Old Hollywood Inspiration: Jayne Mansfield

One of the leading sex symbols of the 1950's 1960's and movie and B movie actress, Jayne Mansfield was born in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, 19 April 1933 and as a child she was a talented pianist and violin player.

Amazingly her IQ was reported to be a 163 and she attended the University of Dallas and participated in little-theatre productions. In 1949 at age 16 she married a man 8 years her senior named Paul Mansfield the next year when Jayne Mansfield was 17 the two had a child named Jayne Marie Mansfield. She landed a small but sexy role in Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), which led to roles that were more prominent in several ways also when she started her movie career she played in movies with popular actors and actresses to help kick start her movie career.

A job in the Broadway production of "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" brought her a good deal of attention for her scantily clad appearance, and she repeated the role in the film version with CoStar Tony Randall (A actor who would later on CoStar in a movie with Marilyn Monroe in 1960 called "Let's Make Love"). Her high-pitched squeal of delight and the studied ease with which she flaunted her more than obvious pulchritude led to a succession of roles as sex kittens and dumb blonde bombshells. She occasionally appeared in films of some quality, but though she apparently aspired to respectability as an actress, her public persona was too extreme to be taken seriously, and she became a sort of poor man's 'Marilyn Monroe' or as the backup or second star for Marilyn Monroe, without the vulnerability and ability that Monroe possessed also the popular movie studios did not think she was that much of a dumb blonde because she knew her movies lines easily.

In the early 1960's she began affairs with many famous individuals like 35th President JFK and his younger brother RFK. By the 1960s Mansfield's career had options that grew lower. She made somewhat embarrassing guest appearances like on the 1950's popular game show "What's My Line?" she appeared on the show 4 times 1956, 1957, 1964, and 1966 and many other 1950's and 1960's game shows also by 1962 she was dropped from 20th Century Fox and the rest of her career had smaller options like being in B movies and low budget movies or performing at food stores or small nightclubs.

On June 29, 1967, Jayne was killed when the car in which she was riding crashed into the back of a semi on the road near Slidell, Louisiana. Her lawyer Sam Brody also perished in the accident. The beautiful woman who starred in 31 movies, the woman who fought so hard for respectability, the woman who, in her own right, was a very good actress was dead at the age of 34. Her final film, Single Room Furnished (1968) was released the following year.

Biography: Taken from Imdb
Photos: Taken from here