Jayne Mansfield had everything but in exaggerated doses. On the verge of the implausible, this is a story that combines extreme beauty, forbidden love, beheadings, maximum glamour, black magic, and dramatic disappearance.
But such an intense life, with the perfect ingredients to become a legend, can only invoke a cruel paradox. And it is that today, of her life, what is most remembered is her death.
Curvaceous goddess of the golden years of Hollywood, her career was as brief as it was intense.
In little more than a decade, a succession of scandals, light comedies, and excesses placed her at the top of a fierce media Olympus that always required her to take a new step. A universe of luxury and mystery that she gave her so much but she took more of her.
It is that she always (voluntarily) in the shadow of Marilyn Monroe, she believed she could handle the fame of dumb blonde that had put her on top. Unfortunately, she didn't make it.
"Good morning, my name is Jayne Mansfield and I want to be a movie star": the beginning
Vera Jayne Palmer - that was her real name - was born in Pennsylvania on April 19, 1933. Almost as a twist of fate, her first brush with death occurred when she was just over two years old. And in a car.
While she was driving, her father had a heart attack and died in front of her and her mother, who miraculously survived the accident.
Three years later, along with her mother's new husband, her family moved to Dallas. A place that she always recognized as small, flat; a broken rung on the ladder that would lead her to fulfill the dreams of fame that she had always had.
Brilliant—his IQ of hers was 163, she spoke five languages and played the piano, violin, and viola—she not even her motherhood could put an end to her desire. She never stopped taking drama and music classes.
At 16, she married Paul Mansfield -whom she would adopt the last name "because it was more cinematographic" than hers-, a neighbor five years older who represented the possibility of leaving the limits of a family that did not look favorably on her ambition.
So, along with her first husband and her young daughter, Jayne Marie Mansfield, she moved to California. And she dyed blonde.
"Good morning, my name is Jayne Mansfield and I want to be a movie star," she says she said. On the other end of her line, a Paramount secretary was listening. They felt her so safe that within a week she already had a place in the casting on duty.
She was to play Joan of Arc. Of course, her voluptuousness, her style, and the prejudices of her time immediately ruled her out for the role of her. But her path was beginning to take shape.
"I have the biggest breasts in Hollywood, I want you to make me a movie star": this is how the erotic myth was born
Christmas Eve 1954. To become an erotic myth, Jayne contacted Jim Byron, one of the best publicists of the time. The message left no room for doubt: "I have the biggest breasts in Hollywood, I want you to make me a movie star."
Her measurements -the exuberant 116-60-90-, her blonde hair, and her smile of studied naivety became the ideal combo for the daring strategy devised by the representative. The boost to fame that she needed.
Everything happened during the presentation of Underwater!, a 1955 film starring Jane Russell. According to the title, the event took place around a swimming pool. And there she appeared, the impressive Jayne Mansfield, with a tiny bikini.
When she jumped into the water, her bra came undone and the blonde came out, without any shame, topless. The photographers' flashes went straight at her. And a valid clarification: she did not appear by chance in the film.
"I like being a pin-up": the other Marilyn
From that moment on, she began her career on the big screen. There were 25 movies, the first in 1955, and the last one released in '67, the year she died.
She knew that her curves were her great letter of introduction and she never denied them. "I like being a pin-up, there's nothing wrong with it," she said. But she always expected more, she was convinced that it would only be the first step to being able to show all her talent.
However, despite her solid background, all they wanted from her was for her to play the S, half-dumb blonde.
The comparison - thankless, like all comparisons - was always latent. Jayne Mansfield was designed and presented as the other Marilyn Monroe, the Marilyn from side B. An exasperated version pushed to the limit of the great S symbol of the 20th century.
Jayne was always relegated to second place. Even her studies offered him the roles that Monroe refused to perform. But not even that was enough to be able to stand out and establish himself as a true star.
Her career navigated between light comedies, the blazon of having been the first American actress to appear N- in a movie in 1963 and dozens of covers and productions in Playboy.
In fact, Hugh Heffner himself defined her as "the best Marilyn Monroe clone of all the ones she had ever met."
The fight between the blondes, deaf and tenacious like few others, transcended screens and film sets. In The Kennedys in Hollywood, Lawrence J. Quirk tells that -just to imitate her opponent?- Jayne and John F. Kennedy had some S encounters.
The actress, showing little discretion, used to comment to whoever wanted to listen, that the president was not exactly a virtuoso between the sheets. “And once he's done, he's done; It is as if you no longer existed”, the book relates.
"It is the most wonderful feeling in the world, knowing that you are loved and wanted": the family
Her personal life was as fast-paced as or even more dizzying than her acting career. Separated from her first husband, with several known lovers (and not so many), in 1958 she met Miklós "Mickey" Hargitay, a muscular Mr. Universe who was participating in a Broadway show.
The crush was immediate. They were married a few months later in a wedding in which there were more press and onlookers than guests of the couple.
Throughout their six years of marriage, they had three children: Miklós, Zoltan, and Mariska Hargitay, the great Olivia Benson from Law and Order.
And how could it be otherwise, the couple lived in a mansion according to the required glamor. At 10100 Sunset Boulevard, "Pink Palace" underwent a complete redevelopment by Mansfield.
It was all one big pink fantasy. Fully carpeted, with padded, leather-lined walls, the most striking detail was a huge heart-shaped pool with "I Love You Jaynie" emblazoned on the bottom.
At that time, Mansfield decided to retire for a while to take care of her children. Fox, the company that had hired her, never forgave her and fired her from it. That was the beginning of the end.
“If you are going to do something bad, do it big, because the punishment will be the same”: satanism, excesses, and decadence
The '60s did not sit well with Jayne. The world was changing, feminism was looming on the horizon and a new standard of beauty was imposed.
Blondes fell out of favor; the women were now languid, distant, and much less explicit. That same body that had made him caress her success was now her doom.
Resisting the onslaught of her oblivion at all costs, she clung tooth and nail to scandals. It was the only way she found to stay current.
Divorced from Tony Cimber -a screenwriter with whom she lived for a little over a year and had her fifth child- and always waiting for a call that would allow her to show her talent, her final blow came from the hand of the last couple of hers.
Sam Brody was her attorney, was married to a disabled woman, and had two children. It was a questioned relationship -and questionable- from the beginning. He found her vulnerable and took advantage of her, pushing her to alcohol and LSD. She added chaos to an already chaotic life.
And amid that lack of control, she met a new and macabre character that would mark her last days: Anton LaVey. It was 1966.
The leader of the Church of Satan - author of the Satanic Bible and self-proclaimed Black Pope - was a media star who promoted earthly pleasures with pompous rituals of black magic at a time when the esoteric and the occult were in fashion.
The scandal played against her again. Photos of her being part of her cult branded her as a demon worshipper. Even, they say, there is the origin of the curse.
For some, the actress and the dark medium had an affair that ended badly; for others, during a visit to LaVey's home, Sam Brody laughed at his host by lighting what were apparently sacred candles.
This, say the Hollywood cliques, drove the satanist crazy who assured that Brody would carry a curse for life and that, if she continued with him, it would also affect Mansfield herself. Few took it seriously, but the facts confirmed it.
Believe or burst, a few days later, during a visit to a zoo, little Zoltan, one of Jayne's sons, was attacked by a lion. Almost inexplicably, according to witnesses, the little boy managed to save himself.
In the following months, other misfortunes? they overshadowed Jayne's life. Although less of a strange curse and more of a harsh reality, the star had some of her jewelry stolen and was accused of tax evasion. But the worst was yet to come.
The End: The Legend of the Headless Actress
It was the night of June 29, '67. Jayne had finished a show in Biloxi, Mississippi, and was on her way to New Orleans for another nightclub engagement.
In the front seat are the driver, Jayne Mansfield, and her partner, Sam Brody. In the back, Miklós, Zoltan, and Mariska, the three of the actress's children, sleep.
At the same time, far away, Anton LaVey carefully cuts out with scissors a photo of himself that had appeared in a magazine. Turning the image around, he sees that on the back there was a photo of the actress... Whose head he had cut off.
The journey continues. Everyone sleeps except the driver. A cloud of freshly sprayed bug spray on US 90 almost completely obscures visibility.
Suddenly, a stopped truck. The driver fails to avoid it. The crash is frontal. The '66 Buick Electra 225 is destroyed. All three adults are killed instantly; the children, again, miraculously escaped unharmed.
Rumors exploded: at the age of 34, Jayne Mansfield had been decapitated in an accident.
In reality, it was not like that and the autopsy was in charge of denying it, although few believed it and the legend took hold. The truth is that with her impact her wig flew bloody. And that confused, at first, the Police.
But the myth was already born. And Jayne Mansfield, the incredible protagonist of a movie life, would always be more remembered for her death.
