Jayne Mansfield and me.
I met her when I was about ten years old. It was an unforgettable moment, but not for the reasons you might think.
I listened with great interest this morning to Tonya Mosley’s “Fresh Air” interview with Mariska Hargitay, the daughter of Jayne Mansfield who—I had not realized this before—was in the car when Mansfield was killed in a terrible automobile accident in 1967. Mariska was three years old at the time, and so has no memory of the crash nor of her mother.
The interview with the well known actress covered a lot of ground, including Mariska’s conflicted attitudes about the ditzy blond her very smart mother portrayed in films and personal appearances—including the squeaky/sexy baby voice that went with what was an act suited to the sexist times (the 1950s, when the very smart Marilyn Monroe was put through the same paces.)
Mariska also talked about finding out that her real father was not Mickey Hargitay. The interview was often very moving and I highly recommend it.
It reminded me that when I was about ten years old, I met Jayne Mansfield in person. The principal of our elementary school in Los Angeles was friends with her, and somehow he thought it would be an appropriate show and tell to have her visit the school.
I knew who she was, because not long before I had gone with my parents to see the 1957 comedy “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” starring Mansfield and Tony Randall. (Betsky Drake, Joan Blondell, and Mickey Hargitay were all in it too.)
During the scene where the Tony Randall character puts a box of popcorn in his back pocket, which begins to pop when the Jayne Mansfield character kisses him, I laughed so hard that I peed my pants. You don’t forget that kind of thing.
Jayne Mansfield showed up in our classroom wearing jeans and a loose sweatshirt, clearly trying to look as unsexy as possible. That was wise and served to protect us innocent kids from getting any pre-pubescent ideas. My memory is that when it was my turn to say hello to her, she knelt down and looked at me curiously, almost searchingly. I was a pretty cute kid at that time, judging from family photos, but I remember being perplexed and wondering why this major movie star was looking at me that way.
I can’t pretend to know, to this day. But as is well known today, she was really the opposite of a stereotypical “dumb blonde.” She spoke several languages, played the violin, and read a great deal. Perhaps it was not such a mystery that she looked at a ten year old boy and wondered what made him tick. At least that’s what I would like to think she was thinking all those years ago.
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