Jimmy Stewart was in "Airport '77" with Kathleen Quinlan, who was in "Apollo 13" with Kevin Bacon.

Kevin Bacon was born on July 8, 1958, in Philadelphia, the sixth of six children of a city planner and a teacher. At the age of 17, he left high school early to go to New York City and study at the Manning Street Actor's Theater and the Circle in the Square Theater School. He trod the boards Off-Broadway for several years in such plays as "Getting Out" and "Forty Deuce," for which he won an Obie award.

His Hollywood film career began in 1978, when he played ROTC student Chip Diller in "Animal House" ("Thank you, sir! Please, may I have another?"). It wasn't until 1982's "Diner" that he really began to be noticed, and it took his leading role in "Footloose" in 1984 to make him into a star. In the meantime, he had done a little bit of TV work, appearing in the soap operas "Search for Tomorrow" and "Guiding Light" in the early 1980s, plus appearing on Broadway in plays such as "Slab Boys."

Fred MacMurray was in "The Apartment" with Jack Lemmon, who was in "JFK" with Kevin Bacon.

Bacon continued to work steadily in film, with major roles in big budget historical dramas ("JFK" and "Apollo 13"), horror movies ("Tremors" and "Hollow Man"), kids' movies ("My Dog Skip" and the animated "Balto"), comedies ("She's Having a Baby" and "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles"), and movies about river rafting ("The River Wild" and "White Water Summer"). More importantly for his personal life, his TV work included 1987's "Lemon Sky," co-starring Kyra Sedgwick, who he married in 1988. The two have two children, a boy named Travis and a girl named Sosie. The family splits its time between an apartment in New York City and a house upstate.

As a side project, in 1994, Kevin Bacon and his older brother Michael formed the rock band The Bacon Brothers. The duo has recorded and released three CDs as of 2002, and performs in clubs and coffeehouses in New York and elsewhere.

Barbara Billingsley was in "Back to the Beach" with David Bowe, who was in "A Few Good Men" with Kevin Bacon.

In 1996 or thereabouts, three movie buffs at Albright College in Pennsylvania made the observation that Kevin Bacon had been in a lot of movies with a lot of other well-known actors. The three attempted to apply Stanley Milgram's "six degrees of separation" theory to Bacon, seeing if he could be linked to any other actor in five movies or less. It worked with just about everyone they could think of, and the three contacted MTV's "The Jon Stewart Show" and described the theory. As it happened, Kevin Bacon himself soon appeared on the show, and via telephone, the three students attempted to link Bacon to various actors whose names were thrown out by host Jon Stewart.

Apparently, everyone who was watching "The Jon Stewart Show" that day immediately logged onto the Internet and e-mailed the "rules" of the game to everyone they knew. Descriptions of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon appeared in Premiere, Entertainment Weekly, and other magazines, and the fad swept the country.

The only problem was that the more movies Kevin Bacon appeared in, the easier the game got.

Vin Scully was in "For Love of the Game" with John C. Reilly, who was in "The River Wild" with Kevin Bacon.


Wink Martindale was in "The Lively Set" with Carole Wells, who was in "Funny Lady" with Colleen Camp, who was in "Trapped" with Kevin Bacon.


Sources:

  • Internet Movie Database (of course) (imdb.com)
  • The Bacon Brothers web site (baconbros.com)
  • The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia (oracleofbacon.org)
  • The Six Degrees of Separation node right here on e2

Unfortunately, the author of this writeup has to cheat because I've never been in a feature film, but I was in several video projects in college with an anonymous friend who is easily visible in the background of a scene in "The Big One" with Michael Moore, who was in "Canadian Bacon" with John Candy, who was in "JFK" with Kevin Bacon.

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