Jayne Mansfield - Early life, Husbands and children, Film career and celebrity, Later career, Death, Filmography, Trivia, Quotes
Film actress, born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, USA. She made her debut in Underwater (1954), and became known for her striking looks in such films as The Female Jungle (1955) and The Girl Can't Help It (1956). In Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter (1956), she reprised a part she had created on stage.
|
Playboy centerfold appearance |
February 1955 |
|---|---|
| Birthplace | Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania |
| Birthdate | April 19, 1933 |
| Date of death | June 29, 1967 |
| Measurements | 40D - 21 - 36 |
| Height | 5 ft 6 in |
| Weight | Unknown |
| Preceded by | Bettie Page |
| Succeeded by | Marilyn Waltz |
Jayne Mansfield (born Vera Jayne Palmer April 19, 1933 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania; In her first few starring roles, Mansfield was courted by 20th Century Fox as a replacement for a then-misbehaving Monroe. However, her Hollywood film career proved fleeting; after playing key roles in a handful of major Hollywood productions she drifted into independently produced low-budget melodramas and comedy films, many of which were filmed in Europe, and nightclub tours.
Early life
She was the only child of Herbert William Palmer and Vera Jeffrey Palmer.
Jayne attended Highland Park High School.
While at Texas, she won several beauty contests including "Miss Photoflash," "Miss Magnesium Lamp" and "Miss Fire Prevention."
Husbands and children
Mansfield was married three times:
Paul Mansfield (May 10, 1950 - 1958), with whom she had Jayne-Marie (November 8, 1950);One biographer quotes Jayne as saying that Paul was not Jayne-Marie's father, but she married him because she was opposed to abortion.
Jayne and Hargitay bought a 40-room Mediterranean-style mansion formerly owned by Rudy Vallee at 10100 Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills, which they called the "Pink Palace."
Film career and celebrity
Mansfield wanted to be a movie star, and was willing to do practically anything for publicity.
Her movie career began with bit parts. In February 1955, Mansfield was the Playmate of the Month in Playboy, for which she would pose several more times over the ensuing years.
After two more movies at Warner Bros., one of which gave her a small role as a hitman's mistress opposite Edward G. Robinson in the hit film Illegal (1955), she went to New York and appeared in the Broadway production of George Axelrod's comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter (1955).
After the theatre run, she returned to Hollywood and made several television appearances including several spots as a featured star on game shows. Later in 1955 Paul Wendkos offered her the dramatic role of Gladden in his film adaptation of David Goodis' novel,The Burglar. The film was done in Film noir style and Mansfield appeared in the film alongside Dan Duryea and Martha Vickers. The film was released two years later when her fame was at its peak. She was successful in this straight dramatic role, however, most of her subsequent film appearances would be more based in comedy or focused on her sex appeal.
Mansfield then starred in Frank Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help It (1956). With her role in this film, she attempted to move away from her highly publicised dumb blonde image and establish herself as a serious actress. The role provided a change of pace from Mansfield's already stereotyped persona and enjoyed reasonable success at the box office.
In April 1957, Jayne pulled off one of the most notorious publicity acts in history by upstaging Sophia Loren during a party in Loren's honor at the famed Romanoff's. Mansfield, having already upstaged Jane Russell at a premiere party for Underwater! by coming out of a swimming pool topless (and amusing producer Howard Hughes) a few years earlier, pulled off a similar stunt with Sophia Loren by literally pulling out her breasts at the table Loren was seated at alongside a bemused Clifton Webb. Mansfield felt that exposing herself would be a priceless press coup and it was. Mansfield's breasts would shoot up and down in size in between having five kids and breast feeding and indeed many photos show her looking much smaller than her reputed 40D. Mansfield was unable to upstage Anita Ekberg who had the largest natural breasts in A-List Hollywood history at 39DD when she tried to pull a similar stunt on a studio backlot.
In October 1957, Mansfield went on a 16-country tour of Europe for 20th Century Fox.
The Girl Can't Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter were critically acclaimed and popular successes in their day and are largely considered classics today. Mansfield's fourth starring role in a Hollywood film was Kiss Them for Me (1957) where she received prominent billing and ostensibly co-starred with Cary Grant. However, in the film itself, she is little more than comedy relief while Grant's character shows a preference for a sleek and demure redhead portrayed by Suzy Parker. She had been persuaded to appear in the film, against the advice of others, by Fox's promise that if she agreed to star in the film they would let her star in her fantasy project The Jean Harlow Story - an empty promise designed solely to mollify her (Marilyn Monroe had also desired to appeared in a Harlow bio-pic, also squashed by the studio).
Mansfield won a Golden Globe in 1957 for Most Promising Newcomer - Female, beating out Carroll Baker and Natalie Wood. Even as her career drifted into low-budget movie comedies and melodramas, she remained highly visible and won a Golden Laurel in 1959 for Top Female Musical Performance for her role in UK-produced Western The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, a western spoof directed by Raoul Walsh.
Mansfield headlined in Las Vegas, toured with Bob Hope for the USO and released Jayne Mansfield Busts Up Las Vegas. She did a number of spots on television programs including The Jack Benny Show (where she played the violin), The Steve Allen Show, Down You Go and The Match Game.
Later career
Despite her monumental publicity, good roles dried up for Mansfield after 1958. Mansfield, nevertheless, kept busy in series of low-budget films mostly filmed in the UK and Europe. Around this time, Fox lined up another film for Mansfield, It Happened in Athens (1962). Depite receiving top billing, Mansfield's character is a supporting one.
Jayne and Mickey headlined at the Dunes in Las Vegas in an act called The House of Love. The act proved such a hit that she extended her stay and 20th Century Fox Records subsequently released the show as an album, Jayne Mansfield Busts Up Las Vegas, in 1962. The times were changing, and Mansfield decided to drop her inventive publicity agent Jim Byron and Hollywood contact Bill Schiffrin in order to carve out a more sophisticated image. None of the films she had made in the previous four years had been successful.
In 1963, Tommy Noonan - a comedian turned producer/screenwriter who had appeared in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and A Star Is Born, persuaded her to bare it all in Promises! The nude photographs of Mansfield on the set were published in Playboy. She was the first American mainstream actress to appear naked in a film. The film was banned in Cleveland, but enjoyed box office success elsewhere. Mansfield played the part of Evelyne, a sexy American singer / actress who travels to Hamburg by ship being followed by a successful American pop singer and sex-symbol Jimmy Jones (Quinn) who is really a German, homesick for home and his mother. Mansfield sings two German songs in the film, though her speaking voice is dubbed.
One critic summed up her 1960s filmography as "one of the most consistently awful in cinema history". The decision to do nude scenes in a film had ruined any chance of her return to "A" caliber Hollywood productions. In 1963, Mansfield released her now cult record Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky and Me in which she reads classical poetry (Shakespeare's sonnets, but also poems by Marlowe, Browning, Wordsworth among others) with a background of Tchaikovsky's music.
Death
In 1967, her time was split between a Southern nightclub tour and the production of Single Room Furnished, directed by Cimber. Mansfield continued her nightclub tour and started dating her divorce lawyer, Sam Brody, who was working to challenge Cimber's demand for full custody of his and Mansfield's child.
After an engagement at the Gus Stevens Supper Club in Biloxi, Mississippi, Mansfield, Brody, and their driver, Ronnie Harrison, along with Mickey Jr., Zoltan, and Mariska, headed in Gus Stevens' 1966 Buick Electra 225 to New Orleans, where she was to appear in a TV interview.
Rumors that Mansfield was decapitated have been proven untrue, though she did suffer severe head trauma. It is believed that this was either a wig that Mansfield was wearing at the time, or was her actual hair and scalp and that she was scalped in the crash.
Her funeral was held on July 3, 1967, in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania, officiated by a Methodist minister. Mansfield has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6328 Hollywood Boulevard.
In an A&E Network Biography program about Jayne Mansfield, the late Tony Randall, who had worked with her in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, talked about how friendly and down-to-earth Jayne was. Her death was one of the focal points of the 1996 film Crash, and a character recreates the accident on a highway, killing himself in the process.
User Comments Add a comment…