New development in Wizard of Oz "hanging"?

Based on this column: Can a Munchkin be seen committing suicide in The Wizard of Oz? - The Straight Dope

I know there must have been several previous threads on this, but the only one I could find was from 1999 and it seemed a bit silly to revive it, so I just started a new one.

Based on Cecil’s column, and a Snopes article at Does 'The Wizard of Oz' Include a Munchkin Suicide? | Snopes.com , the thing you see in the background is a bird. In fact, if you look a the clip on the Snopes page, it seems so obviously to be a bird that I wondered how anyone could possibly think it was anything else. If you look up “wizard of oz munchkin hanging” on YouTube you can find many more of the same clip, showing the same thing.

However, I came across this page: - YouTube

The person who posted it claims that it came from a VHS tape, and the bird was added digitally to later laserdisc/DVD versions to cover up the hanging. In this one, there clearly does seem to be something hanging - no trace of a bird flapping its wings. So I’m not really sure what to think. Regardless of what you see, an actual hanging is unlikely because of the reasons Cecil/Snopes already mention - how was it kept secret for 50 years, how did the actors not notice during the scene when they are dancing/walking right by it, etc.

So, what do you think? Maybe someone in charge of a rerelease simply decided to add a digitally created bird just to cover up the “whatever-it-is” as a way of trying to put the rumors to rest?

Missed the edit window…forgot to add…

Or there’s the possibility that this latest YouTube video is the one that is actually digitally altered, just to get some attention and YouTube hits. I guess one way to check is if someone here has an actual 80s VHS tape of the movie?

Does anyone at home have an old VHS version they can pop in to verify what’s in the Youtube video? Because that pretty obviously looks like a hanging person to me.

Edit: OP beat me to the punch. If someone (preferably multiple people) at home with the old VHS tape can verify that what the Youtube video shows is accurate I’m going to sit in the “it’s a hanging person” camp. If not, the Youtube author is pulling our legs.

Edit #2: I’m finding several other videos online and there is an obvious difference between the VHS and DVD releases. So unless there’s a Youtube Wizard of Oz hanging person conspiracy…

If you find video of the old black and white version it looks like a bird (or something - but definitely not a hanging person). See here for just one example.

So in the (original?) black and white version I’m seeing footage of a bird.
Then, for the VHS release, it’s been changed and there’s a hanging person.
Then, for the DVD release, it’s that fucking bird again.

So… either the people putting those videos up are fucking with us (I’ll wait for Doper help) or we need to check to see if the people responsible for the VHS rework ever helped with Disney’s The Little Mermaid.

As far as I know there was never a B&W version of the parts that take place in Oz.

I suppose someone may have filmed it off a B&W TV.

Yeah, I should have caught that on my own. I’m not a particularly good detective!

Still, I’d appreciate any Dopers who have the actual VHS at home verifying if what the OP’s Youtube clip (and others) shows is accurate.

My parents have a copy on VHS that they purchased around 1989 (I believe it’s the 50th anniversary edition). It was that tape that I looked at after first reading this column in whichever book it was published in. What is on the tape absolutely looks like a bird and not at all like that Youtube video. The probability that the Youtube clip is edited is close to 100%.

The apparent hanging object makes 5.5 oscillations in 20 seconds, for a period of 3.6 s. Using the pendulum formula T = 2pi*sqrt(L/g), we find that the length of the pendulum must be 3.3 meters. Yet the apparent attachment point of the object is only slightly above the “head”. So either there’s some higher attachment point we’re not seeing, or that’s not a real physical object.

Oh, and there’s also the matter that, if they wanted to hide something, it’d have been a heck of a lot easier to replace the “body” with just blank background, rather than putting in something as complicated as an ostrich, especially considering that they couldn’t have done it via computer at that time.

I think it’s also worth mentioning that the column was published in 1997. DVDs had barely been invented at that time and I doubt the Wizard of Oz had been released on the format yet. In all likelyhood, Cecil was watching the VHS for his research.

Edit: It was first released on DVD less than two months before the column. But I still imagine he was working from the VHS.

You’re right that the blank background would have been easier, but replacing a body with an ostrich or whatever could have been done…if there ever was a body. The whole story is ridiculous on its face, but it wouldn’t have been beyond filmmakers of the time to change the image, for example by simply drawing something on each frame of film.

There’s a funny story about the making of “The Last Waltz”, in which Scorcese has to matte out a chunk of cocaine that falls out of Neil Young’s nose. Wiki says it was hanging from the end his nose, but I remember reading that it was especially difficult to pull off because the coke was in motion.

I think it was both…hanging from the end of his nose (not falling), AND “in motion”…in motion because either Neil was moving around (or moving just his head), or the camera was moving, or both.

This story is all new to me, I have never even watched the Wizard of Oz, but one thing immediately occurs to me. If that is a dead munchkin, then why do the three characters active in the scene happily walk right up to and past it? They could not have failed to see it, so why do they not react to it?

The quality of the footage looks too good for VHS anyway, especially old VHS. I call foul.

I call fowl.

Also, at around the 15 second mark, the whole area around the “body” shifts around noticeably. The same thing happens when zoomed and slowed, etc. To my trained eye (BA in “this exact thing”) the video in question is faked.
The masking of the foreground characters is nearly perfect, but the camera motion tracking gives it away.

I have a bad recording of the Wizard of Oz on beta taped off of TV way from long ago. I’d heard of this rumor and me and my dad tried to see the hanging back in about 1990 or so. I could ever see was something that looked like it was swinging, but I could never verify what the blobby shape was.

LaurenIpsum’s link is way different than I remember. What I saw was something actually swinging like on a pendulum. It wasn’t nearly as dark, and it blended mostly into the background and it didn’t start moving until the scene was almost over. There was no mistake, me and my dad watched this scene over and over and over trying to discern what the blob was (I got chills from it because I couldn’t quite make out what was going on)

This particular link looks way too good for anything off of VHS or beta. I’m claiming it’s photographic fakery.

OK this is more of what I remember only fuzzier.

Concur entirely.

The thing that gets me is that the three actors walk right up to the alleged body while singing. You’d think if there was a dead body there, one of them might have at least miss a beat.

I also know that scenes like this take multiple takes. Something always goes wrong. Someone turns a half second too soon, a missed step, some scenery drops down. Even if things went perfectly, you know they’d do at least thee or more “perfect takes” in order to cut and paste between them. They probably spent a whole day just shooting this one scene.

Somewhere, someone would have noticed “Hey, is that Ralph hanging in the background?”

Now, Ed Woods was known for shooting in one take, and it shows. Ed Wood didn’t care if a tombstone fell, or the background changed from day to night and back to day in one scene. Or, if a policeman scratched himself with his loaded gun. If someone said there was a dead body hanging in the background of an Ed Woods film, I’d believe that.

It’d probably be one of the actors. “I’m staring in an Ed Woods film. My career is dead. I might as well end it all now”. Heck, considering how cheap he ran things and the quality of the acting, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the actors were diseased. That way, he wouldn’t have to pay scale.

That would explain Bela Lugosi.