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Jayne Mansfield (b.1933, Vera Jayne Palmer)
Jayne Mansfield was born Vera Jane Palmer in Pennsylvania on April 19, 1933. She was the only child of Herbert and Vera Palmer. When Jayne was just three years old, her father died of a heart attack. Vera remarried in 1939 to a man named Harry Peers and they then moved to his home in Dallas, where Jayne would spent the rest of her formative years. While growing up in Texas, Jayne discovered movie fan-zines. She had made up her mind that she was going to be famous and her walls became plastered with glamour shots of the stars she aspired to be among.
In 1950, just after Jayne had turned 17, she married a high school boyfriend named Paul Mansfield and by the end of the year the couple had a daughter, Jayne Marie. In the next few years, Jayne juggled the tasks of work, school, motherhood, and acting classes. During most of this time Paul was away in Korea serving the army. In early 1954, Paul returned and took Jayne and their daughter to California to fulfil a promise he made to her that he'd give her a chance to persue her dreams in Hollywood. Jayne's all-consuming desire to become a moviestar soon proved to be too much for Paul and the couple split by the end of the year.
Soon afterward, Jayne filmed her first movie and aquired a man named Jim Byron as her press agent. Together they derrived some of the wildest publicity stunts of that era, all of which Jayne was more than willing to carry out. However, it was the incident where she emerged from a pool topless, (at a press junket for Jane Russell's movie, Underwater), that Jayne Mansfield made herself a household name. Major movie studios clamoured for her and she soon signed a contract with Warner Brothers in February of 1955.
In mid 1956, while attending Mae West's show in the Latin Quarter, Jayne's gaze focused upon Mickey Hargitay. He was a muscleman in Mae's show who also held the 1955 title of "Mr Universe". Rumor has it that, when asked what she wanted for dinner, she replied along the lines of, " I'll have the steak and that man on the right." Two years later, in January of 1958, Jayne and Mickey were married in a lavish ceremony in Palos Verdes. It was during her years with Mickey that she bought her dreamhouse on Sunset Boulevard. The mansion would thereafter be known as the Pink Palace. Beyond its gates, Jayne lived the life she dreamed of as a little girl in Texas. It's features included a pink mink living room, gold mosaic heart-shaped bathtub and a beautifully re-landscaped backyard thanks to Mickey's labors. This included her now famous heart-shaped pool with it's fountains and underwater music. Among other things, she got herself a pink Jaguar and took twice-weekly baths in pink champagne. Mickey also bought her a pink '57 Cadillac as a gift after the birth of their first child, Miklos (Mickey Jr.), in 1958. Jayne would have two more children by Mickey; Zoltan in 1960 and Mariska in 1964. But their marriage was not always from the pages of a fairy tale, and it ended in 1963.
By the fall of 1964, Jayne had remarried to her then-manager, Matt Cimber and she gave birth to his son, Anthony, the following year. That marriage was short-lived and by mid 1966 they were divorced. It was her divorce lawyer, Sam Brody, that Jayne was next aquainted with. Their relationship was a stormy one in which alcohol and abuse were not uncommon.
It was not only her personal life that was faltering, it was her professional life as well, and Jayne was taking any opportunities for work that she could. Mamie Van Doren (with whom Jayne starred in 1966's Las Vegas Hillbillys) called Jayne in June of 1967 and asked her if she would fill in for her at a club in Mississippi because she could not fit it into her schedule. Jayne obliged and headed off with Brody and three of her children, to do the shows at Gus Steven's Supper Club in Biloxi. On the sixth night of the engagement, after the evening's last show, Jayne left for New Orleans where she had scheduled a TV appearance the next morning. Sam Brody and her three children were with her as well as Ronnie Harrison, the driver hired from Gus Steven's to take them to New Orleans. While en route, the car was suddenly engulfed in a thick cloud of mosquito pestide. This made it impossible to see the 18 wheeler that had slowed ahead of them and their vehicle plowed under it's trailer. Being asleep in the backseat proved fortunate for the three children, as they survived the accident. But the three frontseat occupants, including Jayne Mansfield, were not so fortunate and they lost their lives.
Jayne's funeral was held in Pen Argyl, Pensylvania. Along with her family and friends, the service drew a throng of respectful fans. Jayne was a legend in her own time - and her death, although tragic, only seems to solidify that status today. A genuine zest for stardom and lust for life such as Jayne's is rarely, if ever, seen in Hollywood these days, and it is sorely missed.
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Marilyn Monroe (b.1926 Norma jean Baker)
An illegitimate child whose father (Edward Mortenson) had deserted her mother (Gladys Baker, née Monroe) before she was born, Norma Jean endured a childhood of poverty and misery, sexual abuse (at the age of eight) and years in foster homes and orphanages after her mother suffered a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized. Escape from this cycle came at the age of sixteen with an arranged marriage to a 21-year-old aircraft plant worker.
While working at the Radio Plane Company factory in Burbank, she had her picture taken by a visiting Army photographer. Norma Jean then began modeling bathing suits and, after bleaching her hair blonde, began posing for pinups and glamour photos. Howard Hughes saw some of her photographs and expressed an interest in giving her a screen test for RKO, but Ben Lyon of 20th Century-Fox beat Hughes to the punch, signing Norma Jean Baker to a contract and changing her name to Marilyn Monroe.
After appearing in small parts in films including LOVE HAPPY (1949) and ALL ABOUT EVE (1950), Monroe achieved celebrity with starring roles in three 1953 features—NIAGARA, GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES and HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE—as well as a series of nude calendar photos, taken in 1948, which appeared in the December 1953 debut issue of Playboy magazine. By the end of the year, Monroe had been voted the top star of 1953 by American film distributors.
In all her film roles, from NIAGARA to THE MISFITS (1961), Monroe portrayed an object of desire and exhibition. Her basic character grew out of the dumb blonde rchetype, but Monroe's dumb blonde could not be pinned down to any particular origin or social class. She was defined only by what was shown on the screen, with neither a previous history nor seemingly a future. Frequently her characters were nameless (LOVE HAPPY, 1949, THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, 1955), further accentuating her status as an object. She usually had no discernable job and when she did, it was a female-relegated profession such as chorus girl, actress or secretary.
But to the dumb blonde stereotype, Monroe added a sense of innocence, naturalism and overt sexuality. Her sexuality was never seen as a threat, but as something harmless and benevolent. Time magazine's sanguine response to Monroe's Playboy centerfold summed up her appeal: "Marilyn believes in doing what comes naturally."
Along with this kindly, innocent sexuality went a vulnerability; Monroe's characters were often humiliated at the expense of a voyeuristic pleasure, whether being lassoed like a cow in BUS STOP (1956) or exposing herself unknowingly in SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959). At the height of her fame, Monroe sensed the limited range of her screen persona and clearly desired to change it: "To put it bluntly, I seem to be a whole superstructure without a foundation." Forming Marilyn Monroe Productions in 1956, she produced BUS STOP and THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL (1957). But her personal problems, with failed marriages to baseball star Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller and increasing reliance on drugs to combat depression and physical ailments, served to forestall any serious change in her career.
The public wanted Marilyn as they had discovered her in 1953, and that was what they got in LET'S MAKE LOVE (1960). She was still capable of memorable work, especially with top directors like Billy Wilder (SOME LIKE IT HOT) and John Huston (THE MISFITS), but her personal demons, or precarious involvement with people in high places, eventually overwhelmed her. On August 5, 1962, she was found dead of an overdose of sleeping pills. Monroe's was a tragedy in which her public, the media and the Hollywood power brokers all share blame. As Laurence Olivier once remarked, "Popular opinion and all that goes to promote it is a horribly unsteady conveyance for life, and she was exploited beyond anyone's means."
Qoutes from Jayne and Marilyn.
I just want to be wonderful AN the world to love me.." --Marilyn
"Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid
old age, to die, young, but then you'd never complete
your life, would you? You'd never really know yourself..." --Marilyn
"A dollar for your thoughts…" --Marilyn Monroe
"I've never dropped anyone I believed in." --Marilyn
"Money, that's what it's all about." --Marilyn
"People respect you because they feel you've survived hard times and endured, and although you've become famous, you haven't become phony." --Marilyn Monroe
"We eat a lot of lean meat and fresh vegetables…. You are what you eat, you know. When I'm 100 I'll still be doing pin-ups."-Jayne
"I like being a pin-up girl. There's nothing wrong with it." -Jayne
"A woman should be pink and cuddly for a man."-Jayne
"I don't want to get involved in the racial situation at the expense of losing fans. I wouldn't say anything too strong but I do know that God created us equal and we're not living up to it."-
Jayne
"A forty-one inch bust and a lot of perseverance will get you more than a cup of coffee-a lot more. But most girls don't know what to do with what they've got." -Jayne
"It is the most wonderful feeling in the world, you know, knowing you are loved and wanted." -Jayne
"If you're going to do something wrong, do it big, because the punishment is the same either way." -Jayne
"Carrying a baby is the most rewarding experience a woman can enjoy." -Jayne
"I will never be satisfied. Life is one constant search for betterment for me." -Jayne
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