3. A Stuntman Dies On-Screen In Ben Hur
It's easy to see why so many people buy into this one, given the less safety-conscious time in which Ben Hur was made, and the fact that its famous chariot race sequence is so utterly visceral - how can someone
not have been harmed making it? While that's not an unreasonable belief, the notion that a stuntman's death would remain in the final cut of the film certainly is; how crass would a director have to be to do such a thing? The myth follows that the brutal demise of the character Messala is the one that claimed the life of the stuntman involved, and because of the shockingly realistic nature of its portrayal - he is run over during the race - people made the natural leap...that William Wyler must've (accidentally) done it for real and just kept it in.