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Jayne was in more than 30 movies and TV shows, such as “The Girl Can’t Help It” (1956), “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” (1957), “Too Hot to Handle” (1960), and “It Happened in Athens” (1962). (1959–1963). Mansfield also acted in “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” on Broadway in 1955.
She also acted in “Death of a Salesman” (1953), “Bus Stop” (1955), and “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1955). (1966). Jayne put out the albums “Jayne Mansfield Busts up Las Vegas” in 1962 and “Jayne Mansfield: Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky, and Me” in 1964.
She also worked with Jimi Hendrix on the singles “Suey” and “As The Clouds Drift By” in 1967. Mariska Hargitay’s mother, Mansfield, died in a car accident in June 1967, when she was only 34 years old.
Table of Contents
Jayne Mansfield Early Life
On April 19, 1933, in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Vera Jayne Palmer became Jayne Mansfield. Herbert and Vera Palmer, attorneys, raised her in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. In 1936, Herbert died of a heart attack, and three years later, Vera married Harry Lawrence Peers and moved to Dallas, Texas.
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At 12, Mansfield started ballroom dancing and graduated from Highland Park High School in 1950. Jayne studied German, Spanish, piano, violin, and viola as a teenager. She studied acting at Southern Methodist University and UT Austin after high school. Mansfield went to Dallas and worked with actor Baruch Lumet, who helped her get her first screen audition in 1954.
Jayne Mansfield Career
Jayne debuted in 1955’s “Female Jungle” and on “Lux Video Theatre” in 1964. In 1955, she signed a seven-year deal with Warner Brothers, had small appearances in “Pete Kelly’s Blues” and “Hell on Frisco Bay,” and portrayed Rita Marlowe in a Broadway production of George Axelrod’s “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” with Walter Matthau and Orson Bean.
The 1957 film adaptation, protected in the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in 2000 for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” starred her again. Jayne featured in 1957’s “The Burglar,” “The Wayward Bus,” “Kiss Them for Me” and 1958’s “The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw.” She played Sandy Brooks in “Promises! Promises!” (1963), which was banned in some cities due to its nudity, and “The Challenge” (1960).
“L’Amore Primitivo,” “Panic Button,” and “Einer den” were Jayne’s 1964 films, followed by 1966’s “The Fat Spy” and “The Las Vegas Hillbillys.” She appeared in 1967’s “A Guide for the Married Man” and “Single Room Furnished” as Johnnie/Mae/Eileen. After Mansfield’s death in 1966, the picture was taken from theatres and released in 1968. “The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield” was a 1968 documentary.
Though Jayne was best known for her film work, she appeared in several television series, including “Kraft Mystery Theater” (1961), “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour” (1962), and “Burke’s Law” (1964), as well as variety shows like “The Jack Benny Program,” “The Jackie Gleason Show,” “The Steve Allen Show,” and “The Ed Sullivan Show.” She earned $20,000 for each TV appearance by the late 1950s. Mansfield read Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” a poem on seizing the day, on “The Joey Bishop Show” 10 days before her death.
Jayne Mansfield’s Personal Life
On May 6, 1950, 17-year-old Jayne married Paul Mansfield. Jayne Marie was born on 11/8/1950. Jayne attended the University of Texas, while Paul, a U.S. Army Reserve member, was drafted during the Korean War. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1954 so Jayne could act.
Three years after their separation, Jayne and Paul divorced, and Mansfield married former Mr. Universe Mickey Hargitay on January 13, 1958. Mickey and Jayne toured in theatrical performances and co-starred in “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” and “The Loves of Hercules.”
They co-wrote “Jayne Mansfield’s Wild, Wild World” and founded Jayne Mansfield Productions, Hargitay Exercise Equipment Company, and Eastland Savings and Loan. Mansfield and Hargitay had three children: Mickey Jr., Zoltan, and Mariska (born January 24, 1964). Mariska became an Emmy-winning actress as Olivia Benson on NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” Jayne and Mickey divorced in Mexico in May 1963, but California accepted it in August 1964.
Mansfield married filmmaker Matt Cimber on September 24, 1964, and had a son, Tony (born October 18, 1965), before filing for divorce in July 1966. Jayne moved in with her divorce lawyer, Sam Brody, who was married to Beverly Brody. Beverly filed for divorce, calling Jayne Brody’s “41st another lady”.
Zoltan, Mansfield’s son, was mauled by a lion in Jungleland USA with Jayne and Sam in November 1966 and required brain surgery. Due to exposure, Brody sued the theme park, which shuttered. Jayne Marie, Mansfield’s eldest child, reported Brody to the LAPD two weeks before her murder for beating her. She blamed Jayne for Sam’s maltreatment, and her paternal uncle, William W. Pigue, and his wife received temporary custody of Jayne Marie.
Jayne Mansfield Legacy
Jayne, Mariska, Zoltan, Mickey Jr., and Sam Brody were traveling from Biloxi, Mississippi, to New Orleans in a car driven by twenty-year-old Ronnie Harrison when they were hit by a tractor-trailer on June 29, 1967. Jayne’s cause of death was a “crushed skull with avulsion of cranium and brain,” not decapitation as stated.
The backseat children were asleep and only received minor injuries. Jayne was interred next to her father in Fairview Cemetery in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania, on July 3. The Dearly Departed Tours & Artifact Museum in Los Angeles owner Scott Michaels bought Jayne’s automobile from the Tragedy in U.S. History Museum in St. Augustine, Florida.
After the accident, rumors spread that Anton LaVey, the head of the Church of Satan, had cursed Sam Brody to die in a car accident. Jayne and Sam survived six vehicle accidents before their death. “Mansfield 66/67” explores these rumors. Cimber, Hargitay, and Mansfield’s mother tried to inherit her wealth after her death.
Jayne’s mansion, jewelry, sports vehicle, and Brody’s estate were valued at $600,000. (which he left to her in his will). In 1971, Beverly Brody sued the estate for more than $300,000 in jewelry and presents Sam had given Jayne, and in 1977, Mansfield’s children realized that their mother’s $500,000 debt had bankrupted the estate.
Jayne Mansfield’s Net Worth
Jayne Mansfield was an American actress and singer who had a net worth of $2 million after inflation at the time of her death in 1967. Mansfield was a vocalist, nightclub entertainer, and an early “Playboy” Playmate in addition to acting on stage and in film and television ventures. She was considered a significant Hollywood sex symbol during the 1950s and 1960s, and she was the first major American actress to appear naked in a starring role in a Hollywood film (1963’s “Promises! Promises!”).
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