Snowball (1960)

10-year-old Mickey (Dennis Waterman) is late home from school. He tells his parents he was thrown off the school bus by the conductor for not having a ticket, obliging him to walk four miles. The local press makes an issue of the incident and the story snowballs out of control. The conductor, Phil Hart (Kenneth Griffith), a former POW with memory problems, is harassed until he collapses on railway tracks and is killed by a train. Mickey finally owns up to lying.