There is an online calculator from the University of Virginia Degrees of Kevin Bacon at OracleofBacon.org that uses the definitive Internet movie database (at imdb.com). Craig Fass, Mike Ginelli, and Brian Turtle originally conceived of the game when they were students at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1993. They observed that Kevin Bacon, who had appeared in nearly thirty respectable diverse films at the time, acted out a movie of sorts. global nexus that could connect to any other actor with six or fewer steps. For example, here are Vivien Leigh’s results for Gone with the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire:

1. Vivien Leigh was in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961) with Jill St. John; 2. Jill St. John was in The Player (1992) with David Alan Grier; 3. David Alan Grier was in The Woodsman (2004) with Kevin Bacon.

Thus, Vivian Leigh produces a Kevin Bacon number of 3. Now, for more variety, the site also allows you to calculate the steps between two actors. For example, here is the shortest path you can find between Carrot Top (Scott Thompson) and Ethel Barrymore:

1. Carrot Top was Chairman of the Board (1998) with Bill Erwin; 2. Bill Erwin appeared in The Color of Evening (1994) with Stuart Whitman; 3. Stuart Whitman was in Johnny Trouble (1957) with Ethel Barrymore.

The trick is to get this number as high as possible. So I thought I’d try an equally ridiculous couple like Natalie Portman and Shemp Howard, but even that one didn’t do better:

1. Natalie Portman was in Zoolander (2001) with Ben Stiller; 2. Ben Stiller was in The Nutt House (1992) with Emil Sitka; 3. Emil Sitka was in Husbands Beware (1956) with Shemp Howard.

The name Emil Sitka probably doesn’t mean much to most people, but he was a regular on many of The Three Stooges shorts, often wore bottle glasses of coke and a mustache and probably best remembered as a judge of Mouse peace that says: Hands, lovebirds. “Next, let’s try Macaulay Culkin and Dooley Wilson (Sam the pianist in Casablanca):

1. Macaulay Culkin was in Rocket Gibraltar (1988) with Burt Lancaster; 2. Burt Lancaster was in Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957) with Frank Faylen; 3. Frank Faylen was in Passage West (1951) with Dooley Wilson.

Hmm, 3 again. Can we now connect Pia Zadora with Rondo Hatton? Safe.

1. Pia Zadora was in Favorite Deadly Sins (1995) with Brian Keith; 2. Brian Keith was in Arrowhead (1953) with Milburn Stone; 3. Milburn Stone appeared in Spider Woman Strikes Back (1946) with Rondo Hatton.

For those of you under the age of thirty-five, Pia Zadora is a richly married cherub, actress, and singer who was the butt of many industry jokes during the ’80s, but who was laughed at in the end by winning a Grammy nomination. . Milburn Stone, a name rarely heard in the same sentence as Pia Zadora, was better known as Doc on the long-running TV series Gunsmoke. Rondo Hatton started out as a normal-looking reporter for the Tampa Tribune, but developed acromegaly, a pituitary disorder that causes the face and hands to grow uncontrollably. Making the most of it, he pursued a second career as a character actor in horror movies. Let’s see if we can do better by pairing Eddie Deezen (War Games’ insufferable geek) with Grace Kelly:

1. Eddie Deezen was in Grease (1978) with Michael Biehn; 2. Michael Biehn was in Blood of the Hunter (1995) with Edward Meeks; 3. Edward Meeks appeared in Rearranged (1982) with Grace Kelly.

As you can see, it’s very difficult to get numbers higher than three, regardless of the apparent disparity between the two actors you choose. Of course, you could boost your scores by selecting two dark wonders of an image that hardly anyone has heard of, but which would not be interesting. Ideally, there should be two easily recognizable people who took very few photographs and who are as chronologically separated as possible. A logical suspect could be Peter Ostrum, who played Charlie in the original Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but turned down all subsequent film offers and became a vet. Pair him with Albert Dieudonné, who played the title role in Abel Gance’s epic silent film Napoleon (1927), but he appeared in just three more pictures:

1. Peter Ostrum was in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) with Roy Kinnear; 2. Roy Kinnear was in Return of the Musketeers (1989) with Christopher Lee; 3. Christopher Lee was in Amere Victoire (1957) with Joe Davray; 4. Joe Davray was in Madame Sans-Gene (1941) with Albert Dieudonné.

So there we are: 4. That Roy Kinnear really moved, until he died in 1988 falling off a horse. Because he was involved in a wide range of pretty big movies, he invariably spoils it for Peter Ostrum and Willie Wonka’s other relatively un-famous alumni (Julie Dawn Cole, Denise Nickerson, Michael Bollner, etc.). Christopher Lee is equally ubiquitous and, in fact, scores the lowest of ALL Hollywood actors in terms of this kind of interconnectedness.