Born when Jayne Mansfield was just 17, Jayne Marie Mansfield bore witness to the struggles her mother faced due to her fame and chose to live largely out of the public eye because of it.
ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock PhotoJayne Mansfield with her daughter Jayne Marie.
“Because my mother was a very beautiful, well-known lady, I’ve had hassles all my life — jokes and kidding. So I grew up very fast and wanted no part of show business.” That’s what Jayne Marie Mansfield, the eldest daughter of Hollywood bombshell Jayne Mansfield, told Playboy in a July 1976 interview.
Her appearance in the magazine marked the only time in the history of Playboy that a model and her mother had both been featured in nude photographs. Despite the obvious comparisons between the two, however, their relationship was complicated.
Just two weeks before her mother’s death in 1967, Jayne Marie Mansfield accused Sam Brody, her mother’s boyfriend at the time, of abuse. When she spoke to the Los Angeles Police Department the following day, she implicated her mother in encouraging that abuse. A few days later, she was placed in the care of her uncle William Pigue, the assistant city editor of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.
But after her mother died, Jayne Marie was the only one of her children to attend the funeral. In the years since, she has spoken a few times about the complicated relationship she had with her mother — and the legacy she left behind.
Growing Up In The Shadow Of Jayne Mansfield
Mickey Hargitay and Jayne Mansfield with Jayne’s daughter Jayne Marie in London. 1959.
Jayne Marie Mansfield was born on Nov. 8, 1950, the first daughter of actress Jayne Mansfield and her then-husband Paul. Her mother was just 17 years old at the time, dreaming of a lavish life of stardom in Hollywood — one she would eventually find. Freshly divorced at 21 with little to her name other than a Buick and a four-year-old daughter, Jayne Mansfield, born Jayne Palmer, kickstarted her Hollywood career behind the candy counter of a Los Angeles movie theater.
What would follow was an exciting, if turbulent, life in the limelight. Between a public rivalry with Marilyn Monroe, a high-profile romance with Mickey Hargitay, and all the drama that came with being one of Hollywood’s biggest sex symbols, Mansfield’s life was constantly under scrutiny.
It’s little wonder why her eldest daughter grew up dreaming of a simpler life, like the one her mother had left behind.
“There are a lot of disadvantages in being a movie star’s daughter,” Jayne Marie Mansfield told Playboy in a 1976 interview. “I helped my mother learn her lines, did her hair, choreographed, even designed clothes for her. I practically brought up my younger half brothers and half sister — five of us in all.”
That half-sister also happens to be Law & Order: SVU actress Mariska Hargitay, who has also shared her experience of growing up as the daughter of a famous actress. Unlike Jayne Marie, though, Hargitay hardly knew their mother — she was just three years old when Jayne Mansfield died in an accident.
Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Stock PhotoHalf-sisters Mariska Hargitay and Jayne Marie Mansfield in 2013.
For Jayne Marie Mansfield, however, her mother was a much more present figure, and as she grew into adulthood, some tension started to form between them. Agents started offering Jayne Marie film roles or chances to act on Broadway, since she was her mother’s spitting image. But her mother was still a young woman, too, and the idea of competing for roles with her daughter “made her irritable.”
Their relationship became even more complicated when her mother started dating Sam Brody.
Allegations Of Abuse Against Sam Brody
Sometime in 1966, Jayne Mansfield met a man named Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan. Mansfield never became a Satanist herself, but she did form a close bond with LaVey that reportedly provided a great deal of support for her at a time when her career was beginning to wane.
Public DomainSam Brody and Jayne Mansfield.
Then, Mansfield started seeing Sam Brody, who just so happened to be serving as her divorce attorney after she and her third husband, director Matt Cimber, split. He was a far cry from the type of men Mansfield usually preferred, less muscular and conventionally handsome. He was also, according to the Daily Mail, “violently jealous.”
“Brody showed a side of himself that was violently jealous, imposing impossible constraints on Jayne,” said former high priestess of the Church of Satan, Blanche Barton. “She was in the process of trying to ease out of the situation, but Brody was becoming only more protective, using her pending custody suit to maneuver her deeper into a relationship.”
Brody’s increasingly domineering presence caused some tension with LaVey, as he would often mock the Satanist church’s practices and teachings. Meanwhile, Mansfield found herself increasingly fascinated with the church’s philosophy — and in LaVey as a sexual partner, at least according to some rumors. LaVey reportedly talked to Barton about an affair between Mansfield and himself, calling her a “self-realized masochist” who “needed public admiration, men fawning after her.”
But Brody’s anger was not only directed at LaVey throughout his and Mansfield’s relationship. As biographer Raymond Strait detailed in The Tragic Secret Life Of Jayne Mansfield, Mansfield and Brody often mixed drugs and alcohol, with one incident described by Strait as a “rampage.”
PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive / Alamy Stock PhotoSam Brody and Jayne Mansfield in 1966.
One night, when they were at the hospital because Mansfield’s son had fallen ill, Brody’s ex-wife sent someone to serve Mansfield as a correspondent in her divorce against Brody, which already left Brody in a foul mood. After combining LSD, alcohol, and “popping uppers,” Mansfield reportedly began walking about the room naked while on the phone with San Francisco-based lawyer Martin Belli. Enraged, Brody “yanked the telephone out of the wall and smashed it against the opposite wall.”
Both were barred from entering the hospital again after their fight exploded.
Not long after, Jayne Marie filed charges of abuse against Sam Brody, and Mansfield and Brody each spoke separately to Strait about the case, hoping he might be willing to testify on their behalf. When Strait asked Brody if he had beaten Jayne Marie Mansfield, Brody responded, “Well — yes. I mean I whipped her with the belt. But I never hit her in the face. Not that Jayne didn’t want it. I was whipping her with the belt, and Jayne was screaming at me over the intercom, ‘Beat her, kill her. Black her eyes like you did mine.'”
Jayne Marie ultimately went to live with her Uncle Bill and Aunt Mary, finally somewhat free from her mother’s increasingly dark shadow. Then, in June 1967, Mansfield and Brody died when their car collided with a semi-truck. Mansfield’s other three children were asleep in the backseat and, by some miracle, survived the incident.
Then, just under a decade later, Jayne Marie Mansfield bared it all — emotionally and physically — in her Playboy interview, reflecting on her mother’s legacy and how it affected her.
Jayne Marie Mansfield Opens Up About Her Mother During A Famous ‘Playboy’ Shoot
The similarities between the two Jaynes were undeniable. They were, after all, mother and daughter. But Jayne Marie Mansfield made it clear that she didn’t strive to live up to her mother’s image.
“My mother and I were more like sisters, really,” she told Playboy, “there wasn’t much of an age difference. I know I’m very similar to her, though more petite. She was 5’6″ and large — in places I’m not. I don’t intend to be stereotyped in my mother’s sexy image. That came from another era and it’s just not me. I think of myself as a natural, realistic beach girl.”
She did follow in her mother’s footsteps in more ways than one, though. In addition to both Jaynes having posed for Playboy, they also both worked as actresses. At the time of the interview, Jayne Marie was fresh off her debut film gig as the lead in Chris Robinson’s The Great Balloon Race — a film that premiered in a great number of theaters to reportedly negative critical reception. It is also seemingly lost to time, with little information available about it beyond its cast and a general, vague plot.
ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock PhotoJayne and Jayne Marie Mansfield.
At the time of the photo shoot, however, Mansfield seemed ecstatic about the film, saying, “I should be put into the Guinness Book of World Records for this one… I was the first woman to cross the Bermuda Triangle and touch ground in a hot-air balloon. It was a real race they used for the film, with lots of sinister little subplots added.”
That said, it took her quite a while before she was willing to pursue acting. Her mother’s death naturally shook her, leaving her “angry at Hollywood and very distrustful.” After school, she “tried marriage,” sought some answers through religion, and took on a series of odd jobs before going off and traveling the world. When she came back, she finally felt ready to step into the limelight.
Despite her complicated relationship with her mother, she also had some insightful reflections on fame and how it can change people.
“She was very sad, in a way,” Jayne Marie Mansfield said of her mother. “So much was expected of her. She packed a lot into her life, but she missed a lot, too. I don’t want to miss it. And we’re living in another era, thank God, and an actress can be herself. You don’t have to get caught up in the Hollywood star-making machinery, unless you’re hooked on money and glory.”
“There’s no way that will happen to me,” Jayne Marie continued. “My idea of a fine time is riding a horse down the beach or just sitting there alone watching the sun set, with a nice glass of wine and my flute.”
After reading about Jayne Marie Mansfield’s life growing up in her mother’s shadow, discover the story of Wendy Cobain and her troubled son, Kurt. Then, learn about Cheyenne Brando and her difficult relationship with her father.
