Jayne Mansfield Biography

Fast Facts

• Was nominated for a Golden Laurel Award for Top Female Musical Performance for "The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw" in 1959
• Studied Drama at Southern Methodist University in the early 1940s
• Had five children with weight lifter Mickey Hargitay, one of whom is "Law and Order" star Mariska Hargitay
• Started out as a stage actress in local productions in Dallas, including "Death of a Salesman," before convincing her husband to move to Los Angeles so she could become a movie star
• After a couple of years of unsuccessful auditions, she began appearing in films like "Female Jungle" and "Pete Kelly's Blues" in 1955
• Took voice, dance, and violin lessons in her youth and became interested in Hollywood at the age of 13 after a vacation to Los Angeles with her mother
• Best known as a Hollywood sex symbol and actress who played Rita Marlowe in "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" and Jerri Jordan in "The Girl Can't Help It․"
• Was very successful at self-marketing, choosing pink as the trademark that colored nearly everything she owned and turning the wardrobe malfunction into what one journalist described as "a professional hazard․"
• Became the first American actress to appear nude in a major motion picture in 1963's "Promises! Promises!"
• During the nine-month period from September 1956 to May 1957, she appeared in an estimated 2,500 newspaper photographs