Jayne Mansfield in a leopard print bikini at the Pink Palace
Jayne Mansfield was the ultimate sex kitten-gone-berserk, the eternal starlet grasping for fame with both hands, Kenneth Anger’s cooing, squealing Hollywood Babylon made flesh. What, one might justifiably wonder, must it have been like having this outrageous creature for a mother?
Considering she was only three years old when Mansfield died in her gruesome 1967 car crash, it’s a question her youngest daughter, actress Mariska Hargitay, can only partially answer in her 2025 documentary My Mom Jayne. What Hargitay does powerfully articulate is the sense of loss she and her siblings have experienced ever since: the aching Jayne Mansfield-shaped void in their lives.
My Mom Jayne is heartfelt and awash with sadness. Mansfield’s premature death aged 34 is clearly the defining trauma in the lives of her five adult children, who, all these decades later, still cry when discussing her. (Mansfield’s oldest, Jayne Marie Mansfield, is 74. The rest are in their sixties. All of them seem like remarkably sane, nice people – a rarity for showbiz offspring). The way Hargitay weaves together archival footage, movie clips, and home movies is fluid and dream-like. Mansfield’s devotees will swoon over the glimpses of family life inside the Pink Palace, her spectacular, garish, and nouveau riche Holmby Hills mansion (unforgivably, the Mediterranean-style home was razed in 2002. Why, oh why wasn’t it preserved like a Graceland-style museum?). And the issue of Mariska’s real parentage is sensitively handled. (Mansfield’s second husband, former Mr. Universe Mickey Hargitay, raised Mariska as his own daughter, but her biological father was Brazilian-born lounge singer Nelson Sardelli. This matter has never been publicly acknowledged until now, but anyone who’s read a Mansfield biography already suspected this was probably the case).
Jayne Mansfield and baby Mariska in 1964
Look, I cried my ass off watching My Mom Jayne. But I do have one caveat. We can’t expect Mansfield’s family to be objective, but in My Mom, Hargitay laments an idealized career Jayne should and could have had – something classier, more A-list, more reputable, and “serious,” possibly incorporating classical music and violins. But to be blunt, Mansfield’s violin-playing was merely proficient. As a comedic actress, she was inspired. The genius-level IQ claim was a myth Mansfield and her publicity agent concocted early in her career, which people still breathlessly repeat to this day. And when Jayne attempted “good taste” dramatic performances, she was often found wanting. The 1957 John Steinbeck adaptation, The Wayward Bus, is a complete snore. She’s uncertain and out of her depth in Single Room Furnished (1968), with a poorly conceived, wandering “Noo Yawk” accent. In any case, in Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn’t Help It (2021), Eve Golden – one of her best biographers – quotes Mansfield herself exclaiming, “I don’t want to be a serious actress – I’m Jayne Mansfield!”
My Mom suggests that Mansfield herself viewed her ditzy blonde facade as a compromise or a trap. But Mansfield owned and shaped this persona from the start and lovingly maintained it throughout her life. My Mom’s argument robs Mansfield of her agency: she was her own auteur. There was no male Svengali figure pulling her strings behind the scenes. Not that anyone could tell Mansfield what to do anyway. In fact, her advisors despaired that she refused to listen to them. “I’m supposed to be handling your career,” Martha Saxton quotes Mansfield’s exasperated agent Bill Shiffrin exploding at her in the 1975 book Jayne Mansfield and the American Fifties. “I wish you weren’t the custodian of your career. I wish I could talk directly to your career.”
Camp twins Liberace and Jayne Mansfield
Instead, I would argue, why not embrace and celebrate the career Mansfield did have? Kitsch icon Mansfield is a key figure – a royal figure! – in low-brow trash culture. There’s a reason Kenneth Anger slapped HER image on the front cover of his salacious and wildly irresponsible first volume of Hollywood Babylon. Mansfield was the punk rock Marilyn Monroe, the drag queen’s Marilyn Monroe, or the naïve outsider artist’s Marilyn Monroe. Her spiritual progeny are Angelyne, Amanda Lepore, and Anna Nicole Smith (but not the Kardashians, although it’s true Mansfield did live her life like a modern reality TV star). Frolicking with pink-dyed poodles or gleefully ogling Mickey’s muscles, Mansfield demonstrated a profound and innate understanding of camp (and perhaps unsurprisingly, had a devoted gay fanbase from the start). Her effervescent male “psychic twin” is Liberace. (As Golden notes, showbiz columnists frequently called Liberace “the male Jayne Mansfield” as she was called “the female Liberace”). The pleasurable sensations Mansfield unleashes are analogous to surf instrumentals bursting from a jukebox, men wearing Hawaiian shirts and fezzes, black velvet paintings of naked ladies (or Elvis Presley. Or praying hands), Cadillacs with fins, and Tiki cocktails festooned with maraschino cherries and pineapple chunks.
And consider Mansfield’s impact on the sensibilities of the People’s Pervert John Waters and his 300-pound leady lady of choice, Divine. “I still think that’s how women should look, basically,” the sultan of sleaze claims in his bonus interview on the DVD for The Girl Can’t Help It. Waters has variously described Divine as “Jayne Mansfield and Godzilla put together to scare hippies” and “a cross between Jayne Mansfield and Clarabell the Clown.” “Jayne Mansfield is the ultimate movie star,” Waters marvels. “She looked to me like she was really happy being completely out of her mind – like an extreme glamour person.”
Jayne Mansfield touring the Colosseum in Rome in 1962
Then there’s the Addams Family of punk, The Cramps. “She’s a role model, a mentor. She had so much aplomb. She’d wear spiked heels and gold lamé to take out the garbage,” guitarist and co-founder Poison Ivy Rorschach raved to journalist Siân Pattenden in the November 1994 issue of Select magazine. Fascinatingly, Rorschach continued, “I saw her as a child. I think that’s why I’m fascinated by her. She opened a shop in Sacramento, and I remember she was with this man, and she looked really big, and she had a really big hairdo, and I remember it was full of dirt. Tons of dirt stuck to her hairspray. I thought, Man – she’s so intense! I’ve been fascinated by her ever since.” Who am I to question Poison Ivy’s recollection, but doesn’t that anecdote feel like a half-remembered David Lynch fever dream? Some of Mansfield’s ratty bouffant wigs in the sixties were pretty dishevelled, so it could be true! The Cramps also referenced Mansfield at least twice in their lyrics. “Is this the way Jayne Mansfield died?” frontman Lux Interior leered on “Bend Over, I’ll Drive” from Look Mom, No Head! (1991). Later, he’d brag, “I’m the feathered serpent of the Aztecs / I’ve weathered the invasion of the insects / I invented the Jayne Mansfield Nuclear project / The Pope genuflects to gain my respect” from “Confessions of a Psycho Cat” on Big Beat from Badsville (1997).
Jayne Mansfield and her wig circa Primitive Love (1964)
Furthermore, from her debut in lurid serial killer noir Female Jungle (1955) through to her swansong Single Room Furnished (1968), any movie starring Jayne Mansfield is worth investigating (although as a public health warning, watching Primitive Love (1964) and The Fat Spy (1966) will destroy your brain cells). The Girl Can’t Help It (1956) is justifiably feted as the Mercedes Benz of fifties rock’n’roll musicals, featuring young Little Richard, Eddie Cochran, and Gene Vincent at their most sexy and feral. And her filmography is studded with some overlooked gems ripe for rediscovery. Too Hot to Handle (1960) – set in the neon-lit glamour jungle of London’s Soho burlesque realm – anticipates Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls (1995). Sure, Promises! Promises! (1963) is stultifyingly boring, but it’s a landmark in sexploitation cinema. Freaky European thriller Dog Eat Dog (1964) concerns a criminal gang on the lam from the police who hide out on a weird, deserted island, gradually lose their minds, and begin double-crossing each other. (Jayne, of course, is their duplicitous moll). Best of all, faux documentary The Wild World of Jayne Mansfield (1968) chronicles her kinky globe-trotting misadventures visiting the hedonistic “sin spots” of the world, encompassing topless go-go clubs, gay bars, drag queen beauty pageants, and nudist colonies, usually accompanied by her pet Chihuahua.
Jayne’s pink cenotaph at the Hollywood Forever cemetery (photo: Graham Russell)
Whether cavorting onscreen or captured in a pin-up glamour shot, the sublime Jayne Mansfield is an anarchic comedienne, a prankster, a parodist, and a joyously uninhibited exhibitionist. Her zany energy and joie de vivre are irresistible. “I saw myself onscreen for the first time, and it was love at first sight,” Mansfield would reminisce after seeing Female Jungle. For us, too, Jayne! For us too!
Like the Shangri-Las song, Graham Russell is good-bad, but not evil. He’s a trash culture obsessive, occasional DJ (Cockabilly – London’s first and to date, only gay rockabilly night!), and promoter of the Lobotomy Room film club at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston. As a sporadic freelance journalist, over the years he’s contributed to everything from punk zines (MAXIMUMROCKNROLL, Flipside, Razorcake) to The Guardian and Interview magazine and interviewed the likes of John Waters, Marianne Faithfull, Poison Ivy Rorschach, Lydia Lunch, Henry Rollins, and Jayne County.