Trivia of Jayne Mansfield

Trivia of Jayne Mansfield (19 April 1933 - 29 June 1967)

*Her birth name was Vera Jayne Palmer.She took her professional name from her first husband, Paul Mansfield.

*She auditioned at both Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. At Paramount, Jayne performed a sketch she had worked out with Lumet from Joan of Arc for casting director Milton Lewis. Lewis informed her that she was wasting her "obvious talents" and had her come back a week later to perform the piano scene from The Seven Year Itch. Jayne failed to impress but learned she would have to go blonde. She then performed the piano scene for Warner Brothers, but, again, failed to impress.She landed her first acting assignment in Lux Video Theatre, a series on CBS in the episode "An Angel Went AWOL", aired on October 21, 1954.In it, she sat at a piano and delivered a few lines of dialogue for $300.

*Twentieth Century-Fox signed Mansfield to a six-year contract on May 3, 1956, in its New York office to mold her as a successor of Marilyn Monroe.She undertook her first starring film role as Jerri Jordan in The Girl Can't Help It (1956).Originally titled Do-Re-Mi, it featured a high-profile cast of contemporary rock and roll and R&B artists. Released in December 1956, The Girl Can't Help It became one of the year's biggest successes, both critically and financially, earning more than Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (that starred by Marilyn Monroe) had three years before.Soon afterward, Fox started promoting Mansfield as "Marilyn Monroe king-sized.Jayne was known as the poor man's Marilyn Monroe. She did not get the plum roles that Marilyn got in her productions. Instead, her films were more of a showcase for her body more than anything else. She did have a real talent for acting, but the movie executives insisted she stay in her dumb blonde stereotype roles.

*She is often remembered for her signature platinum blonde look and flirtatious personality, but Hollywood star Jayne Mansfield was much more than just a pretty face. She was highly intelligent.It’s believed her IQ was 163.She even knew 5 languages. They were English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian. Jayne was fluent in them and never confused the languages with one another.

*Mansfield had almost 30 beauty pageant titles. She turned down some of them not to spoil her reputation. The titles included Miss Photoflash, Miss Magnesium Lamp, Miss Fire Prevention Week, Gas Station Queen, Miss Analgesin, Cherry Blossom Queen, Miss Third Platoon, Miss Blues Bonnet of Austin, Miss Direct Mail, Miss Electric Switch, Miss Fill-er-up, Miss Negligee, Nylon Sweater Queen, Miss One for the Road, Miss Freeway, Hot Dog Ambassador, Miss Geiger Counter, Best Dressed Woman of Theater, Miss 100% Pure Maple Syrup, Miss July Fourth, Miss Texas Tomato, Miss Standard Foods, Miss Orchid, Miss Potato Soup, Miss Lobster, Miss United Dairies, Miss Chihuahua Show, and Miss Roquefort Cheese.

*She was the first American actress to appear nude in a mainstream American film Promises!Promises! (1963).

*While traveling from a nightclub in Biloxi, Mississippi and 30 miles from New Orleans to where she was to be on television the following day, she was killed instantly on Highway 90 in Slidell, Louisiana in a car crash in the early hours of June 29, 1967, when the car in which she was riding slammed into the back of a semi-tractor trailer truck that had stopped due to a truck in front of the tractor trailer that was spraying for bugs. Her car went under the truck at nearly 80 miles per hour. Her boyfriend Samuel Brody and their driver Ronnie Harrison, were also killed.Jane's three children - Mariska, 3, Zoltan, 6, and Miklos Jr, from her second marriage to Mickey Hargitay - who were all asleep in the back, survived the accident with only minor afflictions. After her death an extension was added to the rear bumper of semi trailers to keep autos from driving under the truck. The were colloquially called Mansfield bars.