Reflections on ... My Mom Jayne (2025) for Filthy Dreams

“Jayne Mansfield was the ultimate sex kitten-gone-berserk, the eternal starlet grasping for fame with both hands, Kenneth Anger’s cooing, squealing Hollywood Babylon made flesh. What, one might justifiably wonder, must it have been like having this outrageous creature for a mother?” 

/ Jayne Mansfield and daughter Mariska Hargitay, 1964 /

Yes! Read my new article “Bow Down Before Jayne Mansfield, the Queen of Low-Brow Trash Culture” which features my reflections on Mariska Hargitay’s 2025 HBO documentary My Mom Jayne on FilthyDreams – the provocative blog (for minorities who don't even fit into our own minorities) that analyses art, politics, and culture with a touch of camp! 

/ Pictured: a glamour shot of Jayne Mansfield promoting the 1963 film Homesick for St Pauli /

Reflections on ... the hates and loves of Ann-Margret in 1964

 

In 1964, then-23-year-old starlet Ann-Margret bared her soul to 16 Magazine about her “hates and loves” (or, as they put it at the time: “Here they are - the deep-down, intimate secrets of your favourite new star!”). I think Ann-Margret speaks for all of us here! (Please don’t tell me some publicity agent or anonymous hack cobbled this together – the disillusionment would be overwhelming). Pull up a chair – this is one LONG mutha of list. 

She hates for anyone to yell at her. She cried the first time a bandleader loudly chewed her out for being late to a rehearsal.

She hates dresses with lots of ruffles and frills. They make her feel like "... a Christmas tree!"

She hates vegetables - especially cooked spinach.

She hates to cook or anything to do with the kitchen.

She hates people who say nasty things about other people whom they don't even know.

She hates the fact that no matter how she rushes, she has a tendency to be late.

She hates to see too much make-up on a woman.

She hates to see an animal hurt.

She hates people who "...kid around with someone's emotions".

She hates gossip of any sort.

She hates rain.

She hates herself when she fluffs a song or dance, even during a rehearsal.

She hates people who think that show business is all whipped cream and glamour. Ann-Margret says: "It's one of the toughest professions in the world".

She hates it when people call her a star. "Right now, I am just a very fortunate girl", she earnestly maintains. "A star is someone who sustains, like Bette Davis".

She hates for people to try and pry into her personal life.

She hates the thought of sitting still for more than five minutes at a time.

She hates to have to straighten up her room.

She hates reports that she dates just for publicity.

She hates for people to tell her how to run her life.

She hates grey days and grey colours.

She hates people who complain and feel sorry for themselves.

She hates it when there is a mechanical failure in her car or motor scooter.

She hates to be told she ought to act such-and-such a way, because "... it's the thing to do".

She hates herself for being so painfully shy when it comes to meeting new people.

She hates jealousy of any kind.

She hates aggressive girls who brag that they can twist a man round their little finger.

She hates to get up early in the morning.

She hates prejudice in any form.

She hates to diet.

 

She loves going to football and basketball games.

She loves to ride her motor scooter through the Hollywood hills.

She loves a steak.

She loves to wear dark glasses.

She loves animals of all sorts.

She loves chocolate malts for breakfast.

She loves a windy night.

She loves big, shaggy sweaters.

She loves performing for a live audience.

She loves saving things. She has a huge chest, hand-carved by an uncle in Sweden, in which she stores all her mementos.

She loves sad movies - even though they make her cry.

She loves the colour black.

She loves to sleep under lots of blankets.

She loves pizza with ginger ale.

She loves browsing through family photo albums.

She loves Cantonese food.

She loves talking on the phone. She has two "Princess" models in her bedroom.

She loves water-skiing.

She loves collecting stuffed animals - the pride of her collection is a huge lavender poodle Eddie Fisher gave her in New York. She took it back to California on the plane - strapped in the seat next to her.

She loves flowers and greenery of any sort.

She loves baked potatoes with sour cream, chives and butter.

She loves to travel - especially back to Sweden for a visit with relatives.

She loves the name Skuby. So far, it's the "handle" for her Yorkshire terrier (also a gift from Eddie Fisher).

She loves her red motor scooter and her red compact convertible car.

She loves window-shopping.

She loves the excitement of Las Vegas.

She loves watching parades.

She loves laughing and seeing others laugh.

She loves working with Elvis Presley.

She loves weddings. Last year she was maid of honour at the nuptials of Sharon Louver of Summit, N.J., and Joanie Stremmel, of Wilmette, Ill., both of whom had been her best friends since the sixth grade. She caught Janie's bouquet!

She loves dancing - especially the Twist.

She loves the new house she bought for herself and her parents in fashionable Benedict Canyon.

She loves the beach - day or night.

She loves Marlon Brando's acting.

She loves little children.

She loves Capri pants.

She loves candlelight dinners.

She loves watching TV.

She loves Sammy Davis, Jr. and Elvis Presley records.

She loves modern furniture.

She loves being alone for a certain part of every day.

She loves her good luck charms - a miniature red horse, ivory Buddha, smooth beach pebble and tiny hula doll named "Jungle Julie".

She loves writing in her diary.

She loves playing a jukebox.

She loves holding deep philosophical conversations.

She loves suede jackets.

She loves riding a bicycle.

She loves to write letters and receive them. Write to her at 8966 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, California.

Happy 60th Anniversary to Promises ... Promises! (1963)

 “The movie is a bedroom farce about a writer (Tommy Noonan) and his wife (Jayne) who are on a cruise with their friends, a famous actor (Mickey Hargitay) and his wife (Marie “The Body” McDonald). Tommy and Jayne want to have a baby, and Jayne takes various concoctions cooked up by the ship’s doctor. Tommy, who believes he is sterile, also drinks potency potions. There is a bedroom mix-up, a female impersonator who does Tallulah Bankhead imitations and two short sequences of Jayne thrashing about in bed bra-less, having disturbing dreams. It was because of these sequences that the movie was only shown in “art” theatres. Jet Fore, who was publicist for the movie, had erotic posters of Jayne printed up with a lot of words about the first time ever au naturel for a major star. Each sequence lasts about thirty seconds and bears no relation to the rest of the film which is as clean as a troop of Girl Scouts … In Promises … Promises! Jayne, wearing wedgies and skin-tight pedal pushers, straddles an open door and rubs her calf suggestively up and down against it. One expects the door to moan. It was theatre of sex at its most laughable.”

/ From Jayne Mansfield and the American Fifties by Martha Saxton, 1975 /

“It was at this point that Jayne made the most inexplicable, self-destructive move of her career, one that tipped her over from fading star to unemployable dirty joke. Actually, it was two moves: she agreed to star in the cheesy softcore porn film Promises … Promises! and to pose topless for Playboy … Why did Jayne agree to do nude scenes and in such a cheap film? She was not stupid or naïve when it came to show business – she had to have known no major studio would star her after this, and that family-friendly TV would be off-limits. But she had to work, even if she was a big nude fish in a small scummy pond.”

/ From Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn’t Help It by Eve Golden, 2021 /

Today in smut history: the notorious Jayne Mansfield "nudie" movie Promises … Promises! was released sixty years ago (15 August 1963). It definitively ended the "reputable" part of her career.

Reflections on ... Born to Be Wild (2023) by Ann-Margret

 

/ Portrait of Ann-Margret by Chantal Anderson for The New York Times, March 2023 /

82-year-old veteran sex kitten Ann-Margret dropped Born to Be Wild, her first new album in over a decade, last month (her previous one - God is Love: The Gospel Sessions 2 – came out in 2011). My notes! 

This is being referred to as Ann-Margret’s “first classic-rock album”, but her early sixties RCA recordings brim with delights like the girl group-style “I Just Don’t Understand”, her sultry cover of Elvis’ “Heartbreak Hotel” and her interpretations of R&B songs like “Roll with Me, Henry” and “Jim Dandy”. Ann-Margret has always rocked!   

On the wailing title track (a cover of the 1968 Steppenwolf song), A-M is backed by The Fuzztones – and it’s genuinely ferocious! (This isn’t her first foray into garage punk: “It’s a Nice World to Visit (But Not to Live In)” - her 1969 collaboration with Lee Hazlewood - still slaps hard). 

The musical backing is grittier, brasher and more rockabilly than you might expect. (On “Volare” A-M is accompanied by Lee Rocker and Slim Jim Phantom of The Stray Cats). “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” belongs on every festive Spotify playlist! Her efforts at doo wop (“Earth Angel” and “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”) and “Son of a Preacher Man” are credible. (The latter won’t make you forget Dusty, but it compares favorably with Bobbie Gentry and Nancy Sinatra’s versions). 

Best of all: “Somebody's in My Orchard” is slinky cocktail jazz loungecore with “blue” lyrics (“Somebody digs my fig trees / Someone loves their juice / That someone with that sweet juice / Ain't nothing but bad news ….”). 

/ Portrait of Ann-Margret by Chantal Anderson for The New York Times, March 2023 /

Less happily: duets with Pat Boone and Cliff Richard represent bad kitsch rather than fun kitsch. There’s frequently a whiff of Branson, Missouri and karaoke. Can’t help but wish A-M would find hipper collaborators and material. Not a fan of his but consider how Jack White produced late-period Loretta Lynn and Wanda Jackson albums. Not that A-M ever worried about “credibility” – her priority is to entertain. 

Finally: with the recent deaths of her contemporaries like Stella Stevens and Raquel Welch, the time to love and appreciate Ann-Margret is now! Next, we need comeback albums from Joey Heatherton and Connie Stevens!

Further reading: 

I reminisce about seeing Ann-Margret's ultra-camp Las Vegas revue in 2005.

Ann-Margret's cookie recipe.

 

Reflections on ... my podcasting debut!

 

Hear me rant like a lunatic on my podcasting debut! 

The suave host of the Soho Bites podcast attended the 15 July 2021 Lobotomy Room film club screening of British sexploitation b-movie Too Hot to Handle (1960) at Fontaine’s bar and afterwards we discussed the film, the club, Jayne Mansfield, the representation of Soho onscreen – it’s divoon! And when he calls me “sleazy evil genius” in the introduction, I feel seen!

Listen to the episode of Soho Bites here.

Read my reflections on Too Hot to Handle here. 

The Lobotomy Room Test Kitchen ... Ann-Margret's Cookies

 

Ann-Margret is many things. A consummate entertainer. A “triple threat” (actress, singer and dancer). A sex kitten par excellence. An enthusiast of sequins. One thing she most definitely ain’t: a reliable recipe source. I attempted to make the redheaded vixen’s seemingly straightforward cookie recipe – and let’s just say it turned into a total hot mess!

My learnings: I bought North American style measuring cups rather than Googling the equivalent of every ingredient in grams. From my research: if you see the term “shortening” in an American recipe, replace with butter.  Granulated sugar and caster sugar are the same thing. “Chocolate morsels” and chocolate chips are also the same thing, and a 12-ounce package of chocolate chips (American) is pretty much the same as a 100-gram package (UK). Morrisons (my local grocery store of choice) didn’t have chopped pecans in stock, so I replaced them with a packet of chopped mixed nuts. 

I followed Ann-Margret’s instructions to the letter and carefully dolloped-out small “rounded teaspoon fulls” of the cookie batter onto a foil-lined baking tray. So far, so good. They are meant to create 100 (!) 2-inch cookies. I manged about 28 teaspoon-sized dollops onto the baking tray, so resolved to bake them in batches. But once in the oven, my cookies instantly swelled and “spread-out”, ultimately forming one giant mass and after 15-minutes (considerably longer than A-M instructs), they were still squidgy and under-cooked! (But smelled amazing). So, I left them in for a further 15-minutes until they were firmer and more of a golden-brown shade. Once it cooled I wound-up cutting this wodge of solid cookie into irregular “squares.” I mean, they taste like intensely sweet and delicious chocolate chip cookies (of course they’re delicious: their primary ingredients are butter and sugar) but they don’t look remotely like what I was expecting.  Same thing happened with the second batch. When I was scraping-out the last of the batter from the mixing bowl, the “cookie dots” became smaller – and those final cookies didn’t spread-out and flatten but remained individual circles. So that was the solution – take that “rounded teaspoon” of batter and reduce by half! 

In conclusion: little kids can make chocolate chip cookies. I’m a middle-aged experienced cook and I botched these. File under: never again!

Further reading

My recollections of seeing Ann-Margret perform at The Stardust casino in Las Vegas in 2005.

Reflections on ... Too Hot to Handle (1960)

“Under the naked glare of the spots they do their stuff … the girls who rock the night as tease queens!”

"The Sizzler You Read About in Playboy Magazine!"

"In the fall of 1959 Jayne made a couple of shabby British films in her first independent ventures. She played "Midnight Franklin", a Soho nightclub dancer, more accurately a stripper, in Too Hot to Handle directed by Terence Young. Midnight was in love with Johnny Solo, doomed owner of The Pink Flamingo club. The censors refused to release the movie in this country under its American title, Playgirl After Dark. Jayne suggested that someone get a spray gun and cover her offending areas. But the process cost more than the budget of the film."

/ From Jayne Mansfield and The American Fifties (1975) by Martha Saxton /

Recently watched: lurid British noir crime drama Too Hot to Handle (1960), concerning the inexorably violent rivalry between two competing striptease clubs in the underbelly of Soho, London’s neon-lit glamour jungle! Between the two club owners, we’re seemingly encouraged to sympathise with Johnny Solo, proprietor of striptease emporium The Pink Flamingo Club. (The unappealing actor who plays him - Leo Genn - is a total charisma by-pass). Atomic-era sex kitten-gone-berserk Jayne Mansfield is platinum blonde American showgirl deluxe Midnight Franklin, Solo’s glamorous moll and the star attraction at The Pink Flamingo. Rounding out the cast are Christopher Lee as Solo’s untrustworthy thug henchman Novak (of course he’s untrustworthy – he’s played by Christopher Lee and wears a pencil-line spiv moustache!), Austrian actor Karlheinz Bohm (who in the same year would star in chilling cult classic Peeping Tom) and young starlet Barbara Windsor as naïve, doomed underage stripper Ponytail ("the girl with the rock'n'roll hairstyle"). Lee played an extremely similar role in another trashy exploitation film released the same year, also set in the Soho burlesque milieu: Beat Girl (1960).

Slumming American superstar Mansfield – on loan from her Hollywood studio Twentieth Century Fox - made two fairly undistinguished films in the UK in 1960 (the second one is heist thriller The Challenge. Of the two, Too Hot is considerably more fun). The gangster subplot of Too Hot is pretty unconvincing, but the film sparks to life when it embraces sexploitation and switches to the scantily-clad exotic dancers’ ultra-camp musical numbers and their bitchy dressing room confrontations. Mansfield herself – looking lushly zaftig, her waist cinched to almost Vampira proportions – coos two outrageous songs (“Too Hot to Handle” and  the calypso-style “You Were Made for Me”). Both  are sheer sex kitten bliss (and the film’s highlights by a long shot). When we’re first introduced to Midnight, Mansfield is wearing a tight white leotard and busy auditioning new dancers. The camera fixates on her voluptuous marshmallow thighs and butt (Mansfield is “thicc”, as millennials would put it) and she suggests one of cartoonist Robert Crumb’s big-assed Amazonian dream women come to life. Mansfield was 26 here and – although no one knew it at the time – she’d already “peaked” and the “reputable” legitimate stage of her film career was ending. From here on in, she’d mostly star in low-budget European quickies (or “Nudies!” as Neely O’Hara in Valley of the Dolls would call ‘em).

Pre-Carry On movies Windsor is 22 years old here (her character Ponytail is meant to be 16. One of the male characters actually refers to her as “jailbait”). Later Windsor would claim that Mansfield was threatened by her youth and beauty, refused to make eye contact and demanded that Windsor darken her platinum blonde hair so as not to compete onscreen. To which I argue, the age difference between them was four years and Windsor’s hair (and fake ponytail) in the film is the palest albino shade of white-blonde!

/ Young starlet Barbara Windsor as Ponytail in Too Hot to Handle (1960). Check out those brows! /

Too Hot has a complicated history. In the UK it originally received an X rating. A shorter, censored cut was released in the US with the alternate title Playgirl After Dark. Most weirdly, it was originally filmed in gleaming better-than-life Eastmancolor but the current version in wide circulation is black-and-white! Apparently when Too Hot was made available for television broadcast, most people still had black-and-white TV sets and that’s the print that survives. On YouTube you can view Mansfield’s musical sequences in lush, gorgeous colour and it’s a vastly different, infinitely superior experience. Someone needs to sort out a digitally re-mastered full-colour DVD or Blu-ray of Too Hot to Handle!

Watch Too Hot to Handle online here.

/ German-language for Too Hot to Handle in colour /



/ One of Mansfield's musical numbers in colour. This sensational sheer "nude-look" dress is a somewhat tamer version of the infamous gown Mansfield wore onstage in her Las Vegas cabaret act /

Reflections on ... Female Jungle (1955) and Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958)

This Friday (29 June 2018) represents the 51st anniversary of Jayne Mansfield's death, so – as a timely tribute to the ultimate sex kitten-gone-berserk – I’m posting some Jayne-related content in her memory.

As a committed Jayne Mansfield completist, I’m still indiscriminately working my way through all the movies in her filmography I’ve not yet seen. This is challenging because 1) whole swathes of Jayne's oeuvre are unavailable in 2018 and 2) she featured in some of the worst films ever made. (I'm speaking as someone who sat through The Fat Spy in its entirety). 

In May I made my long-suffering boyfriend sit with me through ultra-low budget exploitation b-movie Female Jungle (1955). I did warn him beforehand that I couldn’t vouch for its quality! A would-be hardboiled film noir crime movie starring a frankly worn-out Lawrence Tierney, Female Jungle turned out to be almost stultifyingly bad and inept, almost like an Ed Wood Jr film. The running time is only 73-minutes long (it was meant to be seen as part of a grindhouse or drive-in double feature, clearly) but the pace was so plodding it felt like two hours! It’s a fascinating curio in the context of Mansfield’s career, though: Female Jungle represented her film debut! (Her early films flopped and it wasn’t until she triumphed on Broadway in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and returned to Hollywood as a hot property that her movie career took off). In Female Jungle, the then-unknown starlet’s signature sex-kitten-gone-berserk comedic persona wasn’t in place yet and it’s fascinating to see Mansfield play a “straight” conventional bitchy and unsympathetic nymphomaniac bad girl. On the plus side – in a glittery halter top and sensational pair of painted-on leopard print Capri pants – Mansfield certainly looks delectable!

More recently we watched the mildly funny 1958 comedy Western Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (also known as The Blonde and The Sheriff). It’s no great shakes by even the most generous stretch of the imagination, but it is of interest and not without fluffy retro charm. Considering it was released by 20th Century Fox, filmed in gleaming deluxe CinemaScope and directed by a prestigious filmmaker (Raoul Walsh) , Sheriff of Fractured Jaw must count as Mansfield’s last “reputable” mainstream Hollywood film. (From 1959 onward, she would mainly feature in low-budget Continental exploitation films – or what Neely O’Hara in Valley of the Dolls would call “nudies”). The film is set in the American West, but the interiors were shot at Pinewood Studios in London and the exteriors in Spain. Mansfield stars as frontier town Fractured Jaw’s tough and sensible saloon proprietress Miss Kate. (She plays her with a wandering Southern accent. Martha Saxton, author of 1975 biography Jayne Mansfield and The American Fifties, accurately concludes, "Jayne plays the role with a lot of gusto and an imperfectly thought-out accent which falls somewhere between Fort Laramie and Newark.”). Her incredibly wasp-waisted, tightly-corseted 1880s costumes (and Mansfield was pregnant at the time with her second child) are certainly noteworthy. As well as being saloon keeper, Kate multi-tasks as the saloon’s onstage chanteuse and these musical numbers provide Sheriff of Fractured Jaw’s most gloriously campy moments because Mansfield is clearly lip-synching along to another woman’s voice which bears no relation at all to her own (the singing is, in fact, via Connie Francis!). Watch for a cameo appearance from British character actor Sid James playing a drunk which anticipates his Carry On persona.

Reflections on ... Mansfield 66/67 (2017)

(I'm posting this particular blog entry  for several reasons: 1) I reviewed the documentary Mansfield 66/67 for queer art and culture website Hiskind when it had its theatrical release in May 2018. The piece is still online but I know from experience I'd better post it here as well in case it gets yanked down at some point. Loads of my online articles have vanished into the ether over the years! 2) Mansfield 66/67 was the Lobotomy Room film club's selection on 20 June, so this will serve as a bit of a "scene report" of that night, too. 3) This Friday - 29 June 2018 - represents the 51st anniversary of Jayne Mansfield's death, so it seemed like a timely valentine to her memory).

/ Did the devil make her do it? Jayne Mansfield and Anton LaVey /

Skulls. Pentagrams. Heart-shaped swimming pools. Chihuahuas. Mansfield 66/67 contains all the components essential for an irresistibly campy cult film-in-waiting. Think of Todd Hughes and P David Ebersole’s documentary as When the Sex Kitten met the Satanist. It speculates about just what happened when Hollywood’s doomed, bosomy platinum blonde starlet Jayne Mansfield (1933 – 1967) encountered charismatic young devil-horned founder of the First Church of Satan Anton LaVey (1930 – 1997) during the messy final year of her life – in particular, whether he placed a curse on Mansfield, causing her fatal 1967 car crash.

Even if you don’t buy into the central thesis about the satanic curse (Mansfield and LaVey were both voracious publicity seekers and self-promoters, and the film begins with the tongue-in-cheek disclaimer “a true story based on rumour and hearsay”), the wildly enjoyable Mansfield 66/67 plays out like a delirious hot-pink fever dream.  The story unfolds via vintage newsreel and film clips, animation, a twangy surf guitar soundtrack, the medium of interpretive dance and commentary from various talking heads. And what a roster of talking heads! The pundits are a kitsch / queer dream cast including John Waters (a life-long Mansfield devotee), drag performer Peaches Christ, underground filmmaker and occultist Kenneth Anger, Tippi Hedren from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, scary Warhol Superstar Mary Woronov, various Playboy playmates and Russ Meyer leading ladies and 1950s b-movie bad girl Mamie Van Doren (who at 87 gives a good indication of what Mansfield might have matured into had she lived to see old age). And for some reason Boy George’s 1980s gender bender pal and pop star manqué Marilyn. (Perhaps there’s a bit too much Marilyn, in fact).

The film works best simply as a celebration of Mansfield herself. Frequently dismissed by the unenlightened as a dime store Marilyn Monroe wannabe, today she looks modern and relevant. Mansfield approached her life and career like a twenty first century reality TV star. Her 1950s pin-ups are ubiquitous on Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest. Fifty years after her death, Mansfield can be reappraised as the punk Marilyn, the drag queen’s Marilyn, the anarchist Marilyn and a vivid precursor to what we now call camp. She also has considerable queer diva value: there’s a reason Kenneth Anger put her on the cover of Hollywood Babylon instead of Monroe, and John Waters deliberately fashioned Divine’s persona as a hybrid of “Jayne Mansfield-meets-Godzilla.” In a particularly brilliant piece of editing towards the end, Mansfield cavorting in 1959 is juxtaposed with Madonna as a peepshow performer in the 1986 “Open Your Heart” pop video. Jayne’s gleeful exhibitionism lives on.

Mansfield 66/67 gives Waters the last word: “I never thought of Jayne’s life as tragic, never. Her ending had blood. Guts. Headlines. A dead Chihuahua. It’s what she would have wanted!”

/ The devil has all the best tunes: Anton LaVey with acolyte / 

Scene report: It was gratifying to see the FULL-to-capacity house enthusiastically embrace the shocking-pink, ultra-kitsch vision of Mansfield 66/67 at the Lobotomy Room film club on Wednesday 20 June! (The night actually coincided with the DVD launch of Mansfield 66/67 - it's available now from Peccadillo Pictures!). Watching the antics of Jayne Mansfield and Anton LaVey over cocktails in Fontaine's Bamboo Lounge proved to be a devil worshipin' good time! As you can see, we even had our own Jayne lookalike on the night!

/ The girl can't help it! Cheyenne as Jayne /

/ Above: Cheyenne as Jayne and I /

/  Above: Vadim and Fenella /

Next date for your Lobotomy Room social calendar: the boozy, punky Mondo Trasho dance party returns on Friday 29 June in the basement Bamboo Lounge of Fontaine's! Admission is FREE and there is one complimentary signature Lobotomy Room cocktail on arrival for the first twenty entrants! Full putrid details on event page!

Further reading:

Follow me on tumblr for all your kitsch, camp, retro vintage sleaze and fifties homoerotica needs!

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"Like" and follow the official Lobotomy Room page on Facebook if you dare!  

Holy Religious Artefacts from Jayne Mansfield’s Pink Palace

/ Jayne Mansfield luxuriating in the boudoir of her Pink Palace /

The Pink Palace – the legendarily kitsch, lurid and nouveau riche Mediterranean-style mansion on 10100 Sunset Boulevard belonging to Hollywood’s platinum blonde sex-kitten-gone-berserk par excellence Jayne Mansfield (1933 – 1967) from 1957 until her death – was razed in November 2002. In my dreams, the Pink Palace would have been preserved exactly as Jayne left it and open to the public as a museum, like Elvis’ Graceland. (I’m sorry, but in low-brow trash culture terms Mansfield is every bit Presley’s equal!). Incredibly, though – five decades after Mansfield’s tragic premature death in a car crash en route to New Orleans – treasures from her long-demolished Pink Palace occasionally re-surface in the present day! For me, these are sacred holy relics!

Now this is what I call “art”! When I saw this listed online as part of Engelbert Humperdinck’s auction in autumn 2017, I felt like setting up an urgent crowdfunding page just so I could bid on this spectacular genuine vintage bust as seen in The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield (1968)! (The online auction happened in April 2017, but I didn’t find out about it until later). The bust used to be prominently displayed in the Pink Palace.  Humperdinck (who, of course, bought the Pink Palace following Jayne’s death) must have kept it in storage for decades before auctioning it off. Weird: why wouldn’t one of Jayne’s five children have this gorgeous object? Imagine how great this would look on my mantelpiece (if I had a mantelpiece). Read the full details here – and note the status “Lot closed – unsold”. Where is it now? Some hip entrepreneur should make a mould of this bust and sell replicas commercially, like those plaster-of-Paris Elvis Presley busts that were ubiquitous in the seventies and eighties. (I had one when I was a university student! Eventually it got smashed – I don’t like to talk about it!).

/ Glimpses of the bust in situ at the Pink Palace. Mansfield seems to have kept it the bedroom / 

Then came this announcement from the Burlesque Hall of Fame's Facebook page on Valentine’s Day 2018: 

“A special Valentine’s Day reveal: Jayne Mansfield’s heart-shaped settee, refurbished for our upcoming Exotic World exhibit! 

We acquired this piece in the 1990s, shortly before Mansfield’s iconic mansion, the Pink Palace, was razed. The heart shape and colour was a theme of the mansion, which also featured a heart-shaped pool and bathtub.” 

The historical significance of this cannot be overstated! Seeing this put me in a state of religious awe - a genuine artifact from Jayne Mansfield’s Pink Palace! Jayne, Mickey and her Chihuahuas once frolicked and cavorted on this pink settee! (When I visited the Burlesque Hall of Fame last April when I was in town for Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekender 2017,  this was most definitely not on display then! Now I have to return to pay homage!).

Let’s hope further riches are exhumed!  Maybe we could re-assemble the Pink Palace piece-by-piece!

/ Bath time at the Pink Palace /