How the ultimate sex symbol tried to win back Hollywood with the Church of Satan
Imagine Marilyn Monroe and then some. Now, you’ve got an idea of what people saw Jayne Mansfield as when she was discovered by talent scouts for movies and theatre in the mid-1950s.
One can only imagine the dollar signs that appeared in people’s eyes when executives first looked at Mansfield’s publicity photos. Among other things, I’m sure.
Those phenomenal looks are still a marvel today, but there was something else that made her an even more enticing proposition to movie producers. Monroe always wanted to be seen as more than just the world’s most beautiful woman. She wanted to be known as the talented actor and comedian she was underneath it all.
Mansfield was nearly exactly the same. Underneath the looks, the hair and that figure, she was a talented actor and performer. A classically trained pianist and violinist who spoke five languages. There was far more to her than her looks; however, she quite simply didn’t see the objectification as much of a problem.
In all honesty, she was arguably a lot better at being a celebrity than Monroe was, embracing the attention and the ‘dumb blonde’ stereotype with aplomb and becoming one of the biggest stars of the 1950s as a result.
The issue is that this put her at odds with the counter-cultural 1960s, when playing the Hollywood game made you extremely lame in comparison with more radical, exhibitionist types like Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda. However, Mansfield was nothing if not cunning and just because times had changed, didn’t mean she couldn’t still play the Hollywood game with the best of them. If she wanted the public speaking about her again, she just needed to do something outrageous.
This should have been nothing new for her. She was the first Hollywood actress to appear nude on screen and had spent the 1950s organising highly public ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ in full view of the press.
However, sex wasn’t shocking people the way it used to. Thus, she challenged the standards of good taste in a very different way, striking up a friendship with Anton LaVey, a man who was getting genuine notoriety as the leader of the Church of Satan.
Now, Mansfield may have claimed that this was a genuine friendship. That she seriously found him to be “an interesting person” and “a genius”, and there’s reason to believe that they did enjoy each other’s company. However, make no mistake about it, this was a publicity stunt through and through. One that LaVey was just as in on as Mansfield was. A man as cunning as him would absolutely know that palling around with one of the world’s most famous women would do wonders for his celebrity, which was all he really cared about in the early days of the church (and arguably his whole life).
I mean, why else would they go to the trouble of setting up a photoshoot where Mansfield took part in “magical rituals” with a cloak-clad LaVey, who wore a fetching pair of plastic devil horns for the occasion? It’s all patently ludicrous, but it takes a much darker hue very soon afterwards, in the aftermath of Mansfield’s deeply troubled final year alive before a car crash took her life in 1967. She was publicly involved with Sam Brody, a married man, battling for custody of her fifth child, and the fateful crash that ended her life was the third she’d been in that year.
Which is when things get gross. As I said previously, LaVey would do anything for publicity. Including exploiting the memory of his dead friend. He said in the press that he had been romantically involved with Mansfield and that when she wouldn’t leave Brody for him, he’d put a Satanic Curse on him. He even made up some nonsense about how the fateful crash was actually the eighth they’d been in that year and that the crash had decapitated Mansfield. Falsehoods that get woven into the legend of Jayne Mansfield to this day.
Most sickeningly of all, he said that he’d warned Mansfield to stay away from Brody due to the danger of his supposed “curse”. Making out that the death of a real-life human woman that he’d been friends with was her own fault for the sake of publicity.
Never ever forget that Jayne Mansfield deserved so much better from everyone in her life.