Pop Goes The World
Joann Ware
At the beginning of the docume ntary “My Mom J a y n e , ” actress Mariska Hargitay walks the property where her childhood home, known as the Pink Palace, used to stand on Sunset Boulevard in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles.
The 40-room Mediterranean- style mansion had been purchased by her mother, screen legend Jayne Mansfield, in 1957 and was painted inside and out in Mansfield’s signature pink. The interior was decorated with crystal chandeliers, depictions of cupids and Mansfield’s magazine covers. The home was demolished in 2002. Reportedly after Mansfield died, subsequent owners tried to paint over the pink, but it bled through with each attempt to mask it.
Hargitay was only 3 years old when her mother died in a horrific car accident. In the documentary, she admits she has virtually no memories of her mother – just a faint recollection of her mother touching her hair as she was eating a bowl of cereal one morning.
In this emotional documentary, which Hargitay directed, the actress, with assists from her siblings, people who knew her mother and archival footage, tells her mother’s often sad story. The documentary was made as an attempt for Hargitay to get to know her mother better and in the process the woman who was often viewed by the world as a poor man’s Marilyn Monroe gets the respect she never had in her lifetime.
Jayne Mansfield came into the world as Vera Jayne Palmer on April 19, 1933. She was an only child and when she was 3 years old, her father suffered a heart attack while driving and died. Young Jayne was in the car at the time of his death.
Jayne developed a talent for music and was equally adept at playing the violin and piano. But her ambition to become a star like the matinee idols she adored on the silver screen became an early obsession. She and her first husband, Paul Mansfield, and their daughter, Jayne Marie, moved to Los Angeles in 1954 and Jayne took any job to advance her career in pictures, from selling popcorn and candy in movie theaters to working as a photographer at a restaurant owned by film actress Esther Williams.
She bleached her hair platinum and appeared as a bit player in several films before being released from her contract from Warner Brothers in 1955 just in time to star on Broadway in the play “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” During the run of the play, Jayne lived in a hotel with her daughter, Jayne Marie, who remembers that time in New York fondly because she had her mother all to herself.
Jayne’s success on Broadway opened doors that had been closed to her in Hollywood and her film career began to flourish. She was known primarily for her outrageous publicity stunts, often performed in tandem with her second husband, Hungarian body builder Mickey Hargitay. The couple married in 1958 and though their marriage was often tumultuous, their children have mostly happy memories of growing up in the Pink Palace and swimming in the heartshaped pool their father, a former plumber and carpenter, built himself.
Jayne’s career waned once the era of the blonde bombshell fizzled out. While promising herself that she would become a serious actress one day, she still had to pay the bills and found herself taking parts in abysmal movies like “Las Vegas Hillbillies” and appearing mostly nude in the 1963 film “Promises! Promises!”
Towards the end of her life, Jayne began making appearances at nightclubs. She was on her way from a gig at a supper club in Biloxi, Miss., to New Orleans when the car she was riding in rear-ended a tractor-trailer. I had always heard that the accident happened so quickly, no one had any time to react. But Jayne’s son, Zoltan, who was 6 at the time, heard her scream. He was in the back seat, along with younger sister Mariska and older brother Mickey Jr. All three siblings suffered minor injuries. It was erroneously reported that Jayne had been beheaded in the wreck because her blonde wig was seen on the hood of the car. Jayne died of massive head trauma. The teenaged driver of the car, who also perished, had been driving too fast.
Jayne’s boyfriend Sam Brody was the third casualty that night. Jayne had long been estranged from husband Mickey Hargitay but had called him that night from a payphone telling him how miserable she was.
Many truths are revealed in this documentary and I shed many tears while watching it. What becomes evident at the end is that Mariska and her mom were on parallel journeys. Mariska wanted to become an established actress like her mother before her. Mariska took bit parts in TV before landing the role of Olivia Benson in the longrunning NBC drama “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”
At the end of the documentary, Mariska says, “I love you, Mom. And I miss you, Mom.”
I hope that wherever Jayne is now, she knows that.
