You probably know comedian Phil Silvers from the movie It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He had a half-hour, weekly TV show called The Phil Silvers Show – You’ll Never Get Rich. (1955 – 59) He played an army sergeant with a barracks full of men trying various money-making schemes that never work out.

Silvers tells the story:

A few years after my TV show ended, I was walking through NYC’s Central Park at night, when I felt a pistol being shoved into my back.

“Freeze or I’ll shoot,” a man’s voice said. “Give me your wallet.”

Right away I knew that voice 100%. It was one of the regular actors in my old TV show. “My wallet is in my jacket pocket,” I said. “Just take it and please don’t hurt me.”

“Are you Silvers?” the man asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Don’t turn around.”

He did not take my wallet. I heard his footsteps running away behind me. I waited a few seconds and then walked to my hotel.

Bonus Story – Phil Silvers said,

"On my TV show, we were required to have a 'technical advisor', so an Army captain was assigned to us. There was nothing much for him to do, and after 16 years in the Army he was getting out because of a back injury. I asked him what he planned to do, but he had no plans. So I said, 'I'll get you a SAG card, so you can appear on the show sometimes and get extra money'."

This captain had enlisted in World War Two and hoped to go on air-combat missions. But being six-foot, four inches and 210 pounds the Army told him, "There's nothing wrong with you, but we'd rather put a 200 pound bomb in the plane instead of you."

The captain worked on the Silver's show for four years, making infrequent appearances on screen. When the show ended, he played a Roman soldier in Spartacus, eight years of bad-guys on TV westerns.

Finally, he won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for the movie where he had a fist-fight with Paul Newman: Cool Hand Luke. Yes, George Kennedy.