The Wizard of Oz curse

Stories of disaster on the set of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, which mix real injuries to cast and crew with a tale of a munchkin suicide caught on film that Snopes found false.

Several people were badly hurt making The Wizard of Oz. Wikipedia reports that ten days into the shoot, the actor Ebsen had a toxic reaction to the aluminum powder in his makeup after breathing in its dust again and again, and was taken to hospital in critical condition. His daughter Kiki Ebsen says the studio wrongly passed it off as an allergy.

The AFI Catalog, citing a studio memo, records that on 28 December 1938 Margaret Hamilton was burned while filming the Wicked Witch's exit from Munchkinland amid flames and smoke, before a hidden lift could take her below. Her face took first-degree burns and one hand second-degree ones. She was back at work in the second week of February 1939. Wikipedia says Hamilton then refused to film a broomstick scene with a smoking broom, so LeRoy gave it to her stunt double, Betty Danko. The smoke rig failed and Danko was badly injured.

A story also goes round that a munchkin took his own life on set and that the moment shows in the finished film. Snopes looked into it and found that nobody died during filming, on camera or off.