by Jenna GuillaumeBuzzFeed Contributor

Content warning: this post references suicide.

Old Hollywood is full of wild tales which often seem unbelievable but turn out to be true. Still, many commonly-accepted rumors aren't fact at all. Here are some of the most popular Old Hollywood myths that have been debunked...

While a lot of awful things did happen on the set of The Wizard of Oz, the persistent myth that there's a dead body in the background of one of the shots is not true.

Silver Screen Collection / Getty Images

The conspiracy theory is that an actor who played one of the munchkins died by suicide and their body can be seen hanging from a tree at the end of the Tin Man sequence, as Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man sing "We're Off to See the Wizard."

MGM

But the figure is actually a large bird, which you can see moving if you watch the clip closely. At the very end of the shot, you can even see the bird spread its wings.

MGM

A fairly innocuous but commonly-held myth is that the rain in Singin' in the Rain had to be mixed with milk in order for it to show up on camera, but this has been repeatedly debunked.

Silver Screen Collection / Getty Images

The truth is the lighting department just did their job well. Singin' in the Rain co-directer Stanley Donen said, "When you're shooting rain, it has to be backlit, or you may not see it very well. There have been a lot of stories about how we put milk in the water so you could see the rain. It's not true. You have to put the light behind the rain so that the raindrops show."

MGM

A lot of people believe that the chocolate river in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was made out of a mixture of water, chocolate, and cream — but there was actually no chocolate in it, although a powder that was used to make chocolate ice cream was one of the ingredients.

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The other ingredients were water (of course) and a whole bunch of chemicals. Michael Bollner, who played Augustus Gloop, said, "It was actually not chocolate. It was terribly cold. It was stinky water!" Julie Dawn Cole, who played Veruca Salt, did note that, "people were emptying their coffee cup dregs into it."

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A long-accepted piece of Old Hollywood trivia is the idea that Marilyn Monroe had six toes on one of her feet, but had the extra toe surgically removed before she became famous. The myth came from a claim by photographer Joseph Jasgur, who did a shoot with Marilyn when she was still the teenage Norma Jean, and who noticed decades later, as he was collating the photos for a book, that in one it appeared as though she had an extra toe.

Sunset Boulevard / Getty Images

But other photos from the same photoshoot — not to mention countless more, including some from Marilyn's childhood, show that she in fact appeared to have the normal amount of five toes on both feet. Plus there is no other evidence that the myth is true.

Hulton Archive / Getty Images

One of the most iconic James Bond deaths is the character Jill Masterton, played by Shirley Eaton, in 1964's Goldfinger. Jill is covered in gold paint, which causes "skin asphyxiation" in the film.

Screen Archives / Getty Images

For some reason, the ridiculous plotline gave rise to the myth that Shirley Eaton had been killed by the gold paint in real life.

Eon Productions

It seems the rumor was fueled by the fact that Shirley retired from acting by the end of the '60s. The truth was, she wanted to focus on raising her two children and on photography and sculpting. She's still alive today.

Screen Archives / Getty Images, David M. Benett / Getty Images

There have been a number of dark stories circulated about Clark Gable, but one that seems to be just a myth is that he killed a pedestrian in a hit-and-run incident in 1933, and studio executives covered it up.

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The rumor seems to have stemmed from the conflation of two separate stories. The first was that in 1933, writer-director John Huston was allegedly drunk driving when he hit and killed an actor named Tosca Roulien. Although he was absolved by a coroner's jury, he was reportedly "traumatized" by the incident.

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Clark Gable, meanwhile, was reportedly in Alaska when the incident occurred. In 1945, he did crash his car into a tree, which seems to have further fuelled the hit-and-run myth.

Hulton Archive / Getty Images

The chariot race scene in Ben-Hur is one of the most iconic in Hollywood history, and there's long been a myth that a stuntperson was killed while filming it and his death was left in the movie. This has been debunked.

Silver Screen Collection / Getty Images

There is no evidence that the rumor is true, and lead actor Charlton Heston maintained that no one was seriously injured while filming the scene. The stunts were all carefully managed by legendary stunt coordinator Yakima Canutt.

Warner Bros

1920s icon Clara Bow was the "original It Gir

12 Old Hollywood Myths That Are Completely False