19 Fascinating Facts About Jayne Mansfield

The life of Vera Jayne Palmer, a.k.a. Jayne Mansfield, is filled with many too-wild-to-be-true rumors—but some of those rumors are true. Ahead of the documentary My Mom Jayne, which hits HBO and HBO Max on June 27, here’s what you should know about the actress.

1. The “dumb blonde” wasn’t dumb at all.
2. She turned down “Miss Roquefort Cheese.”
3. Mansfield had her first real success on Broadway.
4. She was one of “The Three Ms.”
5. There was a Jayne Mansfield hot water bottle.
6. Mansfield’s studio tried to keep her from marrying her second husband.
7. Her house was pink.
8. Mansfield’s Pink Palace had several other famous inhabitants.
9. Mansfield is one half of one of Hollywood history’s most famous photos.
10. It was rumored that she had an affair with JFK.
11. She broke Hollywood’s no-nudity rule.
12. She had a famous meeting with the Beatles.
13. She might have turned down the role of Ginger on Gilligan’s Island.
14. She put out two novelty albums.
15. She was friends with Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey.
16. Mansfield died at just 34 years old.
17. Three of Mansfield’s children were also in the car.
18. A wild documentary capitalized on her death.
19. Mariska Hargitay made a new documentary about her mother.

The “dumb blonde” wasn’t dumb at all.

Part of Jayne Mansfield’s early persona was built around the stereotype of a dumb blonde. Mansfield, however, studied five languages and reportedly had an IQ in the 160s, though biographer Eve Golden says this detail “sounds like publicity fluff.” In 1957, she appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show playing Vivaldi’s “Concerto in A Minor” on the violin (she also played a song on the piano). In 1956 she explained to The Los Angeles Times, “I had better than a B-plus average at the University of Texas but with most men you must conceal your brain.” 

She turned down “Miss Roquefort Cheese.”

Before hitting it big, Mansfield ended up on a sort of quasi-pageant circuit—“quasi” because the titles she received were likely made up for publicity, either for her or for local organizations. Among the titles she purportedly received, according to Golden’s biography Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn’t Help It, are: “Miss Four Alarm (for fire prevention week) … Miss Photoflash, Miss Third Platoon, Miss Queen of Chihuahua Show, Miss Nylon, Miss Orchid, Miss Negligee, Miss Blue Bonnet of Austin, Miss Texas Tomato, Miss July Fourth, Miss Standard Foods, and Gas Station Queen.” Said Mansfield in 1956: “I think the only thing I ever turned down was a chance to be Miss Roquefort Cheese, ’cause it didn’t sound right.” 

Mansfield had her first real success on Broadway.

When Mansfield’s time in Hollywood proved unsuccessful, she moved to New York and co-starred in a Broadway production of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, about a fan-magazine writer who enters into a Faustian pact that featured Mansfield as a blatant parody of Marilyn Monroe. Both Mansfield and the play were a hit, and the film adaptation—which changed virtually every part of the story—became Mansfield’s second big hit, after the previous year’s The Girl Can’t Help It.

She was one of “The Three Ms.”

When Mansfield was coming up in Hollywood, superstar Marilyn Monroe was becoming difficult for studio Twentieth Century Fox to control, having insisted on studying method acting and starting her own production company. Popular legend has it that Mansfield was hired specifically to warn Monroe that she was disposable, though others argue the timelines don’t make sense for that, and Mansfield was instead brought on to fill the “blonde bombshell” musical/comedy void as Monroe sought more serious roles. Mansfield (a natural brunette who dyed her hair platinum blonde) and actress Mamie Van Doren were intended to be Marilyn Monroe knock-offs; together, the trio of curvy blonde bombshells are sometimes known as “The Three Ms.”

There was a Jayne Mansfield hot water bottle.

Those who wanted to cuddle up with Mansfield could do so, in a way, thanks to a Jayne Mansfield-shaped hot water bottle that was released in 1957 shortly after her rise to fame. Mansfield posed for the hot water bottle, which, per designer Don Poynter, was sold for under $10 to around 400,000 people between its introduction and the time of Mansfield’s death. Mansfield was photographed lounging in a pool filled with them.

Mansfield’s studio tried to keep her from marrying her second husband.

According to biographer May Mann, Twentieth Century Fox—with whom Mansfield was under contract—did not want her to marry bodybuilder and Mr. Universe Mickey Hargitay, her eventual second husband. The studio argued that Mansfield wouldn’t be able to date around to boost publicity, and the marriage would prevent her from marrying someone richer and more famous should the opportunity arise. Mansfield met Hargitay in 1956 while he was performing as a muscleman in Mae West’s New York nightclub act. As reported in Hargitay’s New York Times obituary, when Mansfield asked what she wanted for dinner that night, she said, “I’ll have a steak and the man on the left.” They married in 1958, and would divorce in 1963. 

Her house was pink.

Mansfield called her house on Sunset Boulevard the “Pink Palace,” and it was indeed pink inside and out, with a heart-shaped pool. On the bottom of the pool were the words I love you Jaynie in gold leaf, a gift from Hargitay. 

Mansfield’s Pink Palace had several other famous inhabitants.

Mansfield lived in the Pink Palace until her death. A few years later, Ringo Starr moved in (by the time Starr lived there, the house had been painted white). In 1977, singer Engelbert Humperdinck bought the house and eventually repainted it pink.

Humperdinck said he’d met Mansfield over dinner two weeks before her death, but he also claimed to have encountered her ghost while living in the Pink Palace. Said Humperdinck: “I think Jayne was ever-present. It was OK. It was fine … I found out that she used a certain kind of perfume. And that perfume is ever-present in the Pink Palace. It was ever-present. And I tell you sometimes when I’d lie in bed ... somebody came and sat on my bed. You’d feel the bed go down. And then you’d get the smell of the perfume. And I always said, ‘Welcome. Welcome, Jayne.’ ”

Humperdinck owned the Pink Palace until 2002, when he sold it to developers. The house was later demolished.

Mansfield is one half of one of Hollywood history’s most famous photos.

Even if you’ve never seen a Mansfield movie, chances are good you’ve seen the famous photo of her with Sophia Loren in which Loren delivers serious side-eye directed at Mansfield’s breasts. Said Loren decades later, “Look at the picture. Where are my eyes? ... I am afraid they are about to come onto my plate. In my face you can see the fear. I’m so frightened that everything in her dress is going to blow—BOOM!—and spill all over the table.” 

It was rumored that she had an affair with JFK.

According to Lawrence J. Quirk in his book The Kennedys in Hollywood, “One of Jack Kennedy’s sillier romantic involvements was with Jayne Mansfield.” Their affair reportedly began in 1960. Peter Lawford, Kennedy’s friend and brother-in-law, told Quirk that Kennedy said of Mansfield, “She’s so anxious to ape Marilyn, be Marilyn, we’ll add to her credentials by giving her a roll in the hay” (though there’s little direct evidence an affair actually occurred—even JFK’s affair with Marilyn Monroe is a controversial subject). 

She broke Hollywood’s no-nudity rule.

In 1963’s Promises! Promises!, about a couple of swingers on a cruise ship, Mansfield became the first major actress of the sound era to appear topless in a Hollywood film. Photos taken during filming were later published in the June 1963 issue of Playboy, though it wasn’t Mansfield’s first time in the magazine: In 1955, while still an aspiring actress, she was a centerfold, which helped her gain important publicity in the cinema business. 

She had a famous meeting with the Beatles.

In 1964, Mansfield had a run-in with The Beatles. During the band’s 1964 North American tour, the press asked them which Hollywood actress they wanted to meet; Paul McCartney—who was possibly joking, though he was a big fan of The Girl Can’t Help It—said “Jayne Mansfield.” Mansfield and the group, sans McCartney, partied at the famous Whisky a Go Go nightclub on the Sunset Strip. (Per Beatles press officer Derek Taylor, she pestered him for the photo op.) A persistent rumor has it that John Lennon urinated in Mansfield’s drink. 

She might have turned down the role of Ginger on Gilligan’s Island.

A persistent yet unconfirmed legend about Mansfield’s life (and there are a lot of those) has it that she was offered but turned down the role of Ginger in Gilligan’s Island— maybe because sitcoms were beneath her, or she was hoping to get away from the ‘bombshell’ stereotype, or, in the earliest version of the story that we’ve tracked down, her third husband Matt Cimber turned it down for her because it didn’t pay enough. Biographer Golden is skeptical of the story, arguing that “Jayne rarely turned down a paying job“—though she does quote Mansfield as having said, on the subject of TV, “she considers herself primarily a movie actress and does not want to compete against herself.” 

She put out two novelty albums.

In 1961, she released Jayne Mansfield Busts Up Las Vegas, a recording of her show at the Dunes Hotel and Casino. A few years after that came Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky & Me, in which the actress reads excerpts from Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Butler Yeats, William Wordsworth, Christopher Marlowe, and more against a backdrop of Tchaikovsky music (and other classical composers). 

She was friends with Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey.

A trip to the San Francisco Film Festival in October 1966 led to Mansfield meeting and eventually befriending Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey, whom she would call both “a genius” and “a good friend.”

More rumors than hard fact (many detailed in the documentary Mansfield 66/67) exist about their relationship, some of the most sensational of which include: Mansfield was a high priestess of the Church of Satan; LeVay put a curse on Mansfield’s lawyer/lover Sam Brody that caused the car wreck in which he died, with Mansfield being an accidental casualty; and that Mansfield’s praying to LaVey is what saved the life of her 6-year-old son Zoltán after he was mauled by a lion at Jungleland, a private Los Angeles zoo that housed animals used in the entertainment industry, in 1966. (Said freelance photographer Dave Payne, who witnessed the attack: “The lion jumped him, knocking him down on his stomach and then got him by the neck.” Two men were able to free the child from the lion’s grasp and get him to the hospital.) 

Mansfield died at just 34 years old.

Mansfield died in a car crash in the early morning of June 29, 1967, at the age of 34, alongside Sam Brody, driver Ronnie Harrison, and a few chihuahuas. Mansfield was said to have been decapitated in the accident, though this was debunked by the undertaker who dealt with her body, who told The New York Times, “Her head was attached as much as mine is.” In reality, it’s thought that presence of a wig on the front dash of the car, thrown to the side of the road where arriving reporters could see it, contributed to the decapitation rumor. 

Three of Mansfield’s children were also in the car.

Mansfield had five children, three of whom were in the car with her when the accident occurred. Miklós, Zoltán, and Mariska Hargitay all survived. The future Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star, who was 3 at the time, has said she doesn’t remember the accident, though it did leave her with a permanent scar on her forehead. 

A wild documentary capitalized on her death.

Released the year after Mansfield’s death, the mondo documentary The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield consists of footage of Mansfield traveling across Europe, being chased by paparazzi and partying with drag queens. (A Mansfield impersonator provided narration.) Then, after the car accident that killed Mansfield, directors Arthur Knight, Joel Holt and Charles W. Broun, Jr. added in gruesome photos of the site of her death and a video tour of the late actress’s house. 

Mariska Hargitay made a new documentary about her mother.

Hargitay told Vanity Fair that she doesn’t remember anything about her life until she was about 5 years old, two years after her mother’s death—but growing up, she was mortified by Mansfield’s reputation as a sex symbol. “I just wanted my mom to be like the other moms! Like, Why are you always in a bathing suit? Why so much breast? I just wanted a maternal mother image  … I was embarrassed by the choices that she made.” To process her trauma from the accident and grapple with her feelings about Mansfield, she decided to make My Mom Jayne, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Mansfield attended the festival in 1958, every inch the blonde bombshell character she was playing. “The fact that I get to take her back and to tell her story there, I just don’t have the words,” Hargitay said. My Mom Jayne will hit HBO Max on June 27.

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