Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield was an American actress, Playboy Playmate, singer, and sex symbol of the 1950s and early 1960s. She was known for her numerous publicity stunts, her buxom figure, and her personal life. Her film career was short-lived, but she won a Theatre World Award and a Golden Globe Award. Mansfield gained a reputation as Hollywood's "smartest dumb blonde".
Mansfield played the role of fictional actress Rita Marlowe in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? on Broadway in 1955–56 and reprised the role in the 1957 film adaptation. Her other film roles include the musical comedy The Girl Can't Help It, the drama The Wayward Bus, the neo-noir Too Hot to Handle, and the sex comedy Promises! Promises!. In Promises! Promises!, Mansfield became the first American actress to perform a nude scene in a starring film role.
Mansfield's professional name came from her first husband, public relations professional Paul Mansfield. She married three times and had five children. On June 29, 1967, she died in a traffic collision at age 34.
Early life
Jayne Mansfield was born Vera Jayne Palmer on April 19, 1933, at Bryn Mawr Hospital in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, the only child of Herbert William Palmer and Vera Jeffrey Palmer. She inherited more than $90,000 from her maternal grandfather, Thomas H. Palmer, and more than $36,000 from her maternal grandmother, Beatrice Mary Palmer, in 1958.Until age six, Palmer lived in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, where her father, Herbert, was an attorney practicing with future New Jersey governor Robert B. Meyner. In 1936, her father died of a heart attack while driving; three-year-old Palmer was in the car at the time.
In 1939, Palmer's widowed mother married sales engineer Harry Lawrence Peers. The family moved to Dallas, Texas. As a girl, Jayne was known as Vera Jayne Peers. As a child, Palmer wanted to be a Hollywood star like Shirley Temple. At age 12, she took ballroom dance lessons. She graduated from Highland Park High School in 1950. While in high school, she took violin, piano, and viola lessons. She also studied Spanish and German.
Career
Early modeling and performing
While attending the University of Texas at Austin, Palmer won several beauty contests, including Miss Photoflash, Miss Magnesium Lamp, and Miss Fire Prevention Week. By her own account, the only title she refused was Miss Roquefort Cheese, because she believed it "just didn't sound right". Mansfield rejected "Miss Prime Rib" in 1957 as well.Palmer married Paul Mansfield in 1950. In 1952, while in Dallas, Jayne and Paul Mansfield participated in small local-theater productions of The Slaves of Demon Rum and Ten Nights in a Barroom. They also appeared in Anything Goes in Camp Gordon, Georgia. After Paul left for military service, Jayne Mansfield made her first significant stage appearance in a production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman on October 22, 1953, with the players of the Knox Street Theater, headed by Sidney Lumet.
The Mansfields moved with their daughter, Jayne Marie, to Los Angeles in 1954. Jayne Mansfield sold popcorn at the Stanley Warner Theatre, taught dance, sold candy at a movie theater, modeling part-time at the Blue Book Model Agency, and worked as a photographer at Esther Williams's Trails Restaurant.
Early in Jayne Mansfield's career, some advertisers considered her prominent breasts undesirable or inappropriate. She lost her first professional assignment, a General Electric commercial featuring young women in bathing suits relaxing around a pool, having been cropped out of the final photographs. Photographer Gene Lester, who worked on the photoshoot, stated that Mansfield was "too sexy" for the advertisement.
In 1954, Mansfield auditioned at both Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. For the Paramount audition in April, Mansfield performed a sketch from Joan of Arc for casting director Milton Lewis. Lewis told her she was wasting her "obvious talents" and had her come back a week later to perform the piano scene from The Seven Year Itch. Mansfield failed to impress, but learned she would have to dye her hair blonde. She performed the piano scene for Warner Brothers, but, again, failed to impress.
Mansfield landed her first acting assignment in the CBS series Lux Video Theatre, in the episode "An Angel Went AWOL", aired on October 21, 1954. In it, she sat at a piano and delivered a few lines of dialogue. She was paid $300.
In 1955, the Mansfields separated, although Jayne kept Paul's last name.
''Playboy'' appearances
In December 1953, Hugh Hefner began publishing Playboy. The magazine became a success in part because of early appearances by Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page, and Anita Ekberg. In February 1955, Mansfield was the Playboy Playmate of the Month, and appeared in the magazine several times. Publication of photos of Mansfield boosted the magazine's circulation and her own career. Shortly afterward, she posed for the Playboy calendar, covering her bare breasts with her hands. Playboy featured Mansfield each February from 1955 to 1958, and again in 1960. In 1964, the magazine repeated the 1955 pictorial. Playboy later reprinted photos from that pictorial issue, with titles such as December 1965s "The Playboy Portfolio of Sex Stars", and January 2000s "Centerfolds of the Century".Film
Mansfield's first film part was a supporting role in Female Jungle, a low-budget drama completed in ten days. She was paid $150.In February 1955, James Byron, Mansfield's manager and publicist, negotiated a seven-year contract with Warner Brothers, whose decisionmakers were intrigued by her publicity antics. The contract initially paid her $250 a week and landed her two films, one with an insignificant role and one that was unreleased for two years. Mansfield was given bit parts in Pete Kelly's Blues, starring Jack Webb, and Hell on Frisco Bay, starring Alan Ladd. She acted in one more movie for Warner Brothers—another small but significant role opposite Edward G. Robinson in the courtroom drama Illegal.
Mansfield got out of her Warner contract just in time to star on Broadway opposite Walter Matthau. Mansfield's agent, William Shiffrin, signed her to play fictional film star Rita Marlowe in the Broadway play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? with Orson Bean and Walter Matthau. The part was offered to Mansfield after Mamie Van Doren turned it down. Mansfield accepted the part while working on producer Louis W. Kellman's The Burglar, an adaption of the novel of the same name by David Goodis, directed by Paul Wendkos, made in film noir style. She appeared alongside Dan Duryea and Martha Vickers. The film was released two years later, when Mansfield's fame was at its peak. She was successful in this straight dramatic role, though most of her subsequent film appearances were comedic or capitalized on her sex appeal. It was Kellman's first major venture, and he claimed to have "discovered" Mansfield.
On May 3, 1956, Twentieth Century Fox signed Mansfield to a six-year contract to mold her as a successor to the increasingly difficult Marilyn Monroe, their resident blonde sex symbol. Monroe had just completed Bus Stop. Mansfield was still under contract to Broadway and continued playing Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? on stage until September 15.
Mansfield undertook her first starring film role as Jerri Jordan in Frank Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help It. Originally titled Do-Re-Mi, it featured a high-profile cast of contemporary rock and roll and R&B artists, including Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Fats Domino, The Platters, and Little Richard. Released in December 1956, The Girl Can't Help It became one of the year's biggest successes, both critically and financially, earning more than Gentlemen Prefer Blondes had three years before.
Soon afterward, Fox started promoting Mansfield as "Marilyn Monroe king-sized", attempting to coerce Monroe to return to the studio and complete her contract.
Mansfield next played a dramatic role in The Wayward Bus, an adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel of the same name. With this film, she attempted to move away from her "blonde bombshell" image and establish herself as a serious actress. The film enjoyed moderate box-office success, and Mansfield won a Golden Globe in 1957 for New Star of the Year, beating Carroll Baker and Natalie Wood with her performance as a "wistful derelict". It was "generally conceded to have been her best acting", according to The New York Times, in a fitful career hampered by her flamboyant image, distinctive voice, voluptuous figure, and limited acting range.
Tashlin cast Mansfield in the film version of the Broadway show Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, released in 1957, reprising her role of Rita Marlowe alongside costars Tony Randall and Joan Blondell. Fox launched its new blonde bombshell with a North American tour and a 40-day, 16-country tour of Europe. She attended the premiere of the film in London, and met Queen Elizabeth II.
Mansfield's fourth starring role in a Hollywood film was in Kiss Them for Me, for which she received prominent billing alongside Cary Grant. In the film, she is little more than comic relief; Grant's character relates to a redhead played by fashion model Suzy Parker. The film, described as "vapid" and "ill-advised", was a critical and box-office flop, and was one of 20th Century Fox's last attempts to promote Mansfield. The continuing publicity related to her physical appeal failed to sustain her career. Fox gave her a leading role opposite Kenneth More in The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, a western comedy filmed on location in Spain. In the film, Mansfield's three songs were dubbed by singer Connie Francis. Fox released the film in the United States in 1959, and it was Mansfield's last mainstream film success. Columbia Pictures offered her a part opposite James Stewart and Jack Lemmon in the romantic comedy Bell, Book and Candle, but she turned it down because she was pregnant. Fox attempted to cast Mansfield opposite Paul Newman in Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!, his ill-fated first attempt at comedy.
In 1959, Fox cast Mansfield in two independent gangster films shot in the United Kingdom: The Challenge and Too Hot to Handle, both released in 1960. Both films were low-budget, and their American releases were delayed. Too Hot to Handle was released in the U.S. as Playgirl After Dark in 1961. The Challenge was released in 1963 as It Takes a Thief. In the U.S., censors objected to a scene in Too Hot to Handle in which Mansfield, wearing silver netting with sequins painted over her nipples, appears nearly nude.
When Mansfield returned to Hollywood in mid-1960, 20th Century Fox cast her in It Happened in Athens with Trax Colton, a handsome newcomer Fox was trying to mold into a heartthrob. She received first billing above the title but appeared in a supporting role. The Olympic Games-based film was shot in Greece in 1960 but not released until 1962. It was a box-office failure. In 1961, Mansfield took a minor role but above-the-title billing in The George Raft Story, released in 1962. Starring Ray Danton as Raft, the film showcased Mansfield in a small part as a glamorous film star.
With a decreased demand for big-breasted, blonde bombshells and an increasing backlash against her excessive publicity, Mansfield became a box-office has-been by the early 1960s. Fox stopped viewing her as a major Hollywood star and started loaning her and her likeness out to foreign productions in England and Italy, respectively, until the end of her contract in 1962. Many of her English/Italian films are regarded as obscure and some are considered lost.
Tommy Noonan persuaded Mansfield to become the first mainstream American actress to appear nude in a starring role, in the film Promises! Promises!. Playboy published nude photographs of Mansfield on set in its June 1963 issue, resulting in obscenity charges being filed against Hugh Hefner in a Chicago court. Promises! Promises! was banned in Cleveland, Ohio, but enjoyed box-office success elsewhere. As a result of its success, Mansfield landed on the Top 10 list of box-office attractions for that year.
Soon thereafter, Mansfield was chosen to replace the recently deceased Marilyn Monroe in Kiss Me, Stupid, a romantic comedy starring Dean Martin. She turned down the role because of her pregnancy. She was replaced by Kim Novak. But in that same year, 1963, Mansfield appeared in a pinup book, Jayne Mansfield for President: the White House or Bust, which was promoted on billboards. David Attie, a commercial and fine art photographer, took the photographs.
In the mid-1960s, Mansfield appeared in foreign films such as L'Amore Primitivo and Panic Button. In 1966, she was cast in Single Room Furnished, directed by her husband Matt Cimber, whom she had married in 1964. She portrayed three different characters in her first starring dramatic role in several years. The film was released briefly in 1966. It did not enjoy a full release until 1968, almost a year after her death. After Single Room Furnished wrapped, Mansfield was cast opposite Mamie Van Doren and Ferlin Husky in The Las Vegas Hillbillys, a low-budget comedy from Woolner Brothers. This was her first country and western film, and she promoted it on a 29-day tour of major U.S. cities, accompanied by Husky, Don Bowman, and other country musicians. Before filming, Mansfield said she would not "share any screen time with the drive-in's answer to Marilyn Monroe", meaning Van Doren. Their characters did share one scene, but Mansfield and Van Doren filmed their parts at different times; these were edited together later.
In early 1967, Mansfield filmed her last role, a cameo in A Guide for the Married Man, a comedy starring Walter Matthau, Robert Morse, and Inger Stevens. The opening credits listed Mansfield as one of the technical advisers, along with other star names.