moral content. (I just wish that the TV people would put on shows like that now.) I had the good fortune to get to meet him in person in Dallas. He was gracious enough to let a photographer take a picture with my five year old son and I. Even in loafers, he towered above me. He was larger than life. "

Goodguy628 - YouTube Subscriber

Fred Spanjaard was a 12 year old boy doing some commercial work on TV when he was tapped to be the stunt double for a young boy appearing in an episode of Chuck’s series Cowboy in Africa. The episode was Incident at Derati Wells and the script called for a young Black boy to be on a runaway horse calling for help.  Chuck’s character races to the rescue.  However, it wasn’t a young Black boy on the horse but Fred.  It turned out the real actor couldn’t ride a horse much less handle a horse running and jumping over fallen logs.  Fred was a blonde haired  blue-eyed boy who had to wear dark makeup and a turban to look like the character he was doubling.  He recounts that he was pretty scared himself and to prevent his falling off, they tied him to the saddle.  He had a great week working on the show and shared this with us:

"I must say that Chuck Connors was one of the nicest gentlemen I ever ran into in Hollywood.  A kind and thoughtful man, gracious to everyone he encountered no matter what their position, and I was honored to have an opportunity to meet him and work with him."

David Fury

David is the author of the only biography on Chuck: Chuck Connors: The Man Behind the Rifle.  Chuck and David became friends and Chuck approved of David doing a biography on him, however, Chuck passed away before he actually was able to participate in the work.  David has many wonderful memories of his friend, Chuck.  He shared some with us for the site.

"One of the things I loved about Chuck Connors was his offbeat sense of humor!  We would talk on the phone quite often and he always had one of his "characters" ready to play a prank.   One day he changed his voice and claimed to be an FBI agent investigating me and another time he was an IRS investigator checking out my faulty tax returns...had me worried for a minute!

Chuck and I were both devoted lifelong baseball fans and we loved to talk about baseball.  My Minnesota Twins had won the American League pennant in 1991 and were headed for the World Series to play the Atlanta Braves.  I managed to get tickets to the World Series games to be played in Minneapolis and I hoped Chuck would be my guest.  It looked like there was a hole in his schedule that October and I extended my invitation through his secretary, Rosie.

The next day, Chuck called to thank me for the kind offer and told me how much he really wanted to come and watch the Twins and Braves battle in the World Series but that travel was getting more difficult for him and he loved sleeping in his own BIG bed, rather than hotel rooms.  There was sincere regret in his voice but he declined with apologies.

After the World Series, I sent him a Twins World's Championship baseball cap.  Chuck wore it into his local town of Tehachapi and when asked where he had got the cap he told them with a bit of pride:  "My friend in Minneapolis sent it to me."  Chuck toasted the Twins with a "cold one" and bought a round for a few of his friends at the local watering hole.

And that was Chuck Connors in a nutshell.  If he was your friend, you had a true friend indeed.  He was a talented man with an impressive body of work in television and the movies but I think Chuck would rather be remembered for the man he was and the fact that he was loved by so many of his fans.  And he loved baseball!

I remember what he would always say when asked if he would rather be a great actor or a great baseball player.  "You mean, if I could be Clark Gable or Jimmy Sewart, or Stan Musial, 'Stan the Man' of the St. Louis Cardinals?"  Chuck would get that wry smile of his and that twinkle in his eyes: "What do you think, man, what do you think?"  Then he'd break out that great Chuck Connors' smile and admit:  "Musial, of course.  If I could have hit like 'Stan the Man'...I'd still be playing ball today."

                                          






Alex Cord

Alex Cord was gracious enough to share some of his memories of Chuck with us.  He worked with Chuck in the movie, Synanon and an episode of Branded.   





                       





                       

Peter Ford, the son of actor Glenn Ford and MGM star Eleanor Powell, had just graduated with honors from USC in 1968 and had been accepted into USC Law School when actor George Montgomery invited him to appear in a movie that Chuck was starring in called The Proud and the Damned.   Much to his family’s dismay, Peter decided to do the movie so instead of going to law school, he spent six weeks filming his role in the mountains of Columbia, South America.  Peter graciously shared some of his memories of that experience with us.

After flying into Bogota, Columbia, in October, Peter, Chuck and actor Aaron Kincaid were bused to the remote area where the filming was to take place.  They stayed at the Hotel Mesopotamia where Peter recalls that scorpions were not only huge but everywhere.  They had to check their boots every morning before going to work.   Aaron Kincaid and Peter shared a room but Chuck, as the star, had a private room where he was informed the famous Liberator of Latin America, Simon Bolivar, had slept; Chuck was pretty proud of that.

It was a really tough location and there were no phones or television. The food was virtually inedible and besides the scorpions, there was a huge problem with mosquitoes.  Chuck's wife, Kamala Devi, would fly down to the location with all the supplies that Chuck had asked her to bring from the U.S.   On one trip, Chuck had asked the other actors what they wanted and it was a supply of bacon as they were just dying to have some.  So she brought down a huge slab of bacon and it had to be 10 or 15 pounds of it, Peter recalled. They hit the kitchen and started cooking that bacon right away and consumed it all at one sittting.

Peter also remembers that the Columbian horses were short so Chuck, as tall as he was, arranged to have a taller American horse brought down for him to ride.  All the other actors were on the shorter horses and Chuck towered over them on his horse.  Chuck, a prankster from the start, took particular pleasure in poking Peter’s horse in the rump to make him move when least expected.

When Chuck’s agent saw some of the dailies, he called Chuck to say that his make up looked awful, but Aaron Kincaid’s make up was great.  Chuck found out that Aaron was doing his own make-up so from that point on Aaron (& roommate Peter) got up an hour early every day so that Aaron could also do Chuck’s make-up.

The crew was there over our Thanksgiving Holiday.  Of course, the people in Columbia do not celebrate our Thanksgiving; but the hotel, remembering how excited they all were about the bacon, offered to make them a Thanksgiving dinner.  It didn’t turn out exactly as Peter, Chuck and the others hoped.  Dinner was raw pork and a bowl of popcorn.

There was an accident during the filming. Chuck was crossing a river when his horse fell on him injuring Chuck's shoulder very badly and causing a delay in the filming.  They had to fly a doctor in and Chuck had to have cortisone shots in the shoulder so he could finish filming.  Peter remembers that the needle used on Chuck's shoulder was as big as a harpoon.

As soon as Chuck finished all of his scenes, he had to leave to start filming his next movie, Captain Nemo and the Underwater City.  In Chuck’s absence, Peter doubled Chuck in a couple of scenes where no close-ups were required.  Peter was glad he finally got to ride the big horse.

Finally, Peter remembers that Chuck was a great guy, always very friendly and had a wry sense of humor.

                        


                        


                              

                          
                                        Photo Courtesy of Peter Ford



Bill Sasser

Bill Sasser is the coordinator of the Williamsburg Film Festival.  He shared his memory of Chuck with us:

"Some years ago, while researching the Newport News Daily Press archives on microfilm at my local library, I ran across a 1946 Newport News Dodger's Team Photo. Chuck Connors was a member of this team. I printed the photo and mailed it to Chuck. A few days later, I received an autographed photo of Chuck in a baseball uniform along with a letter of thanks. It was a thrill to get this from him."



                     

Jeff and Deb


We received this wonderful memory from some very loyal fans of Chuck:


What a wonderful site you have put together and what a marvelous tribute. Although we never had the opportunity to meet Chuck in person, both my wife an I feel that he was an integral part of our upbringing. The morals and character demonstrated in his shows, especially The Rifleman, seemed to have found their way into our daily lives more than any source other than our parents and family. Even our four children (the youngest of whom is now 19) grew up watching and learning from The Rifleman.

Prior to moving to the east coast a couple of years ago we had the opportunity to live in both Central and Southern California between 2002 and 2007. In Central California we resided in the community of Bear Valley Springs just outside of Tehachapi. We were just down the street from Chuck's ranch and were friends with the people who owned the neighboring property. While his house was lovely, the most interesting part of the property to us was the guesthouse which was (at least on the outside) a replica of the McCain home.

While in Southern California, we would go to Chuck's grave 3 or 4 times a month to clean around it and leave flowers.  We've sent along a picture of his grave with our tribute to him.

      




Jim Nolt


I just found your Chuck Connors site today and think it's quite grand. Since I was a boy I've had an interest in the Adventures of Superman starring George Reeves. I saw my first episode in 1953 and have been researching George and the series ever since. For more than ten years beginning in 1988, I published a magazine called The Adventures Continue. My website of the same name has been online since 1995. ( www.jimnolt.com )

In 1991 I had the great pleasure of speaking on the phone with Chuck Connors, and the following spring I published that conversation in TAC #7. I'd like to share it with you.







Candid Moment

Chuck was caught by a tourist's camera on the street in Hollywood while he (dressed as Lucas McCain) left the set to pick up a pack of cigarettes.  Notice the tourists in the background and their reactions to seeing Lucas McCain from the 1880's Northfork stroll down the 1960's street in Hollywood.  This photo is Courtesy of Dorothee from the collection of Moe Hunt.

                             

Roger Galloway

 I've done many interviews of western stars over the years including John Wayne (the best,) James Arness (still alive and a humble, super good man,) Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, James Garner, and Chuck Connors. ( I missed Randolph Scott, darn it. )  

I interviewed Chuck way back in 1973 when he was doing press for Soylent Green.  We talked mostly about Soylent Green and his role as a bad guy. However, I got to ask him about The Rifleman, which he said he loved playing because it offered him a wide range of emotions with a character he grew to know so well. Big guy, big heart.  Charlton Heston, who was there that day as well, obviously liked him too.

Chuck had the unique ability of playing bad guys and good guys equally well. I loved him in The Big Country and watched The Rifleman every week when I was a kid.  In 1996 I met Johnny Crawford in Hollywood. He was appearing as leader of a big band at a nightclub on Los Feliz Boulevard. We talked at great length about Chuck, who was certainly a father figure to him and they remained friends until Chuck's death in 1992.