Watch Harrison Ford's First Ever Movie Role... As a Bellhop in 1966

When the news broke that Harrison Ford had crashed his small plane on to a golf course Thursday afternoon, the internet held its breath and hoped that the legendary actor would be OK. Luckily, the seemingly indestructible Ford escaped the crash with injuries that were not life-threatening.

But our minds are still on the 72-year-old megastar, who has given us so many iconic characters, from Han Solo and Rick Deckard to Indiana Jones, Jack Ryan and the badass President James Marshall. Despite the enviable roster of on-screen personas, Ford wasn’t exactly an instant sensation. In fact, a whole decade passed between the time Ford moved to Los Angeles in 1964 and the time he finally convinced George Lucas to cast him in Star Wars.

Ford’s first gig in Hollywood was as part of Columbia Pictures’ New Talent program, which paid him $150 a week to work in small bit parts in various films as he ostensibly developed his craft. Ford’s first on-screen role (though it was uncredited) came in the 1966 movie Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round… in which the future Han Solo played a bellhop.

As you can see in the clip above, it was a pretty tiny part — he has a quick conversation with James Coburn while trying to deliver an envelope — and it’d be hard to predict that the 24-year-old in the green jacket would ultimately become an icon. In fact, that’s exactly what some of the brass at Columbia though, too; as he recalled in an interview with Conan O’Brien, Ford was chastised by Walter Beakel, the head of the New Talent program for not seeming like a movie star during his brief 30 seconds of screen time.

"He said, ‘I saw the rushes from yesterday … You’re never going to make it in this business. The first time Tony Curtis was ever in a movie, he delivered a bag of groceries. You took one look at that guy and you said, That’s a movie star,’” Ford recalled. ”And I leaned across his desk and I said, ‘I thought you were supposed to think that’s a grocery delivery boy.’”

Ford, who would later unsuccessfully audition for The Graduate, would eventually be released by Columbia, become trained as a carpenter, and get a small part in George Lucas’ 1973 film American Graffiti. And the rest is whip-crackin’, blaster-packin’, shirt-swappin’ history.