Jayne Mansfield: Secrets About the ’50s Star, Mariska Hargitay’s Mom, Whose Life Was Cut Short
She may have been considered a 'dumb blonde,' but she actually had a genius-level IQ
Jayne Mansfield was one of the pop culture icons who defined the ’50s. During her brief career, she was best known as a sex symbol thanks to her platinum-blonde hair and curvaceous figure, but the actress, who starred in films like The Girl Can’t Help It, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, The Wayward Bus and Kiss Them for Me, was more than just the Marilyn Monroe wannabe she was too often dismissed as. She possessed spot-on comic timing and a self-aware charisma that lit up the screen.
Mansfield died in a grisly car crash in 1967. She was just 34, and her untimely passing gave her a mythic status that remains tragically compelling over 50 years later. Mansfield’s daughter, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star Mariska Hargitay, was in the car during the accident, and was 3 years old when her mom died.
Hargitay has been candid about the trauma she faced in losing her mom in such a public way at such a young age, and she recently announced that she’ll be making her feature directorial debut with My Mom Jayne, a documentary about Mansfield’s singular life, set to premiere on HBO in June. In an Instagram post announcing the film, she said, “I never got to make a movie with my mom, and she never got to make the kind of movies she wanted to make . . . words fail me to describe how meaningful it is to tell her story, my own, and ours together.”
Ahead of Hargitay’s highly anticipated documentary, we’re taking a look back at some fascinating facts you may not have known about Mansfield’s life and career.
Jayne Mansfield was married three times and had five children
Mansfield was born Vera Jayne Palmer and married her first husband, Paul Mansfield, in 1950, when she was just 17. They had a daughter, Jayne Marie, who dabbled in modeling and acting, and they divorced in 1958.
Mansfield married her second and most famous husband, actor and bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay, in 1958. Hargitay, who was crowned Mr. Universe in 1955, made frequent TV and stage appearances with his wife (who often donned a leopard-print bikini so famous it has its own Wikipedia page), and the couple shared the screen in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957), The Loves of Hercules (1960), Promises, Promises! (1963) and Primitive Love (1964).
Mansfield and Hargitay had three children: Mickey Jr., who owns a popular L.A. plant shop, Zoltan, who works behind the scenes as a carpenter for film and TV, and, of course, TV star Mariska. Mansfield and Hargitay divorced in 1964. In 1980, WKRP in Cincinnati star Loni Anderson and future A-lister Arnold Schwarzenegger played the famous couple in a TV movie.
Mansfield married Matt Cimber, who directed her on the stage and became her manager, in 1964. He directed Single Room Furnished in 1966, which would be her final film. Mansfield and Cimber had a son, Tony, who became a director and real estate agent, and divorced in 1966.
She lived in a Pink Palace
Mansfield and Hargitay lived in a fabulously kitschy L.A. mansion known as the Pink Palace. The house was decked out in all kinds of pink ’50s fabulousness, and featured flourishes like cupid sculptures surrounded by pink fluorescent lights, pink shag carpeting, a pink heart-shaped bathtub and a fountain filled with pink champagne. On top of all that, Mansfield also drove a pink Cadillac.
The Pink Palace was later owned by other high-profile figures like Ringo Starr and Engelbert Humperdinck, but was ultimately demolished in 2002.
Jayne Mansfield was the subject of one of Hollywood’s most famous photos
In 1957, Mansfield was photographed smiling and wearing a provocatively low-cut dress while Sophia Loren looked down at her cleavage with a disapproving expression. The photo was taken at a dinner welcoming the Italian actress to Hollywood, and caused a media sensation.
The photo reached the equivalent of going viral in its day, and in later decades, it was referenced by celebrities like Anna Nicole Smith, Heidi Klum, Sofia Vergara and Sydney Sweeney.
In an interview, Loren recalled, “She came right for my table. She knew everyone was watching. She sat down . . . I’m staring at her nipples because I am afraid they are about to come onto my plate. In my face you can see the fear. I’m so frightened that everything in her dress is going to blow—BOOM!—and spill all over the table.”
She was a Playmate and had one of the earliest nude scenes
Early in her career, Mansfield won a number of beauty contests, and she was Playboy’s February 1955 Playmate of the Month. Her appearance in the magazine helped make her a star, and with her 1963 sex comedy Promises! Promises! she became one of the first mainstream Hollywood actresses to appear nude in a film.
While Mansfield was confident in her body and had a sense of humor about her sex appeal, like Marilyn Monroe, she was subject to the sexism of the era and struggled to be taken seriously and make the shift to dramatic roles. She even turned down the role of Ginger, the movie star in Gilligan’s Island, because she saw it as the type of part she wanted to move away from.
Jayne Mansfield released an album of poetry readings
In 1964, Mansfield released Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky & Me, a novelty album featuring her reading Shakespeare sonnets and other iconic poems, all set to the classical music of Tchaikovsky. Mansfield quipped, “I hear it’s big with the college crowd. The boys probably play it to their dates to set things up.”
She may have had a connection to the Church of Satan
In 1966, Mansfield visited the Church of Satan and met Anton LaVey, the Church’s founder. Mansfield and LaVey were photographed together, and covered breathlessly by tabloids. LaVey allegedly gave her the title of “High Priestess of San Francisco’s Church of Satan” and the odd couple was rumored to be having an affair.
Things got even weirder when LaVey supposedly put a curse on Mansfield’s boyfriend and a series of disturbing events transpired, culminating in her death in 1967. This led to some sensationalistic rumors that LaVey was responsible for the fatal car crash.
The relationship between Mansfield and the Satanic priest was the subject of a 2017 documentary, Mansfield 66/67, but it’s more likely that what transpired between Mansfield and LaVey was just a fun photo opp rather than a sordid relationship based in the dark arts.
Jayne Mansfield looms large in rock and roll history
Mansfield’s most famous film, the 1956 musical The Girl Can’t Help It, featured performances by Little Richard, Fats Domino, Gene Vincent and other popular musicians of the time. It was widely credited with bringing rock and roll to the forefront of pop culture, and served as a major influence on none other than the Beatles.
Mansfield has also been a part of musical history in other ways. In 1965, she recorded two songs with a then-unknown Jimi Hendrix on bass as a session musician, and after her death, several rock songs paid homage to her, including L.A. Guns’ “The Ballad of Jayne,” The 5.6.7.8’s “I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield” and Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Kiss Them for Me.”
She was far smarter than most people realize
Mansfield was typecast as a dumb blonde, but she was much smarter than people gave her credit for. The actress spoke five languages, had a Mensa-level IQ and was a talented musician who showed off her violin skills on The Ed Sullivan Show.
As Hargitay put it, “My mother was this amazing, beautiful, glamorous sex symbol—but people didn’t know that she played the violin and had a 160 IQ and had five kids and loved dogs. She was just so ahead of her time.” In an interview, Mansfield admitted, “It’s hard to be an intellectual and a dumb blonde at the same time, so I kept my intellectual background somewhat hidden early in my career.”
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