It is one of the greatest “s*x symbols” in history. With the body of Marilyn Monroe and the IQ of a gifted person, she revolutionized Hollywood. She lived only 34 years but left behind hundreds of 'pin up' photos, twenty films, three husbands, five children, and a black legend that magnified her tragic death.
People are only interested in my numbers: 102-53-89 », joked Jayne Mansfield about the measurements of her spectacular body. And it was not easy for her to go unnoticed. Perhaps that is why the policemen who approached the wrecked car did not hesitate for a second. The deceased woman was 'the' Mansfield.
That morning of June 29, 1967, there was a fog on National Highway 90, near Slidell, in the state of Louisiana. A tractor-trailer suddenly slowed down to avoid colliding with a crop duster truck. And disaster occurred. The following Buick Electra crashed into the tractor-trailer.
Six people were traveling in the Buick: three children in the back and three adults in the wide front seat, so typical of the big cars of the time. The little ones only suffered minor injuries, but the older ones died instantly. The other two fatalities are Mansfield's latest lover, Sam Brody, and chauffeur Ronnie Harrison.
The news caused a sensation. There were all sorts of rumors about the crash in Mississippi: that Mansfield was decapitated in the crash; that at that moment she was doing something more than "handyman" with her lover...
Others insisted that the accident was coming, that the statuesque blonde's days were numbered after becoming involved in Satanism and snubbing the enigmatic Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan. There doesn't seem to be much truth to such astonishing assertions, but why did Jayne Mansfield's passing so ignite the popular imagination?
She spoke five languages and was a viola soloist, but she rose to fame when her bikini fell off "by accident" at a promotional event.
Born on April 19, 1933, under the name of Vera Jayne Palmer and raised in New Jersey and Texas in a middle-class family, little Jayne soon stood out for her great natural intelligence. In addition to getting excellent grades at school, he had a great facility for languages (he would speak five languages fluently) and displayed remarkable musical talent: at the age of twelve, he played the piano, violin, and viola in the solo category. Some paradoxical qualities in that she, as an adult, would be known as the epitome of the blonde with a spectacular physique, but with the brain of a mosquito.
At seventeen she married Paul Mansfield, whose last name she adopted and kept even after parting ways with her. She moved to Los Angeles with him in 1954. Her goal: to succeed in Hollywood. A goal shared by thousands of more or less pretty provincial women. Jayne had two advantages over most of them: her 163-point IQ (belonging to geniuses) and an hourglass-shaped hunk topped by an imposing front.
Jayne rose to fame in 1955 thanks to a ruse by the production company RKO to promote the film Underwater, a boddle of adventures in the Caribbean whose main incentive was the use of innovative underwater cameras designed to capture in detail the splendid body of the protagonist, Jane Russell.
In the course of a reception for the press held next to the studio pool, Mansfield –hired for the event– began to splash around dressed in a very skimpy bikini whose upper part soon came off 'by accident'. The cameras captured the exuberance of that model, hitherto unknown, despite the eclipsed Jane Russell.
With these "talents" as a weapon, Mansfield appeared in dozens of beauty pageants in Los Angeles. And she won almost all of them: Miss Orchid, Miss Fourth of July, Miss Geiger Counter, Queen of the Nylon Sweater, Miss Chihuahua…
In the aftermath of the bikini incident, the voluptuous figure of Jayne Mansfield went on to grace the covers of countless men's magazines. Ready as she was, she told herself that her time had come and that curves were not enough. She dyed herself platinum blonde and adopted the affectations of the bombshell blonde she was sweeping at the time, Marilyn Monroe, to whom she would be repeatedly compared.
And the doors of Hollywood were finally opened to him. Mansfield got her first starring role in Blonde on the Hill (1956). She was followed by other movies, but none of them were really successful because Jayne was starting to fall victim to her faked role of brainless blonde: no one was taking her seriously. Then her personal problems began.
In 1956 she divorced Paul Mansfield. She would marry two more times: the first, with the bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay, who had obtained
In 1956, she divorced Paul Mansfield. She would marry two other times: the first, with the bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay, who had obtained the title of Mr. Universe; then, in 1964, with director Matt Cimber. And she had endless lovers, among them, they say, the brothers Robert and John Kennedy, in one more replica of Marilyn Monroe.
With 30 years she was already finished. In 1965 she appeared on a show in Spain with the Dúo Dinámico...accompanying them on violin!
But, curiously, the rapid transformations in the role of women in the United States caused Mansfield to begin to be seen as an anachronistic figure and somewhat pathetic at the beginning of the sixties.
During their first visit to the United States in 1964, the Beatles expressed an interest in meeting the stunning blonde they had fantasized about as teenagers. They were disappointed to meet her, to such an extent that George Harrison referred to her as "that old firecracker." Jayne Mansfield at the time was 31 years old.
The sixties were of absolute decadence. With an increasingly cartoonish and deformed physique –as a consequence of her growing problems with alcohol–, definitively discarded by the big Hollywood studios, Jayne Mansfield took refuge in nightclub performances, where she sang 'spicy' songs, and in ridiculous roles in low-budget European films. During her forays through Europe, Ella Mansfield came to visit Spain, where in 1965 she appeared in a music program on TVE, along with Manolo de la Calva and Ramón Arcusa, the Dynamic Duo…accompanying them on violin, no less!
The traffic accident in which she died in 1967 brought an abrupt end to Jayne Mansfield's artistic decline and had an unexpected effect: the road safety regulator forced the installation of a bull bar on the bottom of tractor-trailers. In the United States, this type of protection is still known as the 'Mansfield bar'.
