Background

Ethnicity: Mansfield's father was of German and English ancestry and her mother was of English origin.

Jayne Mansfield was born Vera Jayne Palmer on April 19, 1933 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of Herbert Palmer, an attorney and politician, and Vera Jeffrey, a kindergarten teacher.

Education

Jayne Mansfield spent her early years in the small town of Phillipsburg in northwestern New Jersey, where her father was the law partner of Robert Meyner, later governor of the Garden State. When she was only three, her father suffered a massive heart attack and died. Three years later, Vera Palmer, Jayne's mother, married Harry Peers, a successful mechanical engineer, and the family moved to Dallas, Texas. From all reports, Mansfield had an idyllic childhood, pampered by doting parents who encouraged her precocity. At an early age, she discovered movie fan magazines and resolved that she would star in motion pictures. Vera encouraged her daughter's aspirations.

While attending Highland Park High School in Dallas, Mansfield boasted a B-average. Then a brunette, she physically matured early and, by age 17, was amply endowed. In 1950, Jayne married 20-year-old Paul Mansfield. That November, Jayne joined Paul in Austin, where he was attending the University of Texas. Although Mansfield took a couple of classes, she spent most of her time working to support the family, employed as a receptionist at a dance school and as a door-to-door saleswoman.

In 1951, Mansfield took the first serious steps toward her goal. She enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles. While there, she reached the finals of the Miss Southern California Pageant but dropped out when her husband expressed disapproval. In 1952, Paul was inducted into the United States Army and stationed at Camp Gordon, near Augusta, Georgia, where Jayne joined him. In a local beauty competition, she was named Miss Photoflash of 1952, only the first of many beauty titles she would eventually collect. She also picked up some acting experience at Camp Gordon, appearing in local productions of Anything Goes and Ten Nights in a Ballroom. After her husband was sent to Korea, Mansfield returned to Dallas where she attended classes at Southern Methodist University, earned money by modeling, and entered more beauty contests. She then came under the wing of Baruch Lumet, the father of film director Sidney Lumet. Founder and director of the Dallas Institute of Performing Arts, the elder Lumet saw some promise in Mansfield and agreed to give her free acting lessons. While studying under Lumet, she acted in a few local television productions and won a small part in a local presentation of Death of a Salesman, a role that brought her to the attention of a Paramount executive, Milton Lewis. When Paul came back from Korea in 1954, he made good on an earlier promise to move to California so that Jayne could pursue a career in motion pictures.

Career

When Jayne's first husband Paul came back from Korea in 1954, they moved to California so that she could pursue a career in motion pictures. Soon after their arrival, Mansfield signed with an agent, Robert Schwartz, but work was not forthcoming. Paul found Jayne's quest for stardom more than he could tolerate and asked her to give up her career and return with him to Dallas. When she refused, he sued for divorce and sought custody of their daughter, citing a couple of Jayne's provocative pin-up posters; the court granted the divorce but turned down his custody petition.

Mansfield landed a part on television by camping out in the office of the casting agent for three consecutive days. It has been written, though perhaps apocryphally, that while still waiting to see the agent she scribbled "36-22-34" on a card and had it delivered to the show's producer. Supposedly, she was hired the same day. Although she then added a handful of small acting roles to her resume, her career was not successfully launched until early 1955. By that time, an appearance in Hugh Hefner's fledgling Playboy had increased her profile in Hollywood considerably. Howard Hughes ordered his executives at RKO Studios to sign Mansfield, which set off a bidding war with Warner Bros. In the end, she signed a six-month contract with Warner's for a mere $250 a week. Her first film was Illegal, and she also appeared in the television series "Casablanca." Unhappy with her roles at Warner's, Mansfield prevailed upon studio executives to allow her to appear in an independent film project, The Burglar, for which she was paid $5,000. While filming, she received word that the studio had terminated her contract.

Shortly after, Mansfield was signed to do George Axelrod's Broadway show Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?. Although reviews for the play were lukewarm at best, critics raved about her performance. Mansfield was suddenly a hot ticket in New York, leading to guest appearances on a number of television game shows, including What's My Line and Down You Go, Talk it Up, The Match Game, The Jack Benny Program, The Steve Allen Show and The Jackie Gleason Show, as well as a couple of 90-minute specials. She appeared in 1956 on NBC's The Bachelor. Her popular performances in television dramas included episodes of Burke's Law, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Red Skelton Hour, Kraft Mystery Theater and Follow the Sun.

While making a guest appearance on a Mae West show, she met Mickey Hargitay, Mr. Universe 1955, who was one of the musclemen in West's entourage: Mansfield claimed it was love at first sight. Offered an attractive contract by 20th Century-Fox, which had also bought the rights to Rock Hunter, Mansfield left Broadway after more than 450 performances and headed back to Hollywood. The Girl Can't Help It, her first film for Fox, was a box-office smash, rated among the top 20 films of that year. She next re-created her Broadway role in Fox's film version of Rock Hunter. Although it did not equal the success of The Girl Can't Help It, the film did well enough and eventually became something of a cult favorite.

Mansfield's career peaked soon thereafter. In the wake of America's sexual revolution, her brand of sex appeal went out of style, and her inability to shape her image to the emerging sexual maturity resulted in parody; rather than copy for the Hollywood trade magazines, her life became fodder for the tabloids. Fox used her less and less and loaned her out to other studios for B (or lesser) movies. Even the offers from outside studios were becoming less frequent, leading Mansfield to appear more often on the nightclub circuit in Las Vegas. In July 1963, Fox announced that it would not renew her contract. Mansfield remained the trouper, acting in stage shows that she and her husband produced. They needed the income, but the shows were poorly received, and Mansfield, who had poured in her own money to cover production expenses, ended up further behind financially.

After the divorce with Matt Cimber, her third husband, Mansfield landed a role in A Guide for the Married Man, her first major film since 1961. Although still heavily burdened with debt, she managed to move back into her Hollywood mansion. To pay the bills, however, she found it necessary to stay on the road, playing engagements throughout the country.

Later, Mansfield again made headlines after becoming the first American actress to appear nude in a major motion picture, Promises! Promises!. The film generated significant buzz, but it failed to reignite her film career, and she made only a handful more films, including Panic Button, The Fat Spy and Single Room Furnished.

Mansfield also sang in film soundtracks, on stage for her theatrical and nightclub performances. In 1962, the album Jayne Mansfield Busts Up Las Vegas was released. It was a recording of Jayne's Las Vegas revue The House of Love. In 1964, MGM Records released an album called Jayne Mansfield: Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky & Me, in which Mansfield recited Shakespeare's sonnets and poems by Marlowe, Browning, Wordsworth, and other poets.

In 1967, Mansfield's last year, she spent two months touring South Vietnam and entertaining the troops.

Achievements

• 

  Jayne Mansfield was a popular American actress who acted in films, theatre, and on television. Though she performed in twenty-five films, Jayne's accomplishment as an actress is negligible compared to her fame as a "sex goddess." She was a major Hollywood sex symbol during the 1950s and early 1960s, while under contract at 20th Century Fox.
  
  On February 8, 1960, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contribution to motion pictures. In 1962, Italian journalists awarded her the Silver Mask award. Mansfield also received the Oscar of the Two World award in Italy. The next year, Jayne was voted one of the top-10 box-office attractions by an organization of American theater owners for her performance in Promises! Promises!.
  
  In 1968, Hollywood Publicists Guild created a "Jayne Mansfield Award," which would be given to the actress who received the most exposure and publicity in a year.
  
  Despite the fact that Jayne Mansfield was never a major box-office draw, she remains a pop-culture icon because of the massive amounts of publicity she generated, her image as a well-endowed Hollywood sex kitten, and the public's fascination with her gruesome and untimely death.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Single Room Furnished

    (In her last screen performance, famed sex symbol Jayne Ma...)

    1966
  • Las Vegas Hillbillys

    (When Woodrow Wilson Weatherby, a Tennessee wood hauler, i...)

    1966
  • The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw

    (Kenneth More and Jayne Mansfield star in this Western com...)

    1958
  • The Wayward Bus

    (In this engaging drama based on a story by renowned autho...)

    1957
  • Hercules vs. the Hydra

    (Hercules learns of the murder of his wife and seeks venge...)

    1960
  • The George Raft Story

    (This action-filled drama tells the story of this incredib...)

    1961
  • It Takes a Thief

    (A gang leader dumps her criminal boyfriend when he is con...)

    1960
  • Promises! Promises!

    (After a drunken spree on a cruise ship, two women discove...)

    1963
  • Female Jungle

    (Several persons, including an off duty policeman and a we...)

    1955
  • Panic Button

    (A businessman plans to solve his tax problems by financin...)

    1964
  • The Burglar

    (A gang of burglars pilfers a valuable necklace from a fak...)

    1957
  • The Girl Can't Help It

    (A gangster hires a down-and-out press agent to make his a...)

    1956
  • Dog Eat Dog

    (Three thieves rip off a shipment of used money being sent...)

    1964
  • The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield

    (Jayne Mansfield shares her experiences from her last trip...)

    1968
  • Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

    (To save his career, an ad man wants a sex symbol to endor...)

    1957
  • Kiss Them for Me

    (In 1944, three Navy pilots stationed in Hawaii and a P.R....)

    1957
  • Illegal

    (Filmdom's legendary gangster Edward G. Robinson is a crim...)

    1955

• music

  • Too Hot to Handle

Religion

Jayne Mansfield attended Catholic services and followed Catholic practices when she was involved with a Catholic partner. She also showed interest in Judaism.

In 1966, Mansfield visited the Church of Satan with her partner Sam Brody to meet Anton LaVey, the church's founder. She was awarded a medallion and the title "High Priestess of San Francisco's Church of Satan."

In 1992, Karla LaVey, the daughter of the Church of Satan founder, confirmed that Mansfield was a practicing Satanist.

Mansfield's funeral ceremony was conducted by a Methodist minister.

Views

Quotations: "We eat a lot of lean meat and fresh vegetables... You are what you eat, you know. When I'm 100 I'll still be doing pin-ups."

"I like being a pin-up girl. There's nothing wrong with it."

"A woman should be pink and cuddly for a man."

"I don't want to get involved in the racial situation at the expense of losing fans. I wouldn't say anything too strong but I do know that God created us equal and we're not living up to it."

"A forty-one-inch bust and a lot of perseverance will get you more than a cup of coffee - a lot more. But most girls don't know what to do with what they've got."

"It is the most wonderful feeling in the world, you know, knowing you are loved and wanted."

"If you're going to do something wrong, do it big, because the punishment is the same either way."

"Carrying a baby is the most rewarding experience a woman can enjoy."

"I will never be satisfied. Life is one constant search for betterment for me."

"Sex appeal is a wonderful, warm, womanly healthy feeling... it comes only from inside, it's from nothing that's manufactured. It has nothing to do with measurements or lipstick color. To me, it's cleanliness, and youth, an effervescent desire to enjoy life."

"Stars were made to suffer, and I am a star."

"Every star knows you step on some toes to get where you're going - and some more after you get there. Nobody means to hurt anybody else, it just happens. You always keep saying in the back of your mind that one day you will be able to right all the wrongs. That someday almost never comes."

"I've been identified with pink throughout my career, but I'm not as crazy about it as I've led people to believe. My favorite colors are actually neutrals - black and white - but then who thinks of a movie queen in black and white? Everything has to be in living color."

"I don't know why you people [the press] like to compare me to Marilyn or that girl, what's her name, Kim Novak. Cleavage, of course, helped me a lot to get where I am. I don't know how they got there."

"To function as an actress, I have to be in love. I have to have that incentive to work."

Personality

Life magazine featured Mansfield as "Broadway's smartest dumb blonde." Though her films were mediocre, they added to Mansfield's celebrity as a busty, sexy naive. In her later years, Mansfield's exaggerated figure became less fashionable, and the tastelessness of her publicity drew criticism.

To some, she symbolized the self-destructive sex object who tried to conform to fantasies. To others, she was an ironic parody of sexuality, an exploiter of, and commentator on, sexual mores. She had a gift for light comedy, but her remarks suggest that she was unaware of any irony in her popular image. She clearly aspired to be a movie star in the flamboyant, witty tradition of Mae West, but she also tried for the ingenuousness of her early idol, Shirley Temple.

Mansfield loved Chihuahuas and adopted several over her lifetime.

She had an I.Q. of 149, could speak five languages, and played the violin and piano.

Physical Characteristics: Mansfield had an hourglass figure, a unique sashaying walk and breathy baby talk. Because of her striking physique, newspapers routinely published her body measurements. In 1955, during the Broadway debut, Mansfield proclaimed a 41-inch bust line and a 22-inch waist. According to Playboy, her statistics were 102-53-91 cm on her 5'6" (1.68 m) frame.

Jayne had her hair colored platinum blonde and she also had her eyebrows dyed platinum.

Jayne Mansfield died in a New Orleans car accident. Her death certificate stated that the cause of her death was a crushed skull with avulsion of the cranium and brain.

Quotes from others about the person

• Walter Winchell: "Jayne Mansfield is making a career of being a girl."
  
  Anton Szandor LaVey: "The difference between Marilyn's and Jayne's approach to intellectual pursuits is that Marilyn carried big heavy books around and hung out with brainy people to absorb their intellect, while Jayne really had a thirst for knowledge. Jayne was very proud of the fact that if she like something enough she would commit it to memory. At that time, The Satanic Bible was still in monograph form, and Jayne had pored over those pages until she knew most of it by heart... Marilyn gave me a copy of Stendhal's On Love, and I still have a copy of Walter Benton's This is My Beloved, which we bought together on Sunset Boulevard. Marilyn turned me on to it - wanted me to read it and write something in it for her. I got as far as writing her name in it, but I ended up with the book. It meant a lot to me during a particularly dark period in my life after I left L. A. Jayne kept insisting I read The Story of O and I, Jan Cremer. She gave me a dog-eared copy of each. It seems a distinctly feminine trait to want to share books with people they care deeply about."
  
  Raymond Strait: "She had no desire to be second at anything, and in striving to be first she learned the value of hard work."
  
  Mickey Hargitay's father: "I could hold this golden little woman here forever."

Interests

• pool, listening to music, animals

• Artists

  Shirley Temple

• Sport & Clubs

  volleyball

Connections

On May 6, 1950, Jayne married Paul Mansfield, a teenage boyfriend. They had a daughter. Playboy's photos in 1956 prompted her husband to sue for custody of their daughter, but she won the suit and obtained a divorce. Later that year she met bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay, and their romance became a staple of the press. On January 13, 1958, they married and remained close even after their divorce in 1964. They had three children. In May 1964, while acting in Yonkers, New York, Mansfield met the director Matt Cimber (Thomas Vitale Ottaviano), whom she married on September 24, 1964. The couple had one child. Due to her infidelities and alcoholism, they filed for divorce in 1966. Mansfield later became involved in a rocky, reputedly abusive relationship with Sam Brody, the attorney she hired to assist with her divorce proceedings.

Jayne Mansfield allegedly had close relationships with many men, including Claude Terrail, Robert F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Jorge Guinle, Nelson Sardelli, and Enrico Bomba.

Father:

Herbert William Palmer

(1904 - 1936)

Mother:

Vera Palmer

(May 19, 1903 - 2000)

rival:

Marilyn Monroe

Daughter:

Jayne Marie Mansfield

(born November 8, 1950)

Daughter:

Mariska Magdolna Hargitay

(born January 23, 1964)

Mariska Magdolna Hargitay is an American actress best known for her role as New York Police Department Captain Olivia Benson on the NBC drama series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Son:

Tony Cimber

(born October 18, 1965)

Son:

Zoltan Hargitay

(born August 1, 1960)

Son:

Mickey Hargitay Jr.

(born December 21, 1958)

ex-spouse:

Matt Cimber

(born January 12, 1936)

Matt Cimber is an American producer, director, and writer of film, television, and theatre. He is known for directing diverse genre films, such as The Candy Tangerine Man, The Witch Who Came from the Sea, and Hundra, and the controversial 1982 drama Butterfly.

ex-spouse:

Paul Mansfield

(born November 28, 1929 - died June 8, 2013)

ex-spouse:

Mickey Hargitay

(January 6, 1926 - September 14, 2006)

Mickey Hargitay was a Hungarian-American actor and the 1955 Mr. Universe.

Lover:

John Kennedy

Lover:

Robert Kennedy

(November 20, 1925 - June 6, 1968)

Robert Kennedy was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 64th United States Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, and as a United States Senator from New York from January 1965 until his assassination in June 1968.

Lover:

Enrico Bomba

(born August 2, 1922)

Enrico Bomba was an Italian movie producer, director, and screenwriter. He also worked in television.

Lover:

Jorge Guinle

(1916 - 2004)

Jorge Guinle was a billionaire from the Guinle family of Rio, Brazil. He was known as one of the richest men on earth.

Lover:

Nelson Sardelli

Nelson Sardelli is a Brazilian-born singer-comedian of Italian descent. He was an entertainer in Las Vegas.

Lover:

Claude Terrail

(died June 1, 2006)

Claude Terrail was an owner of the Paris restaurant Tour d'Argent.

Lover:

Samuel S. Brody

(September 11, 1926 - June 29, 1967)

References

• American Legends: The Life of Jayne Mansfield American Legends: The Life of Jayne Mansfield examines the notorious life and death of one of America's biggest pop culture stars of the 1950s and 1960s. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, the readers will learn about Jayne Mansfield like never before, in no time at all.
  2014
• Jayne Mansfield A book by May Mann.
  1973
• Jayne Mansfield and the American Fifties A book by Martha Saxton.
  1975
• The Tragic Secret Life of Jayne Mansfield Strait goes below the surface to examine Jayne's emotions and motivations, revealing the truth about her many lovers, her three unsuccessful marriages, her love affair with Mickey Hargitay that lasted to the end and her battle against and her surrender to alcohol and drugs.
  1974
• Affectionately, Jayne Mansfield Discover the story of an actress, who earned fame and fortune with a seductive smile, an eye-popping hourglass figure, and a "dumb blonde" persona that belied the fact that she spoke five languages and was a concert violist and pianist.
  2012
• Diamonds to Dust: The Life and Death of Jayne Mansfield Before Anna Nicole, before Pam Anderson, there was Jayne Mansfield. The original working mom with severe determination and drive. The original Playboy centerfold, the first huge Hollywood star to appear nude in a film. Marriage, divorces, five children, success and disappointment, the story of Jayne Mansfield's life has it all, and the author is happy to tell the true story of TV star Mariska Hargitay's mother's life.
  2007
• Did Success Spoil Jayne Mansfield?: Her Life in Pictures & Text Frank Ferruccio, film historian and personal friend of the Mansfield children, shares more of his behind-the-scenes stories from Jayne's life. Following up on his first biography of Jayne, Diamonds to Dust, The Life and Death of Jayne Mansfield, this newest work fills in many of the missing pieces to Jayne's life and is a fascinating tribute to one of the greatest sex symbols of all time.
  2010
• Jayne Mansfield's Official Website