The Death of Jayne Mansfield

Join Big Juicy as he explores the life and death of Jayne Mansfield. See how lions, beach clubs, satanic churches, televangelists, Hollywood, and the Big Easy weave together into a tale of traffic safety history.

What’s Juicy?

The intro has a mosquito truck sound in the beginning and it continues throughout the video. Although mosquito trucks run year round, I was not fortunate enough to get fogged by one so I added them. It was filmed at the memorial site that is near the actual crash site. I got the Queen of Cleavage from googling “Jayne Mansfield nickname“. if you google “Queen of Cleavage“, you get a different answer.

Vera Jayne Palmer was her birth name, but she went by her stepfather’s last name Peers in high school. Paul and Jayne were married and then had their daughter Jayne Marie 6 months later. Some people question if Paul was the father or if it was another boyfriend. DNA testing on her five children would be interesting to say the least.

I included a tea sipping sound from the Pizza Wars video for The University of Texas reference. Paul did try to get full custody of their daughter claiming that Jayne was unfit because of the nude modeling. Jayne Marie, the daughter, would go on to pose in Playboy in July 1976.

Jayne and Mickey Hargitay married 5 days after she divorced Paul. Jayne was notorious for having well publicized affairs with other men while married to Hargitay. The reference to the question mark curse is from something I heard in a podcast one time. In an interview about Who Framed Roger Rabbit , Robert Zemeckis was asked why the title didn’t have a question mark. He said it was a Hollywood superstition that if you use a question mark in the title, the movie would bomb. There are a whole bunch of movies that followed this logic including Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

Billy Graham, who wasn’t really a televangelist, was visiting London when he made the quote about Jayne. It was part of a larger quote about making idols who emphasize sex. The second commandment is about idolatry, not gun control–that’s the second amendment.

While the term wardrobe malfunction wasn’t used until the Suberbowl Incident, Jayne’s clothes fell off all of the time in public. She used it to gain publicity. The Sophia Loren episode as well as her account of the incident are true. The rivalry between Jayne and Marilyn Monroe is debated. I think it is fair to say that they were competing for the same movies. Jayne supposedly had affairs with JFK and his brother Robert. Jayne claimed that the shipwreck in the Bahamas was not a publicity stunt, but it is hard to tell. Her quote after hearing the news of Marilyn Monroe’s death is real. There were a lot of similarities between the two ladies.

Jaynes marriage to Matt Cimber, the birth of her child Tony, and her separation from Matt happened in less than a year. From the pictures of the couple, it seems like alcohol was getting the best of her. This isn’t in the video, but Matt Cimber went on to be the co-creator and director of Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW).

Jayne and Sam had a toxic relationship. They would get drunk and get into fights with each other and people nearby. Ireland was not the only country they got kicked out of.

The Anton LeVey meeting is real and this is where things get a bit strange. I think you have to assume this was a publicity stunt, but does seem a bit far. I wonder what Billy Graham thought about that. There is a newspaper interview from LeVey where he tells the story of the curse.

The lion attack at Jungleland USA is real and the lion’s name was Sammy. I never confirm he was actually euthanized though. The car accidents are real as well. They were mentioned in the Anton LeVey interview as well as Jayne and Sam’s interview a few days before their death.

The Gus Stevens Supper Club is no longer in Biloxi. Ronnie Harrison was also Gus’s daughter Elaine’s boyfriend. Unknown to him at the time, the couple was preparing to elope because she was pregnant. Ronnie was 19 years old. The amount of people that fit in a car back then is amazing. I am not sure what that says about us now, but sitting three people in the front seat seems crazy. The four chihuahuas were there too, and there is some film of the NOPD officers with the two dogs that survived.

The story of the accident is true including the detail about the mosquito truck. If you grew up around these things, you know how much fog is put out behind them. Even so, they must have been going pretty fast to cause that type of damage.

The story about Jayne’s wig fueling decapitation rumors is true. The New Orleans coroner confirmed later that it was more like a scalping than a decapitation. I left that detail out of the video.

The story of Mariska Hargity becoming Olivia Benson on Law and Order – Special Victims Unit is true. Shortly after the accident, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recommended putting an under ride guard on 18-wheelers. These were referred to as Mansfield bars.

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