If you wander the World-Wide Web aimlessly enough — and long enough — sooner or later, you will happen upon that late-nineties phenomenon known as the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." The parlor-game-turned-board-game that began in 1993 and quickly became a college campus and Internet phenomenon, has spawned a Newsweek article, network television news stories, a book and a whole Internet subculture of probability-minded trivia buffs fascinated by what numbers and a little statistical analysis reveal about the interconnectedness of the human race.
The game is intended to prove that actor Kevin Bacon is the center of the Hollywood universe (and, in extreme manifestations of the affliction — the Center of THE Universe) because all other actors are connected to Bacon by a chain rarely longer than 6 and usually as short as 2 actors. The game goes like this. Pick any actor who has ever appeared in a feature movie (the Internet Movie Database, which catalogs over 100,000 movies, lists almost 250,000 actors who have ever appeared in movies). Then connect that actor to Kevin Bacon in as few intermediate steps as possible. The number of steps is referred to as the Bacon Number (and an actor's number is referred to by some as his or her "Coefficient of Baconosity").
Some Examples:
Mel Gibson has a Bacon Number of 2: Gibson appeared in Conspiracy Theory (1997) with Julia Roberts; Roberts was in Flatliners (1990) with Kevin Bacon.
Nicole Kidman has a Bacon Number of 2: Kidman was in Batman Forever (1995) with Tommy Lee Jones; Jones was in JFK (1991) with Kevin Bacon.
Greta Garbo has a Bacon Number of 3: Garbo appeared in Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931) with Clark Gable; Gable was in Combat America (1943) with Tony Romano; Romano was in Starting Over (1979) with Kevin Bacon.
Calculations such as these produce Bacon Numbers which some find surprising. Such diverse actors from earlier Hollywood history as Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Ronald Reagan, Bette Davis, Buster Keaton, and Humphrey Bogart, all have Bacon Numbers of 2. Even Charlie Chaplin is separated from Bacon by only 3. One of those claiming co-authorship of the Kevin Bacon game, Brett C. Tjaden, who maintains The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia, has calculated that the average Bacon Number for all actors is 2.8. According to Tjaden, more than 1,200 actors have Bacon numbers of 1; over 74,000 have numbers of 2; and over 133,000 have Bacon Numbers of 3. Tjaden's web site offers visitors an easy-to-use Bacon Number calculator; just enter an actor's name and view the resulting Bacon Number.
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