Actor Nearly Killed by Prop Gun

A Florida theater company’s production of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men got a little too real Monday when a prop gun almost killed an actor in rehearsal, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports. A revolver used in the play’s final scene—in which the character Lennie is shot—turned out to be loaded, sending a bullet ricocheting off Fred Kellerman’s skull and through one of his ears.

“The doctor said this is a million-in-one chance of something like this happening,” Kellerman, 81, said of the lucky shot, made possible when one of the cast members brought the gun from home without checking to see if it was loaded. (More actor stories.)