Jayne Mansfield

Jayne Mansfield, born Vera Jayne Palmer on April 19, 1933, at Bryn Mawr Hospital in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, was an American actress, singer, and Playboy Playmate who became one of Hollywood's most prominent sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s. She was the only child of Herbert William Palmer, an attorney, and Vera Jeffrey Palmer. Her father died of a heart attack while driving in 1936, with three-year-old Palmer present in the car. Her widowed mother later married sales engineer Harry Lawrence Peers in 1939, and the family relocated to Dallas, Texas, where Mansfield grew up under the name Vera Jayne Peers. She graduated from Highland Park High School in 1950, having studied violin, piano, viola, Spanish, and German during her school years. As a child, she took ballroom dance lessons beginning at age 12.

Palmer married Paul Mansfield in 1950, and it was his surname she retained professionally throughout her career. While attending the University of Texas at Austin, she won several beauty contest titles, including Miss Photoflash, Miss Magnesium Lamp, and Miss Fire Prevention Week. In 1952, she and Paul Mansfield appeared in local Dallas theater productions of The Slaves of Demon Rum and Ten Nights in a Barroom, as well as a production of Anything Goes at Camp Gordon, Georgia. Her first significant stage appearance came on October 22, 1953, in a production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at the Knox Street Theater, directed by Sidney Lumet.

The Mansfields moved to Los Angeles in 1954 with their daughter, Jayne Marie. During this period, Mansfield held a variety of jobs, including selling popcorn at the Stanley Warner Theatre, teaching dance, selling candy at a movie theater, modeling part-time at the Blue Book Model Agency, and working as a photographer at Esther Williams's Trails Restaurant. She auditioned at both Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. in 1954 without success, though she learned she would need to dye her hair blonde. Her first professional acting assignment was a brief appearance in the CBS series Lux Video Theatre, in the episode "An Angel Went AWOL," which aired on October 21, 1954, for which she was paid $300. Warner Bros. subsequently signed her to a seven-year contract in February 1955, initially paying her $250 a week, and she appeared in small roles in Pete Kelly's Blues, Hell on Frisco Bay, and Illegal, the last opposite Edward G. Robinson.

Beginning in February 1955, Mansfield appeared as Playboy's Playmate of the Month and went on to be featured in the magazine each February from 1955 through 1958, and again in 1960. Her appearances were credited with boosting the magazine's circulation alongside those of Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page, and Anita Ekberg.

Mansfield's Broadway career centered on the 1955 comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, in which she played fictional film star Rita Marlowe opposite Walter Matthau and Orson Bean. The role had been offered to her after Mamie Van Doren turned it down, and her agent William Shiffrin negotiated the deal. She continued performing the role on stage until September 15, 1956, after signing a six-year contract with Twentieth Century Fox on May 3 of that year. Her portrayal of Rita Marlowe earned her a Theatre World Award in 1956. She later reprised the role in the 1957 film adaptation of the play.

During her Broadway run, Mansfield also completed work on The Burglar, a film noir adaptation of David Goodis's novel of the same name, produced by Louis W. Kellman, directed by Paul Wendkos, and featuring Dan Duryea and Martha Vickers. The film was released in 1957. Her first major starring film role came in Frank Tashlin's musical comedy The Girl Can't Help It in 1956, in which she played Jerri Jordan alongside a cast of rock and roll and rhythm-and-blues performers including Little Richard, Fats Domino, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, and The Platters. The film was released in December 1956 and became one of the year's most commercially successful releases. Her performance earned her a Golden Globe Award for New Star. Subsequent film credits included the drama The Wayward Bus and the 1957 film adaptation of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, both released that year, followed by the neo-noir Too Hot to Handle in 1960 and the sex comedy Promises! Promises! in 1963, in which she became the first American actress to perform a nude scene in a starring film role.

Mansfield married three times and had five children. She also inherited more than $90,000 from her maternal grandfather, Thomas H. Palmer, and more than $36,000 from her maternal grandmother, Beatrice Mary Palmer, in 1958. On June 29, 1967, she died in a traffic collision at the age of 34.