Background and career
Jayne Mansfield (born Vera Jayne Palmer; April 19, 1933 – June 29, 1967) was an American actress, Playboy Playmate, and singer. She was one of the original blonde bombshells and a leading sex symbol during the late 1950s and early 1960s. She was well-known for her publicity stunts, buxom figure, her fondness for the color pink, and for personifying the dumb blonde stereotype. While Mansfield's career was short-lived, she had several box office successes, and would win a Theatre World Award and a Golden Globe Award. Her breakthrough came in the Broadway comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? in 1955, which would lead to her signing with 20th Century Fox, where she was promoted as a successor to Marilyn Monroe. She was directed by Frank Tashlin in The Girl Can't Help It (1956) and the screen version of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957), both considered classics, played dramatic roles in The Wayward Bus (1957) and Too Hot to Handle (1960), and was the first American actress to appear nude in a sound film in Promises! Promises! (1963). Mansfield was a fixture on television throughout her career, where her comedic timing was showcased on several different variety shows and game shows, sometimes in the company of comedians, like Jack Benny and Jackie Gleason. As her film career declined in the early 1960s, she would almost exclusively work in low-budget productions, many filmed overseas. Mansfield toured with Bob Hope in his USO shows, and received continued publicity revolving around her physical appearance, wardrobe malfunctions, and marriages to muscleman Mickey Hargitay and producer-director Matt Cimber. Following her death in an automobile accident in 1967, she has remained a presence in popular culture.
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. A 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. One of her classmates was future actress Ann Wedgeworth.
While attending the University of Texas at Austin, Palmer won several beauty contests, including "Miss Photoflash", "Miss Magnesium Lamp", and "Miss Fire Prevention Week". She refused the title "Miss Roquefort Cheese", because she believed it "just didn't sound right", and she rejected "Miss Prime Rib" in 1957. 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 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 she took the casting director's suggestion that she dye her hair platinum blond. 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. She said the name "Mansfield" sounded "like a star".
In December 1953, Hugh Hefner began publishing Playboy. The magazine became a success in part because of the inclusion - without her consent - of Marilyn Monroe, and appearances by Mansfield, 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 "The Playboy Portfolio of Sex Stars" in December 1965, and "Centerfolds of the Century" in January 2000.
Mansfield was paid $150 for her screen debut in Female Jungle (1955), which marked American International Pictures' only venture into film noir. The film starred Lawrence Tierney and John Carradine, and was filmed on a micro-budget. During production, the script was quickly retooled following the reported rape of star Kathleen Crowley so that more emphasis was given to Mansfield. Female Jungle would be rereleased in 1956 as part of a double feature with The Oklahoma Woman just as Mansfield was rising in popularity.
In February 1955, James Byron, Mansfield's manager and publicist, negotiated a six-month contract with Warner Brothers, whose executives were intrigued by her appetite for publicity. The contract paid her $250 a week. Mansfield was given bit parts in Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), starring Jack Webb, and Hell on Frisco Bay (1955), starring Alan Ladd. She had a small, but significant role opposite Edward G. Robinson in the courtroom drama Illegal (1955). While her performance in the latter received good notices, her contract was not renewed. Mansfield secured the opportunity to star on Broadway following her release from Warner Brothers. 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 had apparently been offered to Marilyn Maxwell, but she declined, as did Mamie Van Doren. Mansfield secured the job after auditioning. Mansfield accepted the part while working on producer Louis W. Kellman's The Burglar (1957), an adaption of the novel of the same name by David Goodis, directed by Paul Wendkos. Produced in film noir-style, she appeared alongside Dan Duryea and Martha Vickers. The Burglar was released two years later, when Mansfield's fame was at its peak. While she was successful in this straight dramatic role, most of Mansfield's subsequent film and television appearances were comedic and capitalized on her sex appeal. It was Kellman's first major venture, and he later took credit for having "discovered" Mansfield.
