The Jayne Mansfield Story | |
---|---|
Genre | Biography Drama |
Written by | Charles Dennis Nancy Gayle |
Directed by | Dick Lowry |
Starring | Loni Anderson Arnold Schwarzenegger |
Theme music composer | Jimmie Haskell |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Executive producer | Tom Kuhn |
Producers | Joan Barnett Alan Landsburg Linda Otto |
Cinematography | Paul Lohmann |
Editor | Corky Ehlers |
Running time | 100 Minutes |
Production company | Alan Landsburg Productions |
Original release | |
Network | CBS |
Release | October 29, 1980 |
The Jayne Mansfield Story is a 1980 American made-for-television biographical drama film directed by Dick Lowry starring Loni Anderson as the actress, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as her bodybuilder husband, based on the life of Jayne Mansfield. The film was originally titled Jayne Mansfield: A Symbol of the '50s. The script is based on the book Jayne Mansfield and the American Fifties by Martha Saxton.
It originally aired on CBS on October 29, 1980. [1]
The film is listed in Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson's book The Official Razzie Movie Guide as one of The 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made. [2]
The film tells the fictionalized rise and fall of Hollywood bombshell and sex symbol Jayne Mansfield.
The Jayne Mansfield Story opens in 1967 in Mississippi with Jayne Mansfield closing a show and then talking on a payphone with Mickey Hargitay about going on a new tour together. Intercut with scenes of Mansfield getting into a car and then crashing when the driver tries to overtake a spray truck is film of a teleprinter typing out the news of Mansfield's death. An announcer reads the text over both scenes. The film then goes to credits, intercut with still images of Mansfield as a child and young woman.
The next scene is of an unnamed woman interviewing Hargitay about Mansfield (Hargitay's graying hair indicates that this is some time after her death). Hargitay shows her photos including one where a dark-haired Mansfield poses with a chimpanzee as a publicity stunt to promote a film premiere at the theater where she worked as a popcorn salesperson. (Hargitay narrates throughout the rest of the film). At a scene from the theater and at home Mansfield expresses her desire to act in films and she is shown as a single mother, taking care of her only daughter Jayne Marie after the father left because he disagreed with her acting ambition.
In the next scene Mansfield approaches talent agent Bob Garrett on the street (whom she met, off-screen, at the premiere). She manages to convince Garrett to give her an audition for a one line part in a film after pushing her chest out and declaring that she has something more than Marilyn Monroe. At the audition, Mansfield declines to read the line given to her, opting instead to read a line from Come Back, Little Sheba . She doesn't get the part.
Meeting later with Garrett, Mansfield makes a high pitched cooing sound and strikes a pose, asking rhetorically if this is what they want. Garrett tells her she might be on to something and tells her to lose weight and change her hair. Mansfield states that she will project an airheaded bimbo image until her career gets going and then she will switch to more serious roles. A month later Mansfield meets with Garrett at a car dealership, with blonde hair and wearing a pink polka-dot dress, she is received a pink Cadillac for free as promotion.
Next, Mansfield appears at the Southern California press club (courtesy of Garrett to raise her profile), handing out Christmas presents while wearing a white fur trimmed bikini top and bottom. At a Florida poolside photoshoot, Mansfield pretends to fall in the pool (losing her bikini top in the process), shouting that she can't swim to get the attention of the photographers who eagerly take pictures of her.
Nominated for Primetime Emmy for
Jayne Mansfield was an American actress and Playboy Playmate. A sex symbol of the 1950s and early 1960s, Mansfield was known for her numerous publicity stunts and open personal life. Although her film career was short-lived, she had several box-office successes, and won a Theatre World Award and Golden Globe Award, and soon gained the nickname of Hollywood's "smartest dumb blonde."
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Loni Anderson is an American actress. She played receptionist Jennifer Marlowe on the CBS sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati (1978–1982), which earned her three Golden Globe Awards and two Emmy Award nominations.
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The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw is a 1958 Western comedy film directed by Raoul Walsh, starring Kenneth More and Jayne Mansfield. Mansfield's singing voice is dubbed by Connie Stevens. It was one of the first Westerns to be shot in Spain.
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Promises! Promises! is a 1963 American sex comedy film directed by King Donovan and starring Tommy Noonan and Jayne Mansfield. Released at the end of the Production Code era and before the MPAA film rating system became effective in 1968, it was the first Hollywood film of the sound era to feature nudity by a mainstream star (Mansfield).
The Loves of Hercules is a 1960 international co-production film starring Jayne Mansfield and her then husband Mickey Hargitay. The film was distributed internationally as Hercules vs. the Hydra.
Jayne Mansfield was an actress, singer, Playboy playmate and stage show performer who had an enormous impact on popular culture of the late 1950s despite her limited success in Hollywood. She has remained a well-known subject in popular culture ever since. During a period between 1956 and 1957, there were about 122,000 lines of copy and 2,500 photographs that appeared in newspapers. In an article on her in the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture (1999), Dennis Russel said that "Although many people have never seen her movies, Jayne Mansfield remains, long after her death, one of the most recognizable icons of 1950s celebrity culture." In the novel Child of My Heart (2004) by Alice McDermott, a National Book Award winning writer, the 1950s is referred to as "in those Marilyn Monroe/Jayne Mansfield days". R. L. Rutsky and Bill Osgerby has claimed that it was Mansfield along with Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot who made the bikini popular.
Jayne Marie Mansfield is an American actress and model. She is the first child and eldest daughter of 1950s Hollywood sex symbol and Playboy Playmate Jayne Mansfield and Mansfield's ex-husband Paul. Mansfield is also the elder half-sister of actress Mariska Hargitay. In July 1976, Mansfield became the first daughter of a Playmate to be a featured model in Playboy. To date, only one other daughter of a Playmate has been featured in the magazine. Additionally, Mansfield is the only model who was featured in 100 Beautiful Women along with her mother in the magazine's 1988 special issue. She has acted in the film Olly, Olly, Oxen Free (1978) and TV production Blond in Hollywood (2003).
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is an original stage comedy in three acts and four scenes by George Axelrod. After a try-out run at the Plymouth Theatre in Boston from 26 September 1955, it opened at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway on 13 October, starring Jayne Mansfield, Walter Matthau and Orson Bean. Directed by the author and produced by Jule Styne, it closed on 3 November 1956 after 444 performances.
Jayne Mansfield's Car is a 2012 drama film directed by Billy Bob Thornton, marking his first fiction directing job since 2000's All the Pretty Horses. Thornton also stars alongside Robert Duvall, John Hurt, Kevin Bacon, Ray Stevenson, Frances O'Connor, Ron White, and Robert Patrick. The film had its world premiere at the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival in February 2012. The film was released in limited release on September 13, 2013.
Dog Eat Dog is a 1964 German crime drama film starring Jayne Mansfield, Cameron Mitchell, Dodie Heath, Ivor Salter, Isa Miranda, Elisabeth Flickenschildt, Werner Peters, and Pinkas Braun.
The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield is a 1968 mondo documentary film chronicling the travels of actress Jayne Mansfield. It was directed by Charles W. Broun, Jr., Joel Holt and Arthur Knight.
Jayne Mansfield's Pink Palace was a mansion bought and refurbished with pink paint and fixtures by American actress Jayne Mansfield in 1957. The mansion was demolished in 2002.
Jayne Mansfield's leopard spot bikini was regular wardrobe for actress and blonde bombshell Jayne Mansfield in her publicity stunts. Because of the costume she came to be known as "the girl in the leopard bikini" at times. Throughout the 1950s, she and her husband Mickey Hargitay posed for photos with her in the leopard spot bikini. The couple wore matching leopard spots to announce their closeness, and the costume won them a prize at a Hollywood costume party. Mansfield often walked down the Hollywood Boulevard in the leopard bikini signing autographs, once went shopping in the leopard bikini, and attended parties in it.
Mansfield 66/67 is a 2017 documentary musical directed by P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes about the last two years of actress Jayne Mansfield's life. The film examines the rumors surrounding Mansfield's untimely death, and relationship with Anton LaVey as a celebration of Mansfield's life on the 50th anniversary of her death.