<p>-
- What happened to Jayne Mansfield? Inside the life and career of the iconic actress and sex symbol</p>
<p>Randall ColburnJune 28, 2025 at 9:00 PM</p>
<p>Courtesy of Hargitay Family/HBO</p>
<p>Jayne Mansfield with a young Mariska Hargitay in 'My Mom Jayne'</p>
<p>Key Points -</p>
<p>Jayne Mansfield was one of the most famous (and infamous) actresses and tabloid fixtures of the '50s and '60s.</p>
<p>The bombshell is the subject of a new HBO documentary, My Mom Jayne, from her daughter, Mariska Hargitay.</p>
<p>The documentary is now streaming on HBO Max.</p>
<p>Jayne Mansfield, one of the defining sex symbols of the 1950s and '60s, is the subject of a new HBO documentary, My Mom Jayne.</p>
<p>As its title implies, the documentary is directed by Mansfield's daughter, Mariska Hargitay, best known as Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. An intensely personal film, it finds Hargitay, who was just 3 years old when Mansfield died, publicly working to reconcile what she knows and remembers about her mother with Mansfield's lingering reputation as a "dumb blonde" famous primarily because of her large bust.</p>
<p>The project has allowed Hargitay to develop a new appreciation for mother's intelligence and savvy when it came to traversing celebrity and cultivating a public image. Mansfield, after all, perseveres in culture in part due to the ways she operated as an "influencer" decades before that was a thing.</p>
<p>"I'm so in awe of what she did, what she accomplished, and what she navigated," Hargitay told Entertainment Weekly ahead of the film's release. "Her determination, her appetite, and her ambition, what she wanted to achieve, while at the same time wanting this full life, it's really extraordinary. And I do believe in so many ways she was ahead of her time."</p>
<p>Below is an overview of Mansfield, from the star's early appearances in Playboy to her defining era in Hollywood and tumultuous final years.</p>
<p>Who is Jayne Mansfield?</p>
<p>Courtesy of Hargitay Family/HBO</p>
<p>Jayne Mansfield</p>
<p>Mansfield was born Vera Jayne Palmer on April 19, 1933, in Bryn Mawr, Pa. — the only child of Herbert William Palmer, an attorney, and Vera Jeffrey Palmer — and grew up dreaming of Hollywood stardom.</p>
<p>She married Paul Mansfield at the age of 17, giving birth to a daughter, Jayne Marie Mansfield, that same year. While raising the child, she studied acting at a handful of different schools, including the University of Texas at Austin and UCLA, and won a number of beauty contests.</p>
<p>Her career got a boost from famed director Sidney Lumet, whose father, Baruch Lumet, was Mansfield's acting teacher. He secured her a screen test at Paramount in 1954, and the Mansfield family moved to Los Angeles that year.</p>
<p>But it was her appearance as Playboy's February 1955 Playmate of the Month that served as her big break, helping her land small roles in films that eventually led to a breakout role opposite Walter Matthau and Orson Bean in a 1955 Broadway production of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?</p>
<p>She went on to reprise the role for the 1957 film adaptation, and also turned heads in films like The Girl Can't Help It (1956) and The Wayward Bus (1957), the latter of which won her a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year.</p>
<p>Due to her voluptuous figure and her rising status as a publicity magnet, Twentieth Century Fox signed Mansfield to a contract with the hopes of turning her into the next Marilyn Monroe. Though she enjoyed success with 1958's The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, the studio soon cooled on the actress and she spent much of the rest of her career acting in supporting roles, appearing on variety shows, and touring nightclubs.</p>
<p>She remained a tabloid fixture, however, especially after being the first mainstream American actress to appear nude in a starring role with Promises! Promises! (1963).</p>
<p>What happened to Jayne Mansfield?</p>
<p>Courtesy of Hargitay Family/HBO</p>
<p>Jayne Mansfield with a young Mariska Hargitay in 'My Mom Jayne'</p>
<p>Throughout the '60s, Mansfield's dreams of being a dramatic actress evaporated as studios lost interest in her talents. As such, she chased fame via publicity stunts — such as a cheeky campaign for president in 1964 — and other ventures, including a novelty album in which she read Shakespeare sonnets over the music of Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.</p>
<p>Her personal life remained a hyper-focus of the media as she cycled through a number of marriages, affairs (rumored and not), and pregnancies.</p>
<p>Mansfield and Paul split amid her career rise, with her filing for divorce in 1956 and claiming Paul "refused to support her and was jealous of her Chihuahua."</p>
<p>Just days after their divorce finalized in 1958, Mansfield married Mickey Hargitay, an actor and former Mr. Universe.</p>
<p>The couple had two children, Mickey Jr. and Zoltán, and starred opposite each other in films such as The Loves of Hercules (1960) and L'Amore Primitivo (1964). Following media chatter about her affairs with Italian producer Enrico Bomba and comedian Nelson Sardelli, Mansfield and Mickey divorced in 1964, though their relationship had been on the rocks for a while. But after Mansfield discovered she was pregnant, she and Mickey publicly denied their split, lest Mansfield see her career imperiled as an unwed mother.</p>
<p>Debra L Rothenberg/FilmMagic</p>
<p>Nelson Sardelli and Mariska Hargitay at the 'My Mom Jayne' premiere on June 13, 2025</p>
<p>In 1964, Mansfield gave birth to Mariska, who revealed in May 2025 that Sardelli was her biological father, not Mickey, as was the narrative all these years.</p>
<p>That same year, she married film and stage director Matt Cimber, with whom she had another son, Tony. They separated less than a year later and filed for divorce in 1966. She then began living with Sam Brody, her attorney in a custody battle with Cimber. By several accounts, it was a tumultuous union allegedly exacerbated by alcohol and drugs.</p>
<p>How did Jayne Mansfield die?</p>
<p>Mansfield died at the age of 37 in a car accident on June 28, 1967. During a trip to Biloxi, Miss., in which she performed at nightclubs and visited an Air Force base, Mansfield and Brody accepted a ride from a chauffeur who crashed his car into a truck amid a cloud of mosquito insecticide. The driver, Mansfield, Brody, and two of Mansfield's four dogs died instantly. Mickey Jr., Zoltán, and Mariska were in the backseat, but only suffered minor injuries.</p>
<p>In the aftermath, rumors circulated that Mansfield was decapitated in the crash, though this was disputed by undertaker Jim Roberts, who saw her body and told the The New York Times in 1997 that "her head was attached as much as mine is."</p>
<p>Where can I watch My Mom Jayne?</p>
<p>Mariska Hargitay in 'My Mom Jayne'</p>
<p>My Mom Jayne is currently streaming on HBO Max.</p>
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