Jayne Mansfield Biography, Wiki, Net Worth, Height, Weight, Career

Jayne Mansfield Biography: Vera Jayne Palmer, better known as Jayne Mansfield, was an American actress, singer, nightclub entertainer, and Playboy Playmate.

Jayne Mansfield Biography

Vera Jayne Palmer was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, on April 19, 1933. Her parents were Herbert (an attorney) and Vera Palmer, and she spent her childhood in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. Herbert died of a heart attack in 1936, and Vera married Harry Lawrence Peers and moved the family to Dallas, Texas, three years later. Mansfield began taking ballroom dance classes at the age of 12 and graduated from Highland Park High School in 1950. Jayne studied German and Spanish as a teenager and took piano, violin, and viola classes. After high school, she studied acting at Southern Methodist University & the University of Texas at Austin. Mansfield eventually moved to Dallas and worked with actor Baruch Lumet, who assisted her in getting her first film role in 1954.

Jayne Mansfield Wiki

Also Read: Orlando Bloom Biography, Wiki, Personal Life, Height, Weight, Career

Jayne Mansfield Career

Jayne debuted on television in 1964 on “Lux Video Theatre,” her first film was “Female Jungle” in 1955. That same year, she signed a seven-year contract with Warner Brothers, had minor roles in 1955’s “Pete Kelly’s Blues” and “Hell on Frisco Bay,” and portrayed Rita Marlowe in a Broadway production of George Axelrod’s “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” alongside Walter Matthau and Orson Bean.

She reprised her role in the 1957 film adaptation, which was included in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2000 because it was “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Jayne won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Jerri Jordan in “The Girl Can’t Help It” in 1956. She then starred in “The Burglar,” “The Wayward Bus,” “Kiss Them for Me” in 1957, and “The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw” in 1958. In the early 1960s, she appeared in films such as “The Challenge” (1960), “Too Hot to Handle” (1960), “The Loves of Hercules” (1960), “The George Raft Story” (1961), & “It Happened in Athens” (1962). In 1963, she portrayed Sandy Brooks in “Promises! Promises!” a film banned in several cities due to its adult themes.

Jayne starred in the Italian and German films “L’Amore Primitivo” and “Panic Button” in 1964, followed by “The Fat Spy” and “The Las Vegas Hillbillies” in 1966. She had a cameo in the 1967 film “A Guide for the Married Man,” & her role as Johnnie/ Mae/ Eileen in “Single Room Furnished” is regarded as one of her finest. The film was released momentarily in 1966, then pulled from theaters and released officially in 1968, nearly a year after Mansfield’s passing. The movie “The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield” was also produced in 1968.

She appeared in several television series, including “Kraft Mystery Theater” (1961), “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour” (1962), and “Burke’s Law” (1964). She performed on variety shows such as “The Jack Benny Program,” “The Jackie Gleason Show,” “The Steve Allen Show,” and “The Ed Sullivan Show.” By the late 1950s, she earned $20,000 per television appearance. Ten days before her death, Mansfield made her penultimate television appearance on “The Joey Bishop Show,” where she read Robert Herrick’s poem “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” which includes the line “And this same flower that smiles today / Tomorrow will be dying.”

Jayne Mansfield Awards and Nominations

In 1957, Mansfield won the Golden Globe for Most Promising Female Newcomer for “The Girl Can’t Help It,” in 1959, she was nominated for the Laurel Award for Top Female Musical Performance for “The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw.” She received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 1960 & a Theatre World Award for Promising Personality in 1956 for “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” In 2008, the Texas Film Awards posthumously honored Jayne with a Legacy Award and inducted her into the Texas Film Hall of Fame. Her daughter Mariska accepted the award on her behalf.