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Sydney Morning Herald
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
This is how the world saw Jayne Mansfield. Her daughter needed more
Mariska Hargitay's mother died in a car accident; she was in the front passenger seat and her children were in the back. Mariska was three; Mrs Hargitay, better known as Jayne Mansfield, was 34. Little Mariska had no memories of her mother, but says she 'carried a lot of shame' about the person her mother had been. It wasn't as if she was unfamiliar. For the few years of her heyday as a Hollywood star, Jayne Mansfield was possibly the most photographed person in the world. Many of those photographs were not, however, the kind a girl wants to see of her mother. Mansfield was 21 when she went to Hollywood, with hopes of both stardom and a serious acting career. She did, in fact, win a Golden Globe for her performance in a now-forgotten John Steinbeck adaptation called The Wayward Bus, but she was famous largely as a sex symbol. One of the first Playboy Playmates, she was photographed either in very tight dresses or bits of underwear providing a good view of her breasts. In movies and on chat shows, she spoke in a breathy, baby voice that suggested meek sexual readiness. Even her accent was a confection, looped together with strangulated vowels. 'That voice was painful to me,' says Hargitay, now 61. It has taken her a lifetime to resolve to go behind the voice, the body on display and the scandals to try to know her mother as a person, a quest that has resulted in her film My Mom Jayne, which had its premiere at the recent Cannes Film Festival. As a child, she says, she envied her older siblings, who could remember their mother's bedtime hugs and practical jokes. 'My father said, 'Oh, your mother was so funny!'' she says. 'So different from how she came off in public; that's not who she was at all.' But that persona was the only one Hargitay knew. Hargitay was the only one of Mansfield's five children to follow her mother into acting. Lovers of police procedurals will know her from her Emmy award-winning role as no-nonsense Captain Olivia Benson in the long-running series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU for short). It was during lockdown, when filming on SVU stopped and she had unaccustomed free time, that she started her search for, as she says, 'the soul behind these pictures'. In a corner of her basement, there were boxes of letters and memorabilia that people had sent her over her years as a public person that, somehow, she could never find time to read. Many more boxes – an entire archive – filled a lock-up garage at the modest home where her father and his second wife, Ellen, a flight attendant, had brought up Mansfield's children. Nobody had been through those, either. 'I was really looking to excavate the person behind the photos, many of which were posed and presentational, you know – and say 'who was she?' And through the photographs, I would sometimes find a private moment that for me was like breathing oxygen.' From the start, she wanted to film her search. She had already produced a 2017 documentary called I Am Evidence, about the way police approach rape investigations. 'After that, I've been so in love with the medium,' she says. 'I think it's such a powerful way for people to experience something on such a visceral level.' Her sister and three brothers agreed, reluctantly, to be filmed for My Mom Jayne. It is clear in their interviews that their grief is never far from the surface. They agreed, she says, because Mansfield's chaotic personal life had left her daughter with a secret she didn't want to keep any more. 'I was living with a lie. And it was hurting me.' Mansfield's life was chaotic from the start. Jayne Palmer was pregnant with her first daughter when she was 16. She was an accomplished musician, playing violin and piano to recital standard, and spoke several languages; now she was a housewife. At 21, after studying drama at the University of Austin, she persuaded her then husband, Paul Mansfield, to take her to Hollywood. Their marriage did not survive. She stayed, scraping together a living with dance classes and frequently risque modelling, until she had her breakthrough stage role playing a sex kitten in a New York comedy, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? 'Broadway's Smartest Dumb Blonde' read one cover story. The epithet would chase her for the rest of her short career. When she returned to Hollywood to audition for Paramount, she was told not to 'waste her assets' on drama. 'I could do a movie on the misogyny, I could do a separate thing on that, because it was palpable and everywhere,' says Hargitay. Mansfield, who was still only in her early 20s, had nobody to guide her, but she was determined to do whatever it took to be famous. On her endless chat show appearances, she would smile politely as male hosts routinely belittled her. 'To see someone put into a box like that was, quite frankly, excruciating,' says Hargitay. 'Not just her. Anyone. That's what I wanted to bring out into the world.' Mansfield's one great stroke of luck, in her daughter's view, was marrying Mickey Hargitay, a Hungarian speed skating champion and body-builder, whom she met while he was performing with Mae West in her Las Vegas revue. There were infidelities and affairs. As her career nosedived, there were drink and drugs, there was another divorce as she moved on to another husband, but he was loyal to her, and offered wise counsel when their daughter eyed an acting career. When Hargitay fell in love with acting at high school, she says, 'my father had taught me to play by my own rules from very early on, so I had this incredible built-in strength … [he] taught me to be my own North Star.' Her own career, during which she has deliberately chosen roles as self-reliant women, was nothing like her mother's. In real life, she runs a foundation that supports women who have suffered sexual and domestic violence. She found another side to her mother, however, when she began reading the unanswered correspondence saved in her basement. 'It was quite overwhelming. As I opened up these letters, they were so extraordinary. There was one from this woman who said she used to sit outside my mother's house listening to her play the violin. 'So I started cold-calling these people. Some had passed away but some of them were alive, and I got to speak to them. These 95-year-old women saying, 'We were in high school together'. I was so grateful and only sorry I hadn't called earlier, but clearly I wasn't ready. People gave me what were like pieces of her. And they were such magical and extraordinary gifts to me, because they were so human and different from this presentational, movie-star, sex symbol thing she was famous for. So that's when I said, 'I think I have to do this'.' After that came the garage, the books her father had warned her against reading, the vast archive of television spots and meetings with people from Jayne Mansfield's past. 'The gift of the film was to see this incredible woman who had such an appetite for so much, who wanted to be this artist, who loved music, who loved children and love and went after this magical dream-like life,' says Hargitay. She wanted it all; what was unusual was that she went for it. 'That's what I see now. And it makes me feel whole.'
The Age
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
This is how the world saw Jayne Mansfield. Her daughter needed more
Mariska Hargitay's mother died in a car accident; she was in the front passenger seat and her children were in the back. Mariska was three; Mrs Hargitay, better known as Jayne Mansfield, was 34. Little Mariska had no memories of her mother, but says she 'carried a lot of shame' about the person her mother had been. It wasn't as if she was unfamiliar. For the few years of her heyday as a Hollywood star, Jayne Mansfield was possibly the most photographed person in the world. Many of those photographs were not, however, the kind a girl wants to see of her mother. Mansfield was 21 when she went to Hollywood, with hopes of both stardom and a serious acting career. She did, in fact, win a Golden Globe for her performance in a now-forgotten John Steinbeck adaptation called The Wayward Bus, but she was famous largely as a sex symbol. One of the first Playboy Playmates, she was photographed either in very tight dresses or bits of underwear providing a good view of her breasts. In movies and on chat shows, she spoke in a breathy, baby voice that suggested meek sexual readiness. Even her accent was a confection, looped together with strangulated vowels. 'That voice was painful to me,' says Hargitay, now 61. It has taken her a lifetime to resolve to go behind the voice, the body on display and the scandals to try to know her mother as a person, a quest that has resulted in her film My Mom Jayne, which had its premiere at the recent Cannes Film Festival. As a child, she says, she envied her older siblings, who could remember their mother's bedtime hugs and practical jokes. 'My father said, 'Oh, your mother was so funny!'' she says. 'So different from how she came off in public; that's not who she was at all.' But that persona was the only one Hargitay knew. Hargitay was the only one of Mansfield's five children to follow her mother into acting. Lovers of police procedurals will know her from her Emmy award-winning role as no-nonsense Captain Olivia Benson in the long-running series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU for short). It was during lockdown, when filming on SVU stopped and she had unaccustomed free time, that she started her search for, as she says, 'the soul behind these pictures'. In a corner of her basement, there were boxes of letters and memorabilia that people had sent her over her years as a public person that, somehow, she could never find time to read. Many more boxes – an entire archive – filled a lock-up garage at the modest home where her father and his second wife, Ellen, a flight attendant, had brought up Mansfield's children. Nobody had been through those, either. 'I was really looking to excavate the person behind the photos, many of which were posed and presentational, you know – and say 'who was she?' And through the photographs, I would sometimes find a private moment that for me was like breathing oxygen.' From the start, she wanted to film her search. She had already produced a 2017 documentary called I Am Evidence, about the way police approach rape investigations. 'After that, I've been so in love with the medium,' she says. 'I think it's such a powerful way for people to experience something on such a visceral level.' Her sister and three brothers agreed, reluctantly, to be filmed for My Mom Jayne. It is clear in their interviews that their grief is never far from the surface. They agreed, she says, because Mansfield's chaotic personal life had left her daughter with a secret she didn't want to keep any more. 'I was living with a lie. And it was hurting me.' Mansfield's life was chaotic from the start. Jayne Palmer was pregnant with her first daughter when she was 16. She was an accomplished musician, playing violin and piano to recital standard, and spoke several languages; now she was a housewife. At 21, after studying drama at the University of Austin, she persuaded her then husband, Paul Mansfield, to take her to Hollywood. Their marriage did not survive. She stayed, scraping together a living with dance classes and frequently risque modelling, until she had her breakthrough stage role playing a sex kitten in a New York comedy, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? 'Broadway's Smartest Dumb Blonde' read one cover story. The epithet would chase her for the rest of her short career. When she returned to Hollywood to audition for Paramount, she was told not to 'waste her assets' on drama. 'I could do a movie on the misogyny, I could do a separate thing on that, because it was palpable and everywhere,' says Hargitay. Mansfield, who was still only in her early 20s, had nobody to guide her, but she was determined to do whatever it took to be famous. On her endless chat show appearances, she would smile politely as male hosts routinely belittled her. 'To see someone put into a box like that was, quite frankly, excruciating,' says Hargitay. 'Not just her. Anyone. That's what I wanted to bring out into the world.' Mansfield's one great stroke of luck, in her daughter's view, was marrying Mickey Hargitay, a Hungarian speed skating champion and body-builder, whom she met while he was performing with Mae West in her Las Vegas revue. There were infidelities and affairs. As her career nosedived, there were drink and drugs, there was another divorce as she moved on to another husband, but he was loyal to her, and offered wise counsel when their daughter eyed an acting career. When Hargitay fell in love with acting at high school, she says, 'my father had taught me to play by my own rules from very early on, so I had this incredible built-in strength … [he] taught me to be my own North Star.' Her own career, during which she has deliberately chosen roles as self-reliant women, was nothing like her mother's. In real life, she runs a foundation that supports women who have suffered sexual and domestic violence. She found another side to her mother, however, when she began reading the unanswered correspondence saved in her basement. 'It was quite overwhelming. As I opened up these letters, they were so extraordinary. There was one from this woman who said she used to sit outside my mother's house listening to her play the violin. 'So I started cold-calling these people. Some had passed away but some of them were alive, and I got to speak to them. These 95-year-old women saying, 'We were in high school together'. I was so grateful and only sorry I hadn't called earlier, but clearly I wasn't ready. People gave me what were like pieces of her. And they were such magical and extraordinary gifts to me, because they were so human and different from this presentational, movie-star, sex symbol thing she was famous for. So that's when I said, 'I think I have to do this'.' After that came the garage, the books her father had warned her against reading, the vast archive of television spots and meetings with people from Jayne Mansfield's past. 'The gift of the film was to see this incredible woman who had such an appetite for so much, who wanted to be this artist, who loved music, who loved children and love and went after this magical dream-like life,' says Hargitay. She wanted it all; what was unusual was that she went for it. 'That's what I see now. And it makes me feel whole.'
