"Here they are, Jayne Mansfield"
"Here they are, Jayne Mansfield"
Jayne Mansfield (born Vera Jayne Palmer, April 19, 1933-29 June 1967) was an American actress and Playboy centerfold.
One of the leading sex symbols of the 1950s, Mansfield starred in several popular Hollywood films that emphasized her platinum-blonde hair, dramatic hourglass figure, and cleavage-revealing costumes. She was a recipient of a Golden Globe Award and a Theatre World Award for two early screen and stage performances.
Early life
Jayne Mansfield, of German and English ancestry, was the only child of Herbert William and Vera (nee Jeffrey) Palmer. She was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania but spent her early childhood in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. When she was three years old her father, a lawyer who was in practice with future New Jersey governor Robert B. Meyner, died of a heart attack while driving in a car with his wife and daughter. After his death her mother worked as a school teacher and in 1939, when Vera Palmer remarried, the family moved to Dallas, Texas. Jayne's desire to become an actress developed at an early age. After high school she studied drama and physics at The Southern Methodist University.
In 1950, at age 16, Jayne married Paul Mansfield. Her acting aspirations were temporarily put on hold with the birth of her first child, Jayne Marie Mansfield, on November 8, 1950. She juggled motherhood with classes at the University of Texas at Austin, then spent a year at Camp Gordon, Georgia during her husband's service in the United States Army. She attended UCLA during the summer of 1953 then went back to Texas for fall quarter at Southern Methodist University in Texas. Back in Dallas, she became a student of actor Baruch Lumet, father of director Sidney Lumet and founder of the Dallas Institute of the Performing Arts. On October 22, 1953 she first appeared on stage in a production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.
Jayne won several beauty contests while living in Texas; these included Miss Photoflash, Miss Magnesium Lamp and Miss Fire Prevention. The one title she turned down was Miss Roquefort Cheese because she said it "just didn't sound right".
Acting career and celebrity
Jayne's husband hoped the birth of their child would discourage her interest in acting. When it did not he agreed to move to Los Angeles in late 1954 to help further her career. Between a variety of odd jobs, including candy vendor at a movie theatre, Jayne studied drama at UCLA. Her movie career began with bit parts at Warner Brothers. She had been signed by the studio after one its talent scouts discovered her in a production at the Pasadena Playhouse. Mansfield had small roles in Female Jungle (1954), and in Pete Kelly's Blues (1955) which starred Jack Webb.
In 1955 Paul Wendkos offered her the dramatic role of Gladden in The Burglar, his film adaptation of David Goodis' novel. The film was done in film noir style, and Mansfield appeared along side Dan Duryea and Martha Vickers. The Burglar was released two years later when Mansfield's fame was at its peak. She was successful in this straight dramatic role, though most of her subsequent film appearances would be either comedic in nature or capitalize on her sex appeal. After two more movies at Warner Bros., one of which gave her a minor role as Angel O'Hara, a hitman's mistress, opposite Edward G. Robinson in Illegal (1955).
In 1955, she went to New York and appeared in a prominent role in the Broadway production of George Axelrod's comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1955). The New York Times described as the "commendable abandon" of her scantily clad rendition of Rita Marlowe in the play, "a platinum-pated movie siren with the wavy contours of Marilyn Monroe".
Mansfield then returned to Hollywood and starred in Frank Tashlin's film The Girl Can't Help It (1956). On May 3, 1956 she signed a long-term contract with 20th Century Fox. She then played a straight dramatic role (albeit as a stripper) in The Wayward Bus (1957). With her role in this film she attempted to move away from her dumb blonde image and establish herself as a serious actress. This film was adapted from John Steinbeck's novel: the cast included Dan Dailey and Joan Collins. The role was a change of pace from Mansfield's stereotyped persona and the film enjoyed reasonable success at the box office.
She won a Golden Globe in 1957 for Most Promising Newcomer - Female, beating Carroll Baker and Natalie Wood, for her performance as a "wistful derelict" in The Wayward Bus. It was "generally conceded to have been her best acting", according to The New York Times, in a fitful career hampered by her flamboyant image, squeaky voice ("a soft-voiced coo punctuated with squeals"), almost comically voluptuous figure, and limited acting range.
She then reprised her role of Rita Marlowe in the 1957 movie version of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, co-starring Tony Randall and Joan Blondell. The Girl Can't Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? were popular successes in their day and are largely considered classics. Her fourth starring role in a Hollywood film was Kiss Them for Me (1957) in which she received prominent billing alongside Cary Grant. However, in the film itself she is little more than comedy relief while Grant's character shows a preference for a sleek, demure redhead portrayed by fashion model Suzy Parker. Kiss Them for Me was a box office disappointment and would prove to be her final starring role in a mainstream Hollywood studio film.
Career decline
Despite her monumental publicity and public popularity, good roles dried up for Mansfield after 1959, the year after she married Mickey Hargitay, a Hungarian-born bodybuilder who had been Mr. Universe 1955. The actress, nevertheless, kept busy in series of low-budget films mostly filmed in the Europe. These showed off as much of her anatomy as possible, but provided little display of her acting or comedic talents. Mansfield remained a highly visible personality even with these career setbacks.
Fox tried to cast Mansfield opposite Paul Newman in his (failed) first attempt at comedy, Rally Round The Flag, Boys, but the actor preferred her Wayward Bus co-star Joan Collins. Among other unrealized projects, Joe Pasternak was to produce Three Blondes, a film based on a French novel by Pierre Dassete that (hopefully) would have co-starred Mansfield, Lana Turner and Kim Novak. However, the project was dropped before production began.
In 1960 Fox loaned her out to appear in two independent gangster thrillers in England. These were Too Hot to Handle which was directed by Terence Young and co-starred Karlheinz Böhm, and The Challenge co-starring Anthony Quayle. Fox also lined up It Happened in Athens. The Olympic-themed movie was filmed in Greece and would not be released until 1962. Despite receiving top billing in It Happened in Athens Mansfield was relegated to a colorful, scantily-clad supporting role.
Promises! Promises!
In 1963, the comedian turned producer-screenwriter Tommy Noonan persuaded Mansfield to become the first American mainstream actress to appear in the nude with a starring role in the film Promises! Promises!. Photographs of a naked Mansfield on the set were published in Playboy. In one notorious set of images Mansfield stares at one of her breasts, as does her male secretary and a hair stylist, then grasps it in one hand and lifts it high. The sold out issue resulted in an obscenity charge for Hugh Hefner which was later dropped. (In Kenneth Anger's book Hollywood Babylon II, a photo from an unknown source reveals a shot from the movie's set in which Mansfield displays prominent pubic hair.) Promises! Promises! was banned in Cleveland, but it enjoyed box-office success elsewhere. Because of the film's success, Jayne landed on the Top 10 list of Box Office Attractions for that year.
Career end
By the early 1960s Mansfield's reign in Hollywood was effectively over. One critic summed up her last decade of film vehicles as "one of the most consistently awful in cinema history". The decision to do nude scenes had ruined any chance of her return to prestige productions. Even Mansfield seemed stunned by her sudden shift in professional status, saying, "Once you were a starlet. Then you're a star. Can you be a starlet again?"
In 1963 she appeared in the low-budget West German movie Homesick for St. Pauli (a.k.a. Heimweh nach St. Pauli) with Austrian born schlager singer Freddy Quinn. Mansfield played Evelyne, a sexy American singer who traveling to Hamburg by ship. She is followed by an Elvis like American pop star (Quinn). Mansfield sang two German songs in the movie, though her speaking voice was dubbed.
Publicity stunts: Wardrobe malfunctions
By the late 1950s, Mansfield began to generate a great deal of negative publicity due to her repeatedly successful attempts to expose her breasts in carefully staged public "accidents" that today would be euphemistically called "wardrobe malfunctions". Her bosom was so much a part of her public persona that talk-show host Jack Paar once welcomed the actress to The Tonight Show by saying, "Here they are, Jayne Mansfield" (the line was written for Paar by Dick Cavett). Early in her career, the prominence of her breasts was considered problematic, leading her to be cut from her first professional assignment, an advertising campaign for General Electric, which depicted several young women in bathing suits relaxing around a pool.
In April 1957, her bosom was the feature of a notorious publicity stunt intended to deflect attention from Sophia Loren during a dinner party in the Italian star's honor. Photographs of the encounter were published around the world. The most famous image showed Loren raising a contemptuous eyebrow as the American actress, who was standing between Loren and her dinner companion, Clifton Webb, leaned over the table and allowed her breasts to spill over her low neckline and expose one nipple.
A similar incident, resulting in the full exposure of both breasts, occurred during a film festival in Berlin, when Mansfield was wearing a low-cut dress and her second husband, Mickey Hargitay, picked her up so she could bite a bunch of grapes hanging overhead at a party; the movement caused her breasts to erupt out of the dress. The photograph of that episode was a UPI sensation, appearing in newspapers and magazines with the word "censored" hiding the actress's exposed bosom.
The world media was quick to condemn Mansfield's stunts, and one editorial columnist wrote, "We are amused when Miss Mansfield strains to pull in her stomach to fill out her bikini better. But we get angry when career-seeking women, shady ladies, and certain starlets and actresses ... use every opportunity to display their anatomy unasked."
Mansfield's most celebrated physical attributes would alternate in size due to her pregnancies and breast feeding five children, and indeed many photos show the actress's bosom appearing smaller than its reputed 40D measurement. During a nightclub tour in London, England in 1967, her breasts were measured by paparazzi, and they were reported to be 46D. The director and producer Russ Meyer said that Mansfield's reputation for being large-breasted was based on a misconception and due mainly to her visibly large ribcage and the adoption of daring decolletages.
Personal Life
Jayne Mansfield was married three times and divorced twice, producing five children. The actress reportedly also had affairs and sexual encounters with numerous individuals, including Claude Terrail (the owner of the Paris restaurant La Tour d'Argent), the Brazilian playboy billionaire Jorge Guinle, and Robert F. Kennedy. Her rival, Monroe had relations with Guinle and Robert's brother John F. Kennedy. She was accompanied, in her death, by her lawyer and boyfriend at the time, Sam Brody.
She had a brief affair with Jan Cremer, a young Dutch writer who dedicated his autobiographical novel I, Jan Cremer (1965) to the actress, who called it "a wild and sexy masterpiece" and the author "my Pop Hero". She also had a well-publicized relationship in 1963 with the singer Nelson Sardelli, whom she said that she planned to marry once her divorce from Mickey Hargitay was finalized.
The Pink Palace
In November 1957, shortly before her marriage to Hargitay, Mansfield bought a 40-room Mediterranean-style mansion formerly owned by Rudy Vallee at 10100 Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills, which she had painted pink and then called the "Pink Palace". As its name implies, the mansion's interior and exterior color scheme was largely what would become the actress's signature color, with cupids surrounded by pink fluorescent lights, pink furs in the bathrooms, a pink heart-shaped bathtub, and a fountain spurting pink champagne. Hargitay, who was a plumber and carpenter before he got into bodybuilding, built its famous pink heart-shaped swimming pool. Engelbert Humperdinck bought the Pink Palace in the 1970s. In 2002, he sold it to developers, and the house was demolished in November of that year.
Death
After an engagement at the Gus Stevens Supper Club in Biloxi, Mississippi, Mansfield, Brody, and their driver, Ronnie Harrison, along with the actress's children Miklós, Zoltan, and Mariska, headed in Stevens' 1966 Buick Electra 225 to New Orleans, where Mansfield was to appear in an early morning television interview. On June 29, at approximately 2:25 a.m., on U.S. Highway 90, the car, which was reportedly going 80 miles per hour, crashed into the rear of a tractor-trailer that had slowed down because of a truck spraying mosquito fogger. The children survived with minor injuries, but the adults were killed instantly. The car was returned to its owner, Gus Stevens, who eventually sold it. It was in a museum in Florida for several years but now is owned by a Mansfield fan in North Carolina.
Rumors of decapitation: Rumors that Mansfield was decapitated have been proven untrue, though she did suffer severe head trauma. This urban legend was possibly spawned by the appearance in police photographs of what resembles a blonde wig tangled in the car's smashed windshield. It is believed that this was either a wig that Mansfield was wearing at the time or was her actual hair and scalp.
Copyright: This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on Jayne Mansfield.