Jayne Mansfield’s secrets and the shame of daughter revealed
Mariska Hargitay said: “I just wanted my mother to be like the other mothers. Why are you always in a bathing suit? Why so much chest? So I felt ashamed of her.”
The Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Star, now 61, lays the shocking statements about her tragic, blonde Bombshell Mother, Jayne Mansfield in her direct debut with My mother Jaynean HBO documentary that maps the turbulent life and the death of her silver screen icon, mother, Radaronline.com can reveal.
The 34-year-old Hollywood Bombshell died on June 29, 1967 when the car in which she traveled in a truck hit New Orleans.
Three of her five children – Mickey, Zoltan and Mariska – slept in the back. All were injured but survived.
The crash was quickly entangled in myth.
One persistent – and false – rumor claimed that Mansfield had been beheaded. Her Undertaker, Jim Roberts, later explained that her wig was thrown out of the car and was thought in front of her head.
“It was nonsense,” he said.
Hargitay, who won a Golden Globe in 2005 and an Emmy in 2006 for her TV role as Olivia Benson, admitted that she has no memory of the accident or that her mother had died.
The film wants to put together a woman she hardly knew through interviews with brothers and sisters, surviving friends and the 101-year-old former press secretary of Mansfield, Raymond Strait.
Mansfield, born Vera Jayne Palmer, got up quickly after a calculated make -over – her hair turned out to be, revealing outfits and competing Marilyn Monroe in the 1950s race for maximum exposure.
She posed for Playboyplayed in Will success spoil Rock Jager? In 1957, and was briefly the most common pin-up of America.
But her hunger for publicity soon overshadowed attempts to be taken seriously.
“She was funny and disrespectful and fearless and real,” said Hargitay, quoting her father’s thoughts, the Bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay, born in Hungarian, who married Mansfield in 1958.
By 1964 the marriage and her career staggered. Film offers taken; Mansfield resorted to projects such as the nude comedy Promises! Promises! (1963.)
She showed her intelligence – reportedly supported by an IQ of 163 – in talk shows, even playing Vivaldi on The Ed Sullivan showBut got rejection of jokes from male hosts.
Her personal life was just turbulent. Several things, including rumors of controversial political figures, have eroded her marriage.
Later relationships, also with divorce lawyer Sam Brody, who died next to her, were marred by volatility.
In 1966, Mansfield posed with Anton Lavey, founder of the Church of Satan, for a staged ritual, which fed her fame.
Lavey Brody is said to be cursed and predicted his death in a car accident within a year.
The documentary also investigates a revelation that Hargitay received at the age of 25: that her biological father was not Mickey, but the Italian singer Nelson Sardelli, with whom Mansfield had a short relationship in 1963.
Sardelli said he remained quiet to prevent her childhood. “It’s all about loyalty,” said Hargitay.
The image of Mansfield as a breathable “stupid blonde” became a gilded cage that she could never escape, especially because she longed for recognition by the location via an Academy Award.
Hargitay’s film does not reformulates her as a tabloid caricature, but as a complex woman who pursues legitimacy in an industry that refused to evolve her.
