Robert Mitchum was living in Long Beach, Ca with his sister who was working at the local playhouse. She told Mitchum, “They’re casting a play there today. Why don’t you go with me?”

At the playhouse, he was sitting next to his sister and the other actors, when the director asked, “Who would like to try out for the lead?”

No one raised their hands, so his sister goosed Mitchum in the butt with her thumb and he jumped up. The director called him up on the stage, he read for it and got the part. Through-out life, Michum’s nickname was ‘the goose’ and nobody knew where it came from.

An agent saw Mitchum in the play and offered him a part in a Hopalong Cassidy movie. The first day, the wrangle asked him, “Did you ever ride a horse?”

“I was born on a horse,” Mitchum lied. 

Trying to mount up, the horse kept moving away from him. So, Mitchum took it behind a building, hit the horse behind the ear as hard as he could and said, “I need this job.”

He rode the horse all day filming scenes. At the end of the day he rode back to the stables. The wrangle said, “Wow. I didn’t think you could ride him.”

“Why not?”

“You know that hat you’re wearing? The guy who was wearing that hat yesterday, got killed by this horse. That’s how you got the job.”

(Story source: Mitchum's son Chris.)