Mariska Hargitay Just Revealed a Shocking Truth About Her Dad—All About Jayne Mansfield’s Love Life
In a 'Vanity Fair' interview ahead of her documentary, 'My Mom Jayne,' she spoke publicly about her biological father for the first time
Jayne Mansfield was known as one of the blonde sex symbols that defined the ’50s, and during her tragically brief but iconic career, the star, who was married three times and had five children, earned almost as much attention for her personal life as she did for her playful performances in colorful comedies like The Girl Can’t Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
Today, many know Mansfield best as the mom of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star Mariska Hargitay. The actress, who was a passenger in her mom’s fatal 1967 car crash, and was just 3 years old at the time, is making her feature directorial debut with My Mom Jayne, a documentary about Mansfield’s singular life which just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and will premiere on HBO and HBO Max on June 27.
Ahead of her highly-anticipated documentary’s premiere, Mariska just dropped a bombshell in an interview with Vanity Fair: Her biological father is not Mickey Hargitay, the bodybuilder and actor who was Mansfield’s second and best-known husband, but Nelson Sardelli, a singer with whom Mansfield had an affair in 1963.
My Mom Jayne will further examine the SVU star’s paternity and the complicated ways in which the men in Mansfield’s life impacted the ’50s starlet’s career and public image. Here’s a look at Mansfield’s three marriages—and how the shocking truths Hargitay shared changed the narrative.
From Vera Jayne Palmer to Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield was born Vera Jayne Palmer, and was a natural brunette. She met her first husband, Paul Mansfield, during their high school years in Texas. The couple married in 1950, when Jayne was just 17 and pregnant with her first child, Jayne Marie, who’d go on to dabble in modeling and acting. In later years, some biographers alleged that Paul may not have been Jayne Marie’s biological father, though this is just speculation.
As a teen mom, Jayne hadn’t yet started her career, and Paul’s resistance to her movie-star ambitions put a strain on their relationship. They separated in 1955, and had a messy divorce in which Paul unsuccessfully attempted to gain custody of their daughter. Their split was finalized in 1958, by which point Jayne had become famous. During their divorce proceedings, Jayne claimed that Paul was jealous of her pet Chihuahua.
While married to Jayne, Paul served in the army, and he went on to work in public relations, newspapers and merchandising. He died at 83 in 2013. The marriage may not have lasted, but Paul played a crucial role in Jayne’s image, as she decided to keep his last name because she thought it had “star quality.”
Jayne Mansfield’s high-profile marriage to Mickey Hargitay
Mansfield met her most famous husband, bodybuilder and actor Mickey Hargitay, in 1956, while he was performing in Mae West’s nightclub act. When she first saw him, she quipped to a waiter, “I’ll have a steak and that tall man on the left,” and they married shortly after her divorce was finalized in 1958.
Hargitay was crowned Mr. Universe in 1955, and he and Mansfield shared an over-the-top sensibility. The attention-loving couple became a tabloid staple, and they often performed together onstage, with a provocative act that involved him picking her up and spinning her around while both were clad in skimpy leopard-print bathing suits.
Mansfield and Hargitay made regular TV appearances and acted in several plays together. They also shared the screen in her films Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957), The Loves of Hercules (1960), Promises, Promises! (1963) and Primitive Love (1964) and collaborated on business ventures like the Hargitay Exercise Equipment Company and Jayne Mansfield Productions. In 1963, they co-wrote the book Jayne Mansfield’s Wild, Wild World.
Mansfield and Hargitay had two biological children: Mickey Jr., who owns a popular L.A. plant shop and Zoltan, who works behind the scenes as a carpenter for film and TV, and they raised TV star Mariska, who was believed to be Mickey’s biological child until her recent Vanity Fair interview revealed otherwise, as their daughter. The family famously lived in the Pink Palace, an L.A. mansion elaborately decked out to ’50s kitsch perfection, complete with a pink heart-shaped swimming pool built by Hargitay himself.
While Mansfield and Hargitay’s marriage lasted only six years, it loomed large in pop culture for decades, as the stars were arguably some of the first influencers, and got into antics that felt straight out of reality TV. In 1980, The Jayne Mansfield Story, a TV movie based on their relationship, was released. WKRP in Cincinnati star Loni Anderson played Mansfield while a pre-fame Arnold Schwarzenegger played Hargitay.
Hargitay died of bone marrow cancer at 80 in 2006. In an interview just after Mansfield’s passing, he mused, “Nobody really understood her. Nobody knew the real Jayne.”
The affair that changed everything
Mansfield had affairs with director and producer Enrico Bomba and singer and Las Vegas entertainer Nelson Sardelli in the early ’60s, and filed for divorce from Hargitay in 1962. The dramatic split was finalized in 1964, at the same time Mansfield discovered she was pregnant with Mariska. The couple briefly reconciled, and in an attempt to avoid the perceived scandal of single motherhood, the divorce wasn’t announced publicly until after she was born.
Up until now, Mickey was thought to be Mariska’s biological father, but in her Vanity Fair interview, the actress admitted that she had long suspected something might be off, saying, “[Mickey] was my everything, my idol. He loved me so much, and I knew it. I also knew something else—I just didn’t know what I knew.” When she was in her 20s, someone showed her a photo of Sardelli and she instantly recognized her connection to him. In the documentary, she recalls the moment of truth, saying, “It was like the floor fell out from underneath me. Like my infrastructure dissolved.”
When Mariska confronted Mickey, he denied that Sardelli was her father, and the encounter was so painful that Mariska never brought it up again. At 30, Mariska went to see Sardelli perform in Atlantic City, and while he greeted her tearfully, saying, “I’ve been waiting 30 years for this moment,” she told him, “I don’t want anything, I don’t need anything from you . . . I have a dad,” and explained to Vanity Fair, “There was something about loyalty. I wanted to be loyal to Mickey.”
Mariska understandably went through a lot of soul-searching regarding her family, and went from feeling like she was living a lie to gradually forming a connection with Sardelli, who is still around at age 90, and his other daughters. Sardelli and his two living daughters (another daughter passed in 2001) are all interviewed in My Mom Jayne. When it came to her half-sisters, Mariska admitted, “These two women that I love so much—I made them secrets! It’s so heartbreaking to me,” adding, “I’m not good with lies. So I also made this movie to unburden all of us.”
After years of struggle, Mariska has finally made peace with her dramatic family history, and making the documentary helped her process her complicated feelings. She now says, “I grew up where I was supposed to, and I do know that everyone made the best choice for me. I’m Mickey Hargitay’s daughter—that is not a lie. This documentary is kind of a love letter to him, because there’s no one that I was closer to on this planet.”
Jayne Mansfield’s third and final marriage
Mansfield met her third husband, Matt Cimber, when he was directing her and Hargitay in the play Bus Stop. Mansfield and Cimber married in 1964, and he became her manager. During this time, her career was declining, and he directed her in the B-movie Single Room Furnished, her final film, which wouldn’t be released until 1968, the year after her death.
Mansfield and Cimber had a son, Tony, who became a director and real estate agent. They split up after just one year together and divorced in 1966. The relationship was plagued by the star’s affairs and alcoholism, and after their divorce, she started dating her attorney, Sam Brody. Brody was killed along with Mansfield in the horrific 1967 car crash that took her life at 34. Prior to the crash, Mansfield’s firstborn daughter, Jayne Marie, had accused Brody of abuse.
While Mansfield’s relationships are subjects of cultural fascination, there’s also a poignancy to them, given the fact that she was often underestimated in the public eye and her life was cut short. She saw her marriage to Cimber as a turning point in her career, saying that in Bus Stop, “I got good reviews, not as a sex goddess, but as an actress. That’s when I met my husband who was directing the play. The experience started whole new cravings in me,” but sadly, these new cravings could never be fully realized.
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