I’ve known about this rumor for many years now – I used to work in a video store and we took a laser-disk copy of the WofOz and put it up on the big screen.
While you can indeed see, what we determined to be an osterich, flapping its wings - if you look over to the left of the screen, you’ll see something weird going on between two trees.
What was explained to me was when the midget hung himself, the bird freaked out and spread it’s wings. The film guys didn’t catch on until it was way post-production, so they took that section and tried to edit the scene by grey-ing out that little part. Its hard to see it, but between two trees, there is no color, and you can sort of see something happening at the same time the bird flares itself.
Was it a suicide? Who knows - and I heard it was a midget who was in unrequited-love with miss Garland.
Yes, I know - I read the Q&A and I was responding to it, but somehow entered my response in the wrong area. Why do you think I posted in the first place??
If it was a laserdisk, it was an NTSC version of a fifth-generation (or so) print. (And the editing you posit would have been hellishly difficult and expensive in 1939.)
Not to mention that I personally know several of the Munchkins. If the story were true, I’d know it.
Well, that’s because you’re all looking in the wrong place. The suicide in fact happened on the Kansas set. In the scene where Dorothy visits Professor Marvel, while she’s in the wagon, the munchkin hanged himself outside the wagon, offscreen to the left. You can’t see it because it’s offscreen. You can see the shadow, however, which has clearly been edited because it faces a different direction from the shadow that Toto casts. Furthermore, although it’s supposed to be windy outside, the flag – er, the hanging Munchkin is perfectly still. And the last bit of evidence: the Munchkin was a female, her name was Tracey Home, and so they put a tribute farewell line to his memory at the end of the movie, when Judy Garland says three times, “There’s no Tracey Home.”
Bah. The problem with conspiracy theorists is that they can claim anything they like, however preposterous, and then say that the “evidence” has been hidden, so can only be seen if you’re wearing the special glasses and aluminum foil helmet.
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