Dinah Shore was haunted for years by ULs that she had a black baby and/or was part black herself. The latter is fairly easy to debunk since her parents were Orthodox Jews from Russia. The former dies due to lack of anything remotely considered evidence.
Nowadays such lies spread so easily and are hard to stamp out with facts. Back then, even without the Internet, things were nearly as bad. The old “friend of a friend told me” rumor mill was surprisingly powerful.
Old Dope thread.
No doubt there were a lot of similar rumors about the celebs of the day.