10 Mind-Blowing Film Rumours That Turned Out To Be Fake

6. The Wizard Of Oz Munchkin Suicide

During a key scene in The Wizard of Oz in which Dorothy ignores the Wicked Witch of the West's advice to steer clear of Scarecrow and carries on her merry way down the Yellow Brick Road with him, there's movement in the background of a shot. It seems like nothing significant, until you start hearing the rumours that the silhouette looks an awful lot like a Munchkin actor hanging themselves. Why would a Munchkin actor kill themselves and not even have the common decency to do it off-camera, you ask? Well, the reasons given are plentiful: some theorists say that the dwarven actor was smitten by a Munchkin actress who didn't return his affections and so, heartbroken, he decided to take his own life. Another version tells of a down-on-his-luck actor sick of being forced into the same roles because of his stature and killing himself so as to avoid the humiliation of his vocation. Naturally, of course, they're all wrong. With a few clicks of a mouse or DVD remote you can easily zoom in on the alleged little person suicide to reveal that it's not actually a Munchkin at all... but an exotic bird spreading its wings. There were plenty of them populating the Oz set during filming, and it's ludicrous to think that the editor, director and countless other people who'd seen the footage would ever let the film be released when it contained a live suicide!