![]() ![]() ![]() The Jayne Mansfield death photos released after the accident added fuel to the rumors. Three of her children slept in the backseat.īettmann/Getty Images Another view of Mansfield’s mangled car after the accident.Īs news of the grisly accident went public, rumors swirled that the crash decapitated Mansfield. On the long drive, Mansfield sat in front with a driver, Ronald B. The actress had just performed at a Biloxi nightclub, and she needed to reach New Orleans for a television appearance scheduled for the next day. In the early morning hours of June 29, 1967, Mansfield left Biloxi, Mississippi, driving toward New Orleans. Mansfield famously lived in a rose-colored Hollywood mansion dubbed The Pink Palace, complete with a heart-shaped swimming pool.īut when news of Marilyn Monroe’s sudden death reached Mansfield in 1962, the typically audacious actress worried, “Maybe I’ll be next.” The 1967 Car Accidentįive years after Monroe’s death, Jayne Mansfield died in a car accident. She was infamous for exposing her breasts to photographers on the street, and she was the first mainstream American actress to go nude on screen, baring all in the 1963 film Promises, Promises. Her turbulent love life made for constant tabloid fodder, and she pushed boundaries that other stars at the time wouldn’t approach. She posed for Playboy as a playmate and declared, “I think sex is healthy, and there’s too much guilt and hypocrisy about it.” Mansfield wasn’t shy about her sex symbol status. Unknown/Wikimedia Commons Jayne Mansfield and her husband Mickey Hargitay in costume at the 1956 Ballyhoo Ball. Monroe added, “I know it’s supposed to be flattering to be imitated, but she does it so grossly, so vulgarly – I wish I had some legal means to sue her.” “All she does is imitate me,” Monroe complained, “but her imitations are an insult to her as well as to myself.” But the actress was best known for her personality off-screen, where she played up her curves and sold herself as a naughtier version of Monroe. Mansfield starred in films like 1960’s Too Hot to Handle and 1956’s The Girl Can’t Help It. A young Mansfield, born Vera Jayne Palmer, arrived in Hollywood at just 21 years old, already a wife and mother. ![]() In the 1950s, Jayne Mansfield rose to stardom as a cartoonishly-sexy alternative to Marilyn Monroe. ''She had a lot of makeup with her,'' he remembers, ''and I used it all.Allan Grant/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images Jayne Mansfield lounges on an inflatable raft in a swimming pool surrounded by bottles shaped like bikini-clad versions of herself, Los Angeles, California, 1957. Her face and body, Roberts allows, were ''as bad as you get in this business,'' and he worked all night, valiantly trying to reconstruct her face before her relatives arrived. Headless or not, Mansfield did not go gently. Mansfield's wig was thrown to the side of the road, where it was mistaken in news stories for her head. The impact drove the car's engine into the front seat, killing the actress, two adults and a Chihuahua (who rode up front) but sparing Mansfield's children. ''And she couldn't stand to be away from her children.'' As he also recalls, Mansfield died in a sedan that slammed into the back of an 18-wheeler that was shrouded in ''fog'' from a mosquito-spray truck. ''She was such a fine-looking person,'' Roberts says. He was a fan, and for years he kept a scrapbook of clips, pictures and old obituaries. He's unaware that Mansfield's death has been reduced, by some, to a pop-culture reference point, but he probably wouldn't like it. These days Roberts, 77, lives in cozy retirement above the New Orleans funeral home where he worked for 41 years. ''About the way she lived and the way she died.'' ''People always figured wrong about Jayne,'' he laments. Roberts says the beheading part is hooey, and he should know - he was her undertaker. The accepted version (now playing in the movie ''Crash'') has it that Mansfield was beheaded when she died in a car accident just outside of New Orleans on June 29, 1967. ''Her head was attached as much as mine is,'' says Jim Roberts, gently dismissing a longstanding myth about Jayne Mansfield's grisly demise.
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