Jayne Mansfield

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 26th of May 1957, Jayne Mansfield played the violin on The Ed Sullivan Show, backed by a six-person band. Afterward she exclaimed, "Now I am really national. Momma and Dallas see the Ed Sullivan show!" According to Nielsen, the episode reached 13,400,000 homes, close to 30 million viewers. The woman who said it had been born Vera Jayne Palmer, and she would die at 34. In her short life she was an actress, a Playboy Playmate and a singer. She was also a sex symbol famous for her stunts and her figure. How does a young woman with a handful of small parts turn herself into one of the most photographed people alive? What did the studios want from her, and what did that fame cost her? And why does a steel bar on the back of American trucks carry her name?

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• 2. Before Hollywood

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  In 1936, three-year-old Vera Jayne Palmer was in the car when her father, Herbert, died of a heart attack while driving. She had been born on the 19th of April 1933 at Bryn Mawr Hospital in Pennsylvania, the only child of Herbert and Vera Jeffrey Palmer. Until she was six, the family lived in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. Herbert practiced law there with Robert B. Meyner, who later became the state's governor.

  In 1939, her widowed mother married a sales engineer named Harry Lawrence Peers, and the family moved to Dallas, Texas. For a time the girl was known as Vera Jayne Peers. She dreamed of becoming a Hollywood star like Shirley Temple. At 12 she took ballroom dance lessons, and in school she studied violin, piano and viola. She graduated from Highland Park High School in 1950.

  At the University of Texas at Austin, she won beauty titles with names such as Miss Photoflash, Miss Magnesium Lamp and Miss Fire Prevention Week. By her own account, she refused only Miss Roquefort Cheese, because it "just didn't sound right". As a star in 1957 she also turned down a title called Miss Prime Rib.

  In 1952, she took small parts in Dallas local theater productions of The Slaves of Demon Rum and Ten Nights in a Barroom. Her first significant stage appearance came on the 22nd of October 1953, in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, with the Knox Street Theater players led by Sidney Lumet. That performance caught the attention of Paramount Pictures, and Lumet coached her for the audition.

  The move to Los Angeles came in 1954, and with it a string of day jobs. She sold popcorn at the Stanley Warner Theatre, taught dance, sold candy at a movie theater, and modeled part-time for the Blue Book Model Agency. She also worked as a photographer at Esther Williams's Trails Restaurant. Her first professional assignment ended badly. A General Electric commercial showing young women in swimsuits around a pool cropped her out of the final photographs. Photographer Gene Lester said she was "too sexy" for the advertisement.

  In April 1954, Paramount casting director Milton Lewis watched her perform a sketch from Joan of Arc. He told her she was wasting her "obvious talents" and asked her back a week later. That time she performed the piano scene from The Seven Year Itch. She did not impress him, but she took his advice to dye her hair platinum blond. Warner Brothers saw the same piano scene and was equally unmoved.

  Her first acting job aired on the 21st of October 1954 in the CBS series Lux Video Theatre, in an episode called "An Angel Went AWOL". She sat at a piano and delivered a few lines, and she was paid $300. Her first film part, in the low-budget drama Female Jungle, was finished in ten days and paid only $150.

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• 3. The Publicity Machine

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  On Christmas Eve 1954, Mansfield walked into the office of publicist James Byron with a gift and asked him to run her publicity. He did so, for the most part, until the end of 1961. Byron chose most of her team, including press agent William Shiffrin, attorney Greg Bautzer and business manager Charles Goldring. He also kept feeding material about her to the media.

  A too-small red bikini made the first big splash. At a January 1955 press junket in Silver Springs, Florida, promoting the Jane Russell film Underwater!, she wore a suit borrowed from photographer friend Peter Gowland. She chose it on purpose. When she dived into the pool for the cameras, her top came off. The burst of attention brought offers from Warner Bros. and Playboy.

  Hugh Hefner had begun publishing Playboy only in December 1953, and Mansfield's pictures helped the young magazine take off. She was Playmate of the Month in February 1955, and the issue boosted both its circulation and her career. She then posed for the Playboy calendar, covering her bare breasts with her hands. The magazine featured her every February from 1955 to 1958, again in 1960, and in 1964 it repeated the 1955 pictorial.

  Between September 1956 and May 1957, she appeared in about 2,500 newspaper photographs and inspired roughly 122,000 lines of newspaper copy. By 1960 she had topped press polls for most words in print and had made more personal appearances than any political candidate. She was regarded as the most-photographed Hollywood celebrity in the world. Appearances for everything from supermarket promotions to drugstore openings paid her $10,000 each. On the 10th of October 1959, she even turned up at White Hart Lane in England to watch Tottenham Hotspur play Wolverhampton Wanderers.

  On the 8th of June 1955, her dress fell to her waist twice in one evening, first at a movie party and then at a nightclub. In February 1958 she was topless at a Carnival party in Rio de Janeiro. In June 1962 she shimmied out of a polka-dot dress in a Rome nightclub.

  In April 1957, a dinner party honoring Sophia Loren became a stage for a different stunt, meant to pull attention away from the guest of honor. Seated between Loren and Clifton Webb, Mansfield leaned across the table so that her low neckline gave way. Photographs spread around the world. The best-known shows Loren gazing at her, and the UPI version ran with the word "censored" covering the exposed detail.

  Pink became her color in 1954. Purple was her first choice, but she judged it too close to lavender, the signature color of Kim Novak. "It must have been the right decision," she said, "because I got more column space from pink than Kim Novak ever did from lavender."

  In November 1957, she used money from an inheritance to buy a 40-room Mediterranean-style mansion at 10100 Sunset Boulevard in Holmby Hills, once owned by Rudy Vallée. She had it painted pink and named it the Pink Palace. Inside were cupids ringed by pink fluorescent lights, pink fur in the bathrooms, a heart-shaped bathtub and a fountain of pink champagne. Her husband, Mickey Hargitay, a plumber and carpenter before he took up bodybuilding, built the heart-shaped swimming pool. The next year she began riding in a pink Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz convertible with tailfins, then the only pink Cadillac in Hollywood.

  Her first truly bad press came in September 1958. Hargitay's first wife, Mary, whom he had divorced in 1956, asked for more child support for their daughter Tina. Mansfield and Hargitay pleaded poverty. She told reporters she slept on the floor of her mansion, could not afford furniture, and spent only $71 on her daughter Jayne Marie.

  By the late 1950s, her carefully staged wardrobe accidents were generating steady criticism. Designer Richard Blackwell, who also made clothes for Jane Russell, Dorothy Lamour, Peggy Lee and Nancy Reagan, dropped her from his client list. Things worsened when she took charge of her own publicity. Shiffrin put it bluntly: "She became a freak."

  In April 1967, the Los Angeles Times delivered its verdict: "She confuses publicity and notoriety with stardom and celebrity and the result is very distasteful to the public." It appeared only a couple of months before she died.

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• 4. Studio Years

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  In February 1955, Byron negotiated a seven-year Warner Brothers contract for Mansfield, because studio decision makers were intrigued by her publicity antics. It paid $250 a week. She played bit parts in 1955 in Pete Kelly's Blues, starring Jack Webb, and Hell on Frisco Bay, starring Alan Ladd. A small but notable role followed opposite Edward G. Robinson in the courtroom drama Illegal.

  Mansfield left Warner Brothers just in time to play Rita Marlowe, a fictional film star, on Broadway in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? Her agent, William Shiffrin, signed her, and the part reached her only after Mamie Van Doren turned it down. Orson Bean and Walter Matthau co-starred. Her costume of a bath towel caused a sensation, and she gave about 450 performances between 1955 and 1956. She won the Theatre World Award for Promising Personality, though not every critic was kind. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times noted her "commendable abandon" and called the character "a platinum-pated movie siren with the wavy contours of Marilyn Monroe".

  She accepted that Broadway part while filming The Burglar, a film noir for producer Louis W. Kellman, directed by Paul Wendkos, with Dan Duryea and Martha Vickers. The picture sat unreleased for two years and reached theaters in 1957, when her fame was at its peak. It was a straight dramatic role, and she did well in it. Kellman later claimed to have "discovered" her.

  On the 3rd of May 1956, Twentieth Century Fox signed Mansfield to a six-year contract. The studio wanted a successor to Marilyn Monroe, its increasingly difficult resident blonde, who had just finished Bus Stop. Mansfield kept playing Rock Hunter on stage until the 15th of September.

  Her first starring film role was Jerri Jordan in Frank Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help It, which began life under the title Do-Re-Mi. Rock and roll and R&B performers filled the cast, among them Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Fats Domino, The Platters and Little Richard. Released in December 1956, it was one of the year's biggest successes with critics and audiences, and it earned more than Gentlemen Prefer Blondes had three years earlier. Fox then marketed her as "Marilyn Monroe king-sized", hoping to pressure Monroe into returning to finish her contract.

  In The Wayward Bus, adapted from John Steinbeck's novel, Mansfield tried to escape her blonde bombshell image. The film did moderately well at the box office. In 1957 she won the Golden Globe for New Star of the Year, ahead of Carroll Baker and Natalie Wood. The New York Times judged it generally conceded to be her best acting. It also noted that her career was held back by her flamboyant image, her limited range and a distinctive voice described as "a soft-voiced coo punctuated with squeals".

  Tashlin cast her again in the 1957 film version of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, with Tony Randall and Joan Blondell. To launch her, Fox sent her on a North American tour and then a 40-day, 16-country tour of Europe, running from the 25th of September to the 6th of November 1957. In London she attended the premiere, where the film was titled Oh! For a Man, and she met Queen Elizabeth II.

  Kiss Them for Me, also from 1957, put her opposite Cary Grant, but she was little more than comic relief. Critics called the film "vapid" and "ill-advised", and it flopped. It was among Fox's last attempts to promote her. The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, a western comedy shot in Spain with Kenneth More, gave her a leading role in 1958. Singer Connie Francis dubbed her three songs. It was her last mainstream film success.

  Pregnancy cost her two big chances. She turned down Bell, Book and Candle, with James Stewart and Jack Lemmon, and later Kiss Me, Stupid, the Dean Martin comedy that was to replace the late Marilyn Monroe with her. Kim Novak took that part.

  By the early 1960s, demand for blonde bombshells was falling, and the backlash against her publicity was rising. Fox, whose contract with her ran until 1962, began loaning her out to productions in England and Italy. Two low-budget gangster films shot in the United Kingdom, The Challenge and Too Hot to Handle, reached screens in 1960. Many of her English and Italian films are now obscure, and some are considered lost.

  Then came Promises! Promises! in 1963. Tommy Noonan persuaded her to become the first mainstream American actress to appear nude in a starring role. Playboy published nude photographs from the set in its June 1963 issue, and obscenity charges were filed against Hugh Hefner in a Chicago court. Cleveland, Ohio, banned the film, but it succeeded elsewhere. An organization of American theater owners voted her one of that year's top 10 box-office attractions.

  Her last films were small. Single Room Furnished, in which she played three characters, was directed by her husband Matt Cimber. It was released briefly in 1966 and did not get a full release until 1968, almost a year after her death. In early 1967 she filmed a cameo in A Guide for the Married Man, whose opening credits listed her as a technical adviser, along with other star names.

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• 5. The Blonde Bombshell

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  Novelist Jacqueline Susann once wrote, "When one studio has a Marilyn Monroe, every other studio is hiring Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren." Universal Pictures launched Van Doren as its own substitute. Columbia tried Cleo Moore, Warner Bros. tried Carroll Baker, Paramount tried Anita Ekberg, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer tried Barbara Lang. In England, Diana Dors was dubbed the answer to Mansfield. Mansfield herself was nicknamed the "Working Man's Monroe".

  Mansfield considered Van Doren her professional nemesis, though the press lumped Monroe, Mansfield and Mamie together as The Three M's. Before filming The Las Vegas Hillbillys in 1966, Mansfield said she would not "share any screen time with the drive-in's answer to Marilyn Monroe", meaning Van Doren. Their characters do share one scene, but the two actresses filmed at different times and the footage was edited together. Mansfield promoted that low-budget Woolner Brothers comedy, her first country and western film, on a 29-day tour of major U.S. cities with Ferlin Husky and Don Bowman.

  She borrowed heavily from Monroe's style. She adopted Monroe's vocal mannerisms in place of her own husky voice and Texas accent. She performed in two plays based on Monroe vehicles, Bus Stop and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Her role in The Wayward Bus was strongly influenced by Monroe's character in Bus Stop.

  Mansfield's platinum hair put her among the early blonde bombshells, along with Monroe, Betty Grable and Mamie Van Doren. Jean Harlow had started the trend with her film Bombshell. The stereotype combined a curvaceous body, very light hair and a perceived lack of intelligence. Social historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg called the 1950s "an era distinguished by its worship of full-breasted women" and credited the shift to Mansfield and Monroe. Another scholar, Patricia Vettel-Becker, pointed to Playboy and the pair's appearances in it. These women replaced the asexualized, virginal "nice girls" of earlier films.

  Newspapers in the 1950s routinely printed Mansfield's body measurements. The habit once drew a complaint from evangelist Billy Graham: "This country knows more about Jayne Mansfield's statistics than the Second Commandment." Playboy listed her measurements in 1955 as 40D-21-36 on a 5 ft 6 in frame. Newspapers called her "the Cleavage Queen". British writer J. G. Ballard, drawing on the Freudian idea of fetishism, wrote that the breasts of Mae West, Mansfield and Monroe "loomed across the horizon of popular consciousness".

  Mansfield claimed an IQ of 163, and she spoke English and four other languages. She learned French, Spanish and German in high school and studied Italian in 1963. Reputed to be Hollywood's "smartest dumb blonde", she complained that the public ignored her brain. "They're more interested in 40-21-35," she said.

  Critic Dave Kehr observed that, as the 1960s approached, the anatomy that had made her a star turned her into a joke. The body ideal of the decade shifted toward the slim, waif-like look of supermodel Twiggy and actress Audrey Hepburn.

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• 6. Beyond the Movies

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  In February 1958, the Tropicana in Las Vegas opened The Tropicana Holiday, a striptease revue produced by Monte Proser and co-starring Mansfield's then-husband, Mickey Hargitay. Her four-week contract was extended to eight, and opening night raised $20,000 for the March of Dimes. She earned $25,000 a week as Trixie Divoon, while her Fox contract paid her $2,500 a week. She even carried a million-dollar policy from Lloyd's of London in case Hargitay dropped her as he whirled her around the stage.

  In December 1960, the Dunes hotel and casino launched The House of Love, produced by Jack Cole and co-starring Hargitay. Her salary of $35,000 a week was the highest of her career. Her gold mesh dress with sequins was billed as "Jayne Mansfield and a few sequins". In early 1963 she took her act outside Las Vegas for the first time, earning $23,000 in one week at the Plantation Supper Club in Greensboro, North Carolina. Her last nightclub act, French Dressing, ran six weeks at the Latin Quarter in New York in 1966.

  Theater work continued in between. In May 1964, she starred in Bus Stop at Yonkers Playhouse with Hargitay and Ann B. Davis, for a three-week engagement ending on the 14th of June. In 1965 she performed in Rabbit Habit at the Latin Quarter and in Champagne Complex, directed by Matt Cimber. Both plays received poor reviews.

  In 1962, 20th Century Fox Records released the album Jayne Mansfield Busts Up Las Vegas, recorded from The House of Love. Two years later, MGM Records issued the novelty album Jayne Mansfield: Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky & Me. On it she recited sonnets and poems by Marlowe, Browning, Wordsworth and others over Tchaikovsky's music. The New York Times reviewer wrote, "Miss Mansfield is a lady with apparent charms, but reading poetry is not one of them."

  A young session musician named Jimi Hendrix worked with her in 1965, playing bass and adding lead parts on two songs, "As The Clouds Drift By" and "Suey". London Records released them as a single in 1966. Producer Ed Chalpin claimed Mansfield played all the instruments. According to Hendrix historian Steven Roby, the collaboration happened because the two shared a manager. Her German-language single "Wo ist der Mann" was in great demand in Austria after its release in August 1963. Years after her death, punk-rock musicians took her as an inspiration.

  Television gave her another stage. In 1957, she toured US Pacific Command areas in Hawaii, Okinawa, Guam, Tokyo and Korea with Bob Hope for the USO, appearing as a comedian over 13 days. Four years later she traveled to Newfoundland, Labrador and Baffin Island for a Christmas special. By 1958 she earned $20,000 per episode for television performances. In 1964 she turned down the role of Ginger Grant on Gilligan's Island because it epitomized the stereotype she wished to leave behind. Tina Louise took the part.

  In June 1967, ten days before she died, she read "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" by Robert Herrick on The Joey Bishop Show. The poem is about early death. It was her last television appearance.

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• 7. Marriages and Family

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  Film critic Whitney Williams wrote in Variety in 1967 that Mansfield's "personal life out-rivaled any of the roles she played". Accounts allege relationships with many men, among them Claude Terrail, owner of the Paris restaurant Tour d'Argent, and Brazilian billionaire Jorge Guinle. She met John F. Kennedy in Palm Springs, California, in 1960, through his brother-in-law Peter Lawford.

  Sources differ on the exact date, but most place the wedding of Paul Mansfield and Vera Jayne Palmer on the 6th of May 1950 in Fort Worth, Texas. He was 20. She was 17 and three months pregnant. They had met at a Christmas Eve party in 1949. Their daughter, Jayne Marie, was born on the 8th of November 1950.

  In 1952, the US Army Reserve called Paul up for the Korean War, and Jayne spent a year at Camp Gordon, Georgia. Paul hoped the baby would discourage her interest in acting, and when it did not, he agreed to move to Los Angeles in 1954. They lived in a small Van Nuys apartment with her pets: a great dane, three cats, two chihuahuas, a poodle dyed pink and a rabbit. Jayne Marie stayed with her maternal grandparents. After arguments over ambition, infidelity and animals, the couple separated in 1955. In August 1956, Paul sought custody of Jayne Marie, arguing that her appearance nude in Playboy made Jayne an unfit mother. He failed. The divorce papers arrived on the 8th of January 1958, and she kept Mansfield as her professional name.

  On the 13th of May 1956, she met her second husband, Mickey Hargitay, at the Latin Quarter nightclub in New York. He was performing in the chorus line of Mae West's show and had won the Mr. Universe contest in 1955. Mansfield fell for him immediately, which led to a squabble with West. After her 40-day European tour, Hargitay proposed on the 6th of November 1957 with a 10-carat diamond ring. They married on the 13th of January 1958, days after her first divorce, at the glass Wayfarers Chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Her skin-tight pink wedding gown was made of sequins, with a 30 yd flounce of pink tulle. At the reception she had Hargitay drink pink champagne.

  The couple owned businesses together, including the Hargitay Exercise Equipment Company and Jayne Mansfield Productions. They co-wrote an autobiographical book, Jayne Mansfield's Wild, Wild World. They had two sons, Miklós Jeffrey Palmer Hargitay, born on the 21st of December 1958, and Zoltán Anthony Hargitay, born on the 1st of August 1960.

  The marriage frayed. In 1962, Mansfield had a well-publicized affair with Enrico Bomba, the Italian production manager of her film Panic Button. In 1963 she became involved with Brazilian-born comedian and singer Nelson Sardelli. She had filed for divorce on the 4th of May 1962 but told reporters, "I'm sure we will make it up." On the 30th of April 1963, she obtained a divorce from Hargitay in Juarez, Mexico, with Sardelli at her side. That relationship ended in June 1963. She reconciled with Hargitay in October 1963 after learning she was pregnant. Her daughter Mariska Hargitay was born on the 23rd of January 1964. As an adult, Mariska revealed that Sardelli is her biological father. The Juarez divorce was recognized on the 26th of August 1964.

  Mansfield became involved with Italian-born director Matt Cimber while he directed her in Bus Stop in Yonkers. They married on the 24th of September 1964 in Mulegé, Baja California Sur, Mexico, and he managed her career. The marriage collapsed amid Cimber's alleged physical abuse, her alcohol abuse and open infidelities. She also told him she had been happy only with Sardelli. They separated on the 11th of July 1965. Their son Antonio Raphael Ottaviano was born on the 18th of October 1965, and they filed for divorce on the 20th of July 1966.

  In August 1963, Mansfield decided to convert to Catholicism, though she never did. She attended Catholic services in Europe and followed Catholic practices when her partners were Catholic. She wanted a Catholic wedding with Cimber but could not find a priest to officiate. In May 1967, her performance at the Mount Brandon Hotel in Tralee, Ireland, was canceled after Catholic clergy condemned it.

  In July 1966, she began living with her attorney, Sam Brody. He had frequent drunken brawls with her and mistreated her daughter Jayne Marie. In the 2025 documentary My Mom Jayne, Jayne Marie, her half-brother Zoltán and Mickey Hargitay's wife Ellen recalled signs that Brody had physically abused Mansfield. His wife, Beverly, filed for divorce and called Mansfield the "41st other woman" in his life. At the San Francisco Film Festival in 1966, Mansfield and Brody visited Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan. He gave her a medallion and the title "High Priestess of San Francisco's Church of Satan". The media covered it eagerly, called her a Satanist and speculated that she and LaVey were lovers. While with Brody she also showed interest in Judaism.

  On the 23rd of November 1966, a lion attacked Zoltán at the theme park Jungleland USA in Thousand Oaks, California, biting his neck. He suffered severe head trauma, had three surgeries, including a six-hour brain operation, and contracted meningitis. He recovered. Brody sued the park for $1.6 million on the family's behalf, and the publicity led to the park's closure.

  In June 1967, two weeks before her mother's death, 16-year-old Jayne Marie accused Brody of beating her. Her statement to the Los Angeles Police Department implicated her mother in encouraging the abuse. Days later a juvenile court judge gave temporary custody to Paul Mansfield's uncle, William W. Pigue, and his wife Mary. That same month a decree named Hargitay guardian of his three children with Mansfield, though they kept living with her.

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• 8. The Crash and Aftermath

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  On the 28th of June 1967, Mansfield was in Biloxi, Mississippi, for an engagement at the Gus Stevens Supper Club. After midnight she left for New Orleans, where she was due on WDSU's Midday Show. With her were Sam Brody, three of her children, four Chihuahuas, and Ronald B. Harrison, a 19-year-old club driver who was at the wheel.

  At about 2:25 a.m. on the 29th of June, on U.S. Highway 90, one mile west of the Rigolets Bridge, the car slammed into the rear of a tractor-trailer. The truck had slowed because an insecticide fog-spraying truck ahead was flashing a red light. Mansfield, the two other adults in the front seat and two of the dogs died instantly. The children, asleep in the back, survived with minor injuries. Mickey Hargitay reached Ochsner Foundation Hospital the same day, after learning what had happened.

  Reports that she was decapitated are untrue. The legend began with police photographs of the car, its top virtually sheared off, showing what looked like a blonde head tangled in the smashed windshield. The cause of that shape has never been definitively determined. After her death, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recommended steel underride guards on all tractor-trailers, though the trucking industry was slow to adopt them. In America, the guard is sometimes called a "Mansfield bar".

  Her body was flown from New Orleans to New York. A private funeral took place on the 3rd of July at the chapel of the Pullis Funeral Home in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania, led by Rev. Charles Montgomery of Zion Methodist Church. She was buried in Fairview Cemetery next to her father. Hargitay was the only ex-husband present.

  Two wrongful-death lawsuits were filed in 1968. After a 16-day trial in 1971, the jury found Harrison negligent and truck driver Richard Rambo not negligent. Fog-truck driver James McLelland was found negligent, but his negligence was not a proximate cause. A rehearing was denied. The crashed car was saved by a private collector in Florida, became a roadside attraction in the 1970s, and was later shown at the Dearly Departed Tours & Artifact Museum until the COVID-19 pandemic sent it into storage.

  Her estate was first appraised at $600,000. That figure included the Pink Palace, valued at $100,000, and $185,000 left to her in Sam Brody's will. Many relatives and advisers filed unsuccessful suits to control it. In 1977, her four eldest children went to court and found the estate insolvent, weighed down by about $500,000 in debt. The bills included $11,000 for lingerie and $11,600 for plumbing the heart-shaped pool. The Pink Palace was sold, and its later owners included Ringo Starr and Engelbert Humperdinck. Cass Elliot is often falsely said to have owned it. Humperdinck sold it to developers in 2002, and the house was demolished that November.

  Awards had come earlier. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on the 8th of February 1960. In 1968, the Hollywood Publicists Guild announced a "Jayne Mansfield Award" for the actress who got the most exposure and publicity in a year. Raquel Welch was its first winner, in 1969.

  Her daughter Mariska Hargitay grew up to star in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, winning a Golden Globe in 2005 and an Emmy in 2006. In June 2025, she released My Mom Jayne, a documentary about the mother she lost at the age of three.

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