About Jayne Mansfield
One of the leading sex symbols of the 1950s and 1960s, film actress Jayne Mansfield was born Vera Jayne Palmer on April 19, 1933 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, the only child of Vera J. (nee Palmer; later Peers) and Herbert W. Palmer. Her parents were well-to-do, with her father a successful attorney in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, where she spent a portion of her childhood. Her parents were both born with the same surname, and her ancestry was seven eighths English and Cornish and one eighth German. She was reportedly a talented pianist and played the violin when she was young.
Tragedy struck when Jayne was three, when her father suddenly died of a heart attack. Three years later, her mother remarried and she and her mother moved to Dallas, Texas, buying a small home where she had violin concerts in the driveway of their home. Her IQ was reportedly 163, and she attended the University of Dallas and participated in little-theater productions. In 1949, at the age of 16, she married a man five years her senior named Paul Mansfield. In November 1950, when Jayne was seventeen, their daughter, Jayne Marie Mansfield was born. The union ended in divorce but she kept the surname Mansfield as a good surname for an actress.
After some productions there and elsewhere, Jayne decided to go to Hollywood. Her first film was a bit role as a cigarette girl in Pete Kelly's Blues (1955). Although the roles in the beginning were not much, she was successful in gaining those roles because of her ample physical attributes which placed her in two other films that year, Hell on Frisco Bay (1955) and Illegal (1955). Her breakout role came the next year with a featured part in The Burglar (1957). By the time she portrayed Rita Marlowe in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) and Playgirl After Dark (1960), Jayne was now known as the poor man's Marilyn Monroe. She did not get the plum roles that Marilyn got in her productions. Instead, her films were more of a showcase for her body more than anything else. She did have a real talent for acting, but the movie executives insisted she stay in her dumb blonde stereotype roles. By the 1960s, her career had options that grew lower. She made somewhat embarrassing guest appearances like on the popular game show What's My Line? (1950), she appeared on the show four times in 1956, 1957, 1964, and 1966 and many other 1950s and 1960s game shows. By 1962, she was dropped from 20th Century Fox and the rest of her career had smaller options like being in B movies and low budget movies or performing at food stores or small nightclubs.
While traveling from a nightclub in Biloxi, Mississippi and 30 miles from New Orleans to where she was to be on television the following day, she was killed instantly on Highway 90 in Slidell, Louisiana in a car crash in the early hours of June 29, 1967, when the car in which she was riding slammed into the back of a semi-tractor trailer truck that had stopped due to a truck in front of the tractor trailer that was spraying for bugs. Her car went under the truck at nearly 80 miles per hour. Her boyfriend Samuel Brody and their driver Ronnie Harrison, were also killed. The damage to the car was so bad that the engine was twisted sideways. She was not, however, decapitated, as had long been misreported. She was 34 years old.
Mansfield's funeral was on July 3, 1967 and hundreds of people lined the main street of Pen Argyl for Mansfield's funeral, a small private ceremony at Fairview Cemetery in Plainfield (outside Pen Argyl), Pennsylvania (where her father was also buried), attended by her family. The only ex-husband to attend was Mickey Hargitay. Her final film, Single Room Furnished (1966), was released the following year. In 2000, Mansfield's 97 year old mother, Mrs. Vera Peers, was interred alongside Mansfield.
After Mansfield's death, Mansfield's mother, as well as her ex-husband Mickey Hargitay, William Pigue (legal guardian for her daughter, Jayne Marie), Charles Goldring (Mansfield's business manager), and Bernard B. Cohen and Jerome Webber (both administrators of the estate) all filed unsuccessful suits to gain control of her estate, which was initially estimated at $600,000 ($3,712,000 in 2018 dollars), including the Pink Palace (estimated at $100,000 ($619,000 in 2018 dollars)), a sports car sold for $7,000 ($43,000 in 2018 dollars), her jewelry, and Sam Brody's $185,000 estate left to her in his last will ($1,145,000 in 2018 dollars).
In 1971, Beverly Brody sued the Mansfield estate for $325,000 ($2,011,000 in 2018 dollars) worth of presents and jewelry given to Mansfield by Sam Brody; the suit was settled out of court.
In 1977, Mansfield's four eldest children (Jayne Marie, Mickey, Zoltan, and Mariska) went to court to discover that some $500,000 in debt which Mansfield had incurred ($3,093,000 in 2018 dollars) and litigation had left the estate insolvent.
Jayne won several beauty contests while living in Texas; these included Miss Photoflash, Miss Magnesium Lamp and Miss Fire Prevention. The one title she turned down was Miss Roquefort Cheese because she said it "just didn't sound right."
"I need to have a man around. I have to sleep with a man every night. I really do."
Jayne Mansfield was married three times and divorced twice, producing five children. The actress reportedly also had affairs and sexual encounters with numerous individuals, including Claude Terrail (the owner of the Paris restaurant La Tour d'Argent), the Brazilian playboy billionaire Jorge Guinle, and Robert F. Kennedy. Her rival, Monroe had relations with Guinle and Robert's brother John F. Kennedy. She was accompanied, in her death, by her lawyer and boyfriend at the time, Sam Brody.
She had a brief affair with Jan Cremer, a young Dutch writer who dedicated his autobiographical novel I, Jan Cremer (1965) to the actress, who called it "a wild and sexy masterpiece" and the author "my Pop Hero". She also had a well-publicized relationship in 1963 with the singer Nelson Sardelli, whom she said that she planned to marry once her divorce from Mickey Hargitay was finalized.
Husbands/Children
Paul Mansfield, whom Mansfield secretly married on 28 January 1950. The couple had a public wedding on 10 May 1950 and was divorced from on 8 January 1958. During this marriage she had one child, Jayne Marie Mansfield (November 8, 1950—), who was a Playboy centerfold in the magazine's July 1976 issue. Two weeks before her mother's death, Jayne Marie, then 16, accused her mother's boyfriend, Sam Brody, of beating her on 16 June 1967, at Mansfield's home on Sunset Boulevard. The girl's statement to officers of the West Los Angeles police department the following morning implicated her mother in encouraging the abuse, and days later, a juvenile-court judge awarded temporary custody of Jayne Marie to a great-uncle, W.W. Pigue.
Miklós Hargitay, an actor and bodybuilder who was Mr. Universe 1955. They were married on January 13, 1958 in Portuguese Bend, California and divorced in Juarez, Mexico in May 1963. The Mexican divorce initially was declared invalid in California but in August 1964 Mansfield successfully sued to have it declared legal. She had previously filed for divorce on 4 May 1962 but told reporters "I'm sure we will make it up." Their acrimonious divorce had the actress accusing Hargitay of kidnapping one of her children to force a more favorable financial settlement. During this marriage she had three children:
Miklós Jeffrey Palmer Hargitay (21 December 1958—)
Zoltan Anthony Hargitay (1 August 1960—)
Mariska Hargitay (Born Mariska Magdolina Hargitay) (called Maria, 24 January 1964—), a 2005 Best Drama Actress Golden Globe award winner and a 2006 Outstanding Lead Drama Actress Emmy Award-winner; portrays Olivia Benson on the television show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Matt Cimber (alias Matteo Ottaviano, né Thomas Vitale Ottaviano): an Italian-born film director. They married on 24 September 1964, got separated on 11 July 1965), and filed for divorce on 20 July 1966. Cimber was a director with whom the actress had become involved when he directed her in a widely praised stage production of Bus Stop in Yonkers, New York, which costarred Hargitay. Cimber took over managing her career during their marriage. With him she had one son,
Antonio Raphael Ottaviano (a.k.a. Tony Cimber, 17 October 1965—).
Mansfield's daughter is actress Mariska Hargitay.
