Tom Gregory's Hollywood Vault radio clips, as featured on Leeza Gibbons' national radio program Hollywood Confidential!

Jayne Mansfield

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Below is a transcript of the review on the audio file playable above.

In this day of Paris’ prolific self-promotion, it’s fittingly fun to remember buxom Jayne Mansfield. That’s Jayne with a "Y" and Mansfield, dotted with a heart. She said "A woman should be pink and cuddly for a man."

Famed reporter Walter Winchell bellowed, "Jayne Mansfield is making a career of being a girl." Listen, says Jayne, I've been Miss Freeway, Miss Nylon Sweater, and Miss 4th of July Heck, the only award I ever turned down was: Miss Roquefort Cheese, "it just didn't sound right."

Mansfield's legend is a potpourri of posing, performance, and pink. Don’t think she was all fluff. Her turn as Rita Marlowe in 1957’s "WIll Success Spoil Rock Hunter" sealed her star as a legitimate actress in Hollywood.
Jayne and her body-builder husband Mickey Hargitay lived their storybook life in love on Sunset Blvd. Their mansion became known as the Pink Palace. Painted this coral color the house boasted a fireplace, pool, and Jacuzzi - all in her trademark heart shape.

Jayne was the queen of the wardrobe malfunction as self-promotion. More than once her candid picture was plastered across the entertainment page with the word CENSORED across her exposed attributes.

Sadly, in 1967 34-year-old Jayne, her attorney, and a business companion were killed when their car rear-ended a truck on a dark Louisiana highway. Her three children, asleep in the back seat, survived. Daughter Mariska Hargitay is a regular on TV's Law and Order. Her Mother would be proud. Bravo, or as Jayne would have purred, "Isn't she Devoon??!!"

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