Mansfield 66/67 explores mystery of how Hollywood sex symbol Jayne Mansfield ended up in the grip of a satanic sex cult and dead at 34
Film explores tragedy surrounding the legend famous for her 40inch bust, who hooked up with Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey
WITH her pink palace, nude Playboy pictures and “accidental” wardrobe malfunctions, there was little Jayne Mansfield would not do to gain attention.
Her 40in bust certainly helped get her noticed as she fought Hollywood rival Marilyn Monroe for the blonde bombshell crown in the Fifties and Sixties.
But the publicity stunts led the film star, who claimed to have bedded US President John F Kennedy and his brother Robert, down a dark path towards Satanism — and a curse some say was to cut her life tragically short at the age of 34.
Now documentary Mansfield 66/67 — in cinemas from Friday — has examined the story behind the screen goddess’s mysterious final months.
As Jayne’s career floundered in 1966 she hooked up with Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey, posing at his Black House in San Francisco.
Devotees of oddball LaVey, revered by singers Kurt Cobain and Marilyn Manson, would strip naked on his altar and preach sexual freedom.
Jayne became a high priestess of the Devil worshipper’s church and was rumoured to be one of his many lovers.
That did not sit well with her jealous boyfriend and lawyer Sam Brody, who then got on the wrong side of “the evilest man in the world”.
After supposedly falling foul of a LaVey spell, Sam was involved in six serious road accidents.
The final time proved fatal, killing him, driver Ronnie Harrison and Jayne when their 1966 Buick Electra 225 ploughed into the back of a tractor.
Jayne famously once said: “If you’re going to do something wrong, do it big because the punishment is the same either way.”
In 1963 she became the first actress to appear naked in a major Hollywood film.
When Playboy founder Hugh Hefner published nude images from the set of the movie, called Promises! Promises!, he was hauled up in court on obscenity offences.
Married three times and a mother of five, Jayne cheated on all her husbands, and they were said to have cheated on her in return.
Her relaxed attitude to sin was shared by LaVey. Nicknamed the Black Pope, his philosophy was: “If you’re going to do something naughty, do it and enjoy it.”
Rather than telling people to follow Satan, he told them to follow their sexual desires.
His daughter Zeena, 54, who turned her back on his cult three decades ago, told The Sun he treated his female followers as sex slaves, who could earn him money by sleeping with other men.
Zeena said: “He was a pimp.
"There was a category of women he called his ‘students’, but that was a euphemism.
“Basically, these were women who would give him a portion of their earnings and he would give them a supposed consultation on how to be more seductive.
"Then he would turn them out.
"They were impressionable.”
But she questions whether Jayne was one of LaVey’s lovers, saying he did not like his women to have “big boobs”.
Instead, Zeena thinks both her father and Jayne’s boyfriend Sam were trying to exploit the star for their own gain.
Jayne was so famous that when The Beatles were asked during their first trip to the US in 1964 who they would most like to meet, Paul McCartney replied: “Jayne Mansfield.”
And preacher Billy Graham complained that Americans knew more about her “vital statistics than the Second Commandment”.
Although she played the archetypal “dumb blonde”, Jayne was neither blonde nor dumb.
She was born a brunette and had an IQ of 160.
But putting peroxide in her hair and acting ditzy got the former model into Hollywood hits such as The Girl Can’t Help It and Too Hot to Handle.
Those roles had been won on the back of relentless self-publicity.
In 1957, she bought a 40-bed mansion on LA’s Sunset Boulevard, shortly before her marriage to second husband Mickey Hargitay, winner of Mr Universe 1955.
It was dubbed the Pink Palace after she painted all the rooms pink and filled it with pink furnishings, including a fountain spurting pink champagne.
When the scripts dried up, she turned to LaVey to get her what she wanted — more tabloid column inches.
But according to the documentary, she started to take him seriously after her six-year-old son Zoltan was mauled by a lion at a theme park in 1966.
She asked LaVey to use black magic to save her little boy.
The Satanist is said to have headed for a mountaintop to perform an incantation.
Hours later doctors said Zoltan would pull through.
Jayne also sought the Devil’s help in securing custody of her year-old son Tony during her divorce from final husband Matt Cimber.
She eventually won the case weeks before her death.
Both her controlling lawyer boyfriend Sam and LaVey tried to take the credit.
It was their battle for her devotion which is said to have led to the deadly curse.
LaVey’s oldest daughter Karla, 65, once said: “Jayne wanted to get rid of (Sam) Brody, but he wouldn’t leave.
“He was touching certain implements in my father’s ritual chamber and he lit a candle in the shape of a skull, and my father said no one is supposed to do that.
"It’s a curse.”
Curse or not, Sam’s luck ran out on the night of June 29, 1967.
He was killed along with Jayne and driver Ronnie when their Buick crashed.
The impact ripped the top of the car off, killing Jayne instantly.
It has long been rumoured that she was decapitated, but cause of death was given as massive brain trauma.
Three of Jayne’s children, Zoltan, six, Mickey Jnr, eight, and three-year-old Mariska — who went on to become a successful US actress — were sleeping in the back of the car and survived.
Artist Zeena, who used to practise magic and is now a Buddhist, claims it was beyond her father’s powers to cause the crash.
She said: “His curses were fits of anger.
"This needed a focused ritual.”
But she is in no doubt LaVey was a man you would not want to cross.
Zeena, who also knew serial killer Charles Manson, said: “I could deal with Manson in a more rational way than I could with my father.”
The film dwells on LaVey’s kooky TV persona, yet Zeena describe a “brutal” man who almost killed her mother Diane Hegarty more than once.
LaVey died in 1997 aged 67, but still has followers across the globe.
His book The Satanic Bible is taken seriously by occultists.
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His fame was achieved on the back of his association with Jayne.
But while she remains a beloved screen goddess, referenced in movies such as Pulp Fiction, Zeena warns it is wrong to treat LaVey as a piece of pop culture, too.
She says: “It is damaging to present my father as a playful, benign figure, because his philosophy continues to negatively affect people’s lives.”
- Mansfield 66/67 (15) will be in cinemas from Friday.
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