Real Name : Jayne Mansfield
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One of the leading sex symbols of the 1950s and 1960s, movie and B movie actress, Jayne Mansfield was born on April 19, 1933 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and she was a talented pianist and violin player as a child. She moved to Dallas, Texas, after the death of her father at age three and the family bought a little home where she had violin concerts in the driveway of their home. Amazingly, her I.Q. was reported to be a 163 and she attended the University of Dallas and participated in little-theatre productions. In 1949, at age 16, she married a man 5 years her senior named Paul Mansfield, the next year when Jayne was 17, the two had a child named Jayne Marie Mansfield. She landed a small but sexy role in _Pete Kelly's Blues (1955)_ (qv), which led to roles that were more prominent in several ways also when she started her movie career she played in movies with popular actors and actresses to help kick start her movie career. A job in the Broadway production of "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" brought her a good deal of attention for her scantily clad appearance, and she repeated the role in the film version with co-star 'Tony Randall (I)' (qv) (who would later co-star with 'Marilyn Monroe' (qv) in the movie _Let's Make Love (1960)_ (qv)). Her high-pitched squeal of delight and the studied ease with which she flaunted her more than obvious pulchritude led to a succession of roles as sex kittens and dumb blonde bombshells. She occasionally appeared in films of some quality, but though she apparently aspired to respectability as an actress, her public persona was too extreme to be taken seriously, and she became a sort of poor man's 'Marilyn Monroe' or as the backup or second star for Marilyn Monroe, without the vulnerability and ability that Monroe possessed also the popular movie studios did not think she was that much of a dumb blonde because she knew her movies lines easily. In the early 1960s, she began affairs with many famous individuals like 35th President JFK and his younger brother RFK. By the 1960s, Mansfield's career had options that grew lower. She made somewhat embarrassing guest appearances like on the popular game show _"What's My Line?" (1950)_ (qv), she appeared on the show four times in 1956, 1957, 1964, and 1966 and many other 1950s and 1960s game shows. Also 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 a car crash in the early hours of June 29, 1967, when the car in which she was riding in 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, and the car which she was riding in went under the truck at nearly 80 miles per hour along with boyfriend Samuel Brody and their driver Ronnie Harrison, she was only 34 years old at the time. The damage to the car was so bad that the engine was twisted sideways. Rumors began that Mansfield was decapitated began when the photographers and police found her platinum blonde wig on the dashboard of the car and they saw that and just took of with that which is highly untrue as her first child Jayne Marie Mansfield claims and it was a false report. Mansfield's funeral was on July 3, 1967 which was a small ceremony which her family, first child, and second husband Mickey Hargitay attended the same place in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania where her father was buried. Today, Jayne Mansfield's fame lives on in the success of her best movies, her documentary film appearances, her 22 television appearances, and in the career of her 4th child, actress 'Mariska Hargitay' (qv) who plays Olivia Benson on the popular NBC crime drama _"Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" (1999)_ (qv).
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Jayne Mansfield
- George Harrison: Living in the Material World
- Cannes, 60 ans d'histoires
- TV Land: Myths and Legends
- Playboy: Celebrity Centerfolds
- Shooting Stars
- Candid Camera: 5 Decades of Smiles
- Bettie Page: The Girl in the Leopard Print Bikini
- Celebrity Naked Ambition
- Blond in Hollywood
- The People's Hollywood
- Sex at 24 Frames Per Second
- Living Famously
- Cleavage
- Blondes: Diana Dors
- Playboy: The Story of X
- 50 años de cámaras ocultas
- E! Mysteries & Scandals
- François Chalais, la vie comme un roman
- Candid Camera's 50th Anniversary
- E! True Hollywood Story
- Playboy Playmates: The Early Years
- Death Scenes 2
- Playboy Video Centerfold: Dutch Twins
- Hollywood Sex Symbols
- Happy Birthday Bob 50 Stars Salute Your 50 Years with NBC
- Hollywood Uncensored
- Biography
- The American Experience
- Hollywood Out-takes and Rare Footage
- Hollywood's Private Home Movies
- Notre Dame de la Croisette
- Bob Hope's Overseas Christmas Tours: Around the World with the Troops - 1941-1972
- Arena
- Single Room Furnished
- The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield
- Spree
- Omnibus
- The Joey Bishop Show
- Dateline: Hollywood
- The Pat Boone Show
- Mondo Hollywood
- A Guide for the Married Man
- The Milton Berle Show
- A Bob Hope Comedy Special
- Poem Posters
- The Fat Spy
- The Las Vegas Hillbillys
- Hollywood My Home Town
- The Love Goddesses
- Get the Message
- Panic Button
- Einer Frisst den anderen
- L'amore primitivo
- Miss Skandinavia 1964
- Burke's Law
- Hollywood Without Make-Up
- Promises! Promises!
- Heimweh nach St. Pauli
- The Merv Griffin Show
- Lykke og krone
- The Tonight Show
- Girl Talk
- The Match Game
- Guest Shot
- Jackie Gleason: American Scene Magazine
- It Happened in Athens
- The Alfred Hitchcock Hour
- Follow the Sun
- Password
- Monte Carlo
- The Annual National Sports Awards
- The George Raft Story
- The National Sports Awards
- Candid Camera
- The Challenge
- The Arthur Murray Special for Bob Hope
- TV-uutiset ja sää
- Kraft Mystery Theater
- Too Hot to Handle
- Gli amori di Ercole
- Menschen, Hoffnungen, Medaillen
- The 31st Annual Academy Awards
- Zwischen Glück und Krone
- Juke Box Jury
- Screen Snapshots: Salute to Hollywood
- The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw
- After Hours
- Screen Snapshots: The Walter Winchell Party
- Kiss Them for Me
- Hollywood Glamour on Ice
- The Burglar
- Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
- The Wayward Bus
- Tonight Starring Jack Paar
- Tonight! America After Dark
- The James Dean Story
- The Steve Allen Show
- Cinépanorama
- The Girl Can't Help It
- Sunday Spectacular: The Bachelor
- Spectacular
- Atlantic City Holiday
- Val Parnell's Sunday Night at the London Palladium
- Pete Kelly's Blues
- Hell on Frisco Bay
- Hollywood Preview
- Illegal
- Female Jungle
- Shower of Stars
- Person to Person
- This Is Your Life
- Today
- The Bob Hope Show
- Reflets de Cannes
- The Red Skelton Show
- Down You Go
- What's My Line?
- Lux Video Theatre
- The Jack Benny Program
- Toast of the Town
- Pantomime Quiz
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- * Appeared in the 1965 film _The Loved One (1965)_ (qv), but her scenes--along with those of
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- Platinum blonde hair
- Voluptuous figure
- Lisp, breathless voice
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- "Dramatic art in her opinion is knowing how to fill a sweater." - 'Bette Davis' (qv).
- To establish yourself as an actress, you have to become well known. A girl just starting out, I would tell her to concentrate on acting, but she doesn't have to go around wearing blankets.
- Stars were made to suffer, and I am a star.
- 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.
- 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.
- I don't particularly enjoy publicity, it seems to just follow me around.
- I like being a pin-up girl, there's nothing wrong with it.
- A lot of happiness can be brought to the mentally distraught by a little understanding.
- 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.
- War is a foolish, childish, animalistic, unthinking, unintelligent way of trying to accomplish a purpose.
- I want to earn my own way, I like having nice things but I've never accepted anything I haven't earned.
- I'd like ten more babies and ten more chihuahuas and a few Academy Awards. Meanwhile, I enjoy being a sex symbol and making people happy.
- No one wants to see or read about a dull subject. I don't consider myself a dull subject.
- I've got the strangest build. It's big in the hips, small in the waist and I've got these enormous...shoulders.
- Looks don't regulate a girl's body temperature, at least not this girl's body temperature. Intelligence in a man is the keynote and no girl in her right mind is going to go shopping for a man who's handsome and husky alone.
- To function as an actress, I have to be in love. I have to have that incentive to work.
- I didn't come to Hollywood to be the girl next door. I came to be a movie star.
- My father was the only man I ever knew who really loved me unselfishly, who never used me for personal gain.
- Once you were a starlet. Then you're a star. Can you be a starlet again?
- If you want the best things in life you have to earn them for yourself.
- I like the California style of living.
- [Upon learning that 20th Century-Fox had lied to her about being considered for the lead in a film about the life of 'Jean Harlow (I)' (qv)] "I have thousands of letters here, from people all over the world, saying I am the perfect Harlow...even naturally have her mannerisms of caressing my body and arms in that way. But no, they can't see me playing the dramatic side of Harlow's life."
- I guess a lot of people think that a girl who shows her bosom and wears tight dresses can't be close to God. God has always been close to me. Only He knew what was in my heart.
- I have always considered my career self and my personal self as two different and separate people. There's a Jayne Mansfield at home, a wife and devoted mother, and there's Jayne the sex symbol, which is my career. I have always kept them completely apart and separate.
- Sex appeal is a wonderful, warm, womanly, healthy feeling. If you're a woman it's womanly, if you're not it's manly...it comes only from inside...it's an effervescent desire to enjoy life.
- You know which title I like best? I like to be called mother.
- Men are those creatures with two legs and eight hands.
- If you're going to do something wrong, do it big, because the punishment is the same either way.
- Nothing risque, nothing gained.
- Once you were a starlet. Then you're a star. Can you become a starlet again?
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