Early Years
Connors was born in Fresno, California, of Armenian descent. He was an avid basketball player in high school who was nicknamed "Touch" by his teammates. During World War II he served in the United States Army Air Forces. After the war he attended the University of California at Los Angeles on a basketball scholarship, where he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. William A. Wellman got him into acting after noticing his expressive face while Connors was playing basketball. He appeared on the Los Angeles CBS station as "Touch" Connors in an episode of Jukebox Jury before the program went national via ABC in 1953. Connors is credited in his early films, such as Island in the Sky (1953), Swamp Women (a.k.a. Swamp Diamonds), Five Guns West (1955), The Day the World Ended (1955), and Flesh and the Spur (1957) as "Touch Connors".
He played basketball for coach John Wooden at UCLA.
Connors recalled in an interview that he was renamed by Henry Willson saying that "Ohanian" was too close to the actor George O'Hanlon and came up with "Touch Connors".
Read more about this topic: Mike Connors
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