Here Are 14 Morbid And Shocking Behind-The-Scenes Secrets About Kids' Movies And Actors
Warning: The following contains mentions of sexual assault, abuse, and addiction.
1.Judith Barsi, who voiced Ducky in The Land Before Time and Anne-Marie in All Dogs Go to Heaven, was murdered by her own father in 1988. She was only 10 years old.
Her father, Jozsef Barsi, shot her and then her mother, Maria. He then subsequently turned the gun on himself and died as a result. Prior to her tragic death, the young actor also suffered abuse at her father's hands, and he reportedly frequently threatened to kill her and her mother. The Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services investigated the abuse, but no further action was taken.
2.There are numerous allegations that Judy Garland, who was 17 years old at the time, faced abuse on the set of The Wizard of Oz. She was reportedly placed on strict diets and forced to bind her chest because the producers wanted her to look younger and slimmer.
“They’d give us pep pills,” Garland said about her teenage years under MGM Studios. “Then they’d take us to the studio hospital and knock us cold with sleeping pills…after four hours, they’d wake us up and give us pep pills again…that’s the way we worked, and that’s the way we got thin. That’s the way we got mixed up."
Additionally, her ex-husband, Sid Luft, alleged in his memoir (released posthumously) that Garland had been molested by the actors who played the Munchkins. "They would make Judy’s life miserable on set by putting their hands under her dress…the men were 40 or more years old," he wrote.
3.Lilo & Stitch (2002) originally included a scene where Stitch hijacks a Boeing 747 jet and crashes it through a building to save Lilo. After 9/11, Disney went back and changed the sequence completely, fearing it would be too close to the real-life attacks.
The scene was replaced with a spaceship being hijacked and crashing into the mountains instead. You can watch the original, deleted scene below:
4.Robert Knox, who played Marcus Belby in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was stabbed to death just a few days after he finished filming. He was 18 at the time of his murder.
The actor was fatally stabbed by Karl Bishop while attempting to protect his younger brother. Bishop was later sentenced to life in prison.
Here's one of the scenes Knox was featured in:
5.The tunnel scene in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) isn't just unsettling to watch — it was also apparently terrifying for the actors to film.
In the scene, Wonka leads a boat full of kids into a dark tunnel, where things get...weird. If you need a refresher on the nightmare-inducing sequence, here's a clip below:
The reason it was so terrifying for the actors? According to Julie Dawn Cole (who played Veruca Salt), none of them knew about the scene ahead of time and thought they were in actual danger. So, that was real fear! "Gene [Wilder, who played Willy Wonka] wasn't a method actor and did take direction, but he was always creating his own thing," she explained. "We never quite knew what we were going to get from him, particularly the boat scene in the film, when he went slightly loopy — whether that was improvisation or not, I'll never know, but we certainly didn't see it coming."
6.Three people, including two young children, were killed while filming a helicopter scene for Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1982.
The scene was supposed to depict a helicopter bombing. When the aircraft caught on fire, however, the pilot was forced to crash land into a river, where actors were wading. The right landing skid crushed 6-year-old Renee Chen to death. The helicopter blade then sliced through 7-year-old Myca Dinh Le and 53-year-old actor Vic Morrow, decapitating them both.
The child actors had been hired illegally, without the necessary permits secured. Several people involved in production, including the director, associate producer, and explosives specialist, were tried and acquitted for manslaughter.
The incident led to new safety standards being put in place in the film industry. On-set ambulances became mandatory, insurance companies were looped in with every detail, and risk managers were hired, for starters.
7.Buddy Ebsen was initially cast as the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, but was replaced when he was hospitalized. The actor suffered from poisoning as a result of the makeup, which was made of pure aluminum dust.
The role was recast with Jack Haley. Instead of directly applying the aluminum to Haley's face, the makeup artists opted to mix it into a kind of paste, which they then painted on to his face.
Ebsen wasn't the only one to sustain severe physical injuries from this film. Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West, suffered from third-degree burns from filming certain scenes.
8.The classic holiday film The Santa Clause was MUCH darker originally. Initially, Tim Allen's character was apparently supposed to shoot Santa to death.
Allen explained to Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show: "The original Santa Clause is a little darker, written by two comedians, and I actually shot and killed Santa. … He fell off the roof because I thought he was a burglar. He gives me the card, the whole movie starts. The kid actually starts, ‘You just killed Santa.’ And I said, ‘He shouldn’t have been on the roof when he wasn’t invited.'"
9.Phil Hartman, who co-wrote the movie Pee-wee's Big Adventure, was shot and killed by his wife, Brynn Omdahl, in a 1998 murder-suicide. He was 49 at the time of his murder.
Hartman was also known for his role as Captain Carl on Pee-wee's Playhouse and, most famously, his time as a cast member on Saturday Night Live.
After shooting Hartman three times, Brynn fled the scene and drove to two separate friends' houses to confess. She then returned to the house with a friend, who called the authorities. Brynn fatally shot herself before the police arrived to the scene.
10.Matthew Garber, who was known for playing Michael in Mary Poppins, died of haemorrhagic necrotising pancreatitis as a result of complications from hepatitis in 1977. He was only 21 at the time of his death.
You can watch a clip of Garber's performance here:
11.The original Alfalfa actor Carl Dean Switzer — who starred in Our Gang, the inspiration for The Little Rascals, was murdered in 1959.
The actor was killed when a friend shot him over a money dispute. Switzer reportedly owed the acquaintance $50 and had failed to produce it. He was 31 years old at the time of his death.
12.Pixar story supervisor Joe Ranft died in a car accident while he was in the midst of working on the movie Cars.
Ranft co-wrote multiple Disney films, including Toy Story and A Bug's Life, and worked as a story artist on Monsters, Inc. He also had voice roles such as Wheezy in Toy Story 2.
Ranft and his friend, Elegba Earl, were killed after their car went off Hwy. 1 and descended 130 feet into water, close to the mouth of the Navarro River. Ranft was 45 at the time of his death, and Earl was 32. A third passenger in the vehicle survived.
13.Bobby Driscoll, who voiced Peter Pan in Disney's animated Peter Pan and starred in Song of the South, was found dead in an abandoned building at age 31. Despite being a household name as a child, his body initially went unidentified — his own mother didn't find out about his death until a year and a half later.
Driscoll's death was reportedly caused by his repeated use of heroin and other hard drugs. Prior to his death, the actor was arrested multiple times for drug possession, assault, burglary, and check kiting. "I had everything," he said in an interview after being sentenced to prison. "Was earning $50,000 a year…working steadily with good parts. Then I started putting all my spare time in my arm."
