Hollywood's 50 All-Time Hottest Rumors

16. Tooting His Own Horn. Town talk has long had it that a certain greatly endowed, great-looking dude has such yogic dexterity that his very favorite form of nonprofessional performance is to orally pleasure himself while others, including girlfriends, watch in amazement

17. The Movie Star and the President. Speculation that Marilyn Monroe and President John F. Kennedy had a torrid affair has persisted so long it's often spoken of as simple fact. The two had plenty of opportunity, and there is that "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" performance on record, not to mention tales of wiretap recordings of trysts at JFK's brother-in-law Peter Lawford's beach house. But there's about as much chance of proving this as there is of proving there really was a gunman on the Grassy Knoll.

18. The Movie Star and the President's Brother. With JFK preoccupied with presidential concerns, stories have it, Marilyn sought comfort from Bobby Kennedy, the Attorney General, and when he blew her off it was the end of her.

19. The Movie Star and the CIA. If you believe the last two items, you're supposed to accept as a given that Marilyn was killed by the CIA for knowing too much about the Kennedy brothers. Her death was officially listed as suicide and she'd long been emotionally unstable, but that didn't slow the rumors--or stop the bad movies.

20. The Movie Star and the President II. By now the world knows that Bill Clinton has strayed here and there from monogamy, but can it be true that early in his presidency, he wanted so badly to be compared to JFK that he hounded a certain sexy superstar to appear at his nationally televised birthday celebration and croon, in the manner of Marilyn Monroe, "Happy Birthday, Mr. President ..."?

21. Jack and Jessica. Rumors circulated during the production of 1981's The Postman Always Rings Twice to the effect that when Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange were shooting the sex-on-the-kitchen-table sequence, things got very steamy. Eye-popping outtakes were said to be a hot item on the Beverly Hills underground screening circuit for years afterward. We've never seen them. Have you?

22. Indecent Proposal. The persistent rumor that's dogged a long-married, glamorous household-name couple for years claims that studio bosses paid her $5-million to lend him heterosexual credibility by marrying and raising kids with him--with yearly bonuses so long as he remained box-office attraction worth protecting. The longevity of the rumor has more to do with the very real tradition of studio-arranged marriages (for such stars as Barbara Stanwyck and Rock Hudson) than with any evidence that this particular union is less than the real thing.

23. The Big Change. The much-repeated tale goes that when this second generation star was born she was hermaphroditic, and that her parents chose to have her surgically altered to be exclusively a girl. The story is so prevalent it's been openly discussed on radio and the Internet with names attached.

24. Superman. The perennial rumor about just who reigns as Hollywood's most prodigiously endowed guy constantly changes. Among the contemporary names widely mentioned are David Duchovny, Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, James Woods, Michael Bay, Dolph Lundgren, Andy Dick, Peter Weller, Norman Reedus, Eric Lutes, Chris Isaak, Carl Weathers, John Schneider and Ed Begley Jr.

25. The Screen Sex Queen Who Would Be King. During the '30s, it was rumored that one of the box-office sex queens of the day was actually a man by birth. Post-mortem examinations of screen legends Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Mae West, the most-mentioned suspects, proved that none of them was the cross-dressing icon.

26. Hair Apparent. Hair rumors are perennial favorites, especially the ones about desperate cover-ups. The latest tale, which has long been proven false, has Bruce Willis getting costly digital effects to fill in the gap on his dome.

27. Leading Lady. Accolades follow this star's every career move, but so too do rumors that, on every film, she calculatedly seduces her leading man--not for sexual pleasure, mind you, but to gain power over him.

28. My Latest Protégé. Tongues wagged all over town when this hit-making, very married filmmaker became mentor to a boyishly good-looking fledgling director. More tongues wagged when the established talent dropped the mentoree. Half the gossip said it was because he realized the romantic feelings he'd developed for his protege. The other half said it was because the kid turned out a bunch of so-so movies.

29. Don't Drink The Water. Rising star Sharon Stone was so disliked by coworkers on the back-to-back shoots for King Solomon's Mines and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold in Africa that one day before she arrived on the set for a scene that required her to immerse herself in a water barrel, members of the crew peed in it. This is one of the few rumors you can rest assured is true--Stone herself confirmed it in Movieline.

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