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2026.0807.0001-Friday...
Mansfield Bars...
On June 28th, 1967, actress Jayne Mansfield, her driver, her lawyer and three of her kids were driving to New Orleans for an interview after an appearance in Mississippi. While cruising along the highway at two o'clock in the morning, the driver didn't see a semi-truck that had slowed because of a mosquito fogging truck ahead -- the fog masked the big rig's trailer, and Mansfield's driver couldn't react in time to slow the 1966 Buick Electra 225. The car slid under the semi-trailer and Mansfield and the other adults didn’t survive.
Reports that Mansfield was decapitated are untrue, although she suffered severe head trauma. This urban legend started with the appearance in police photographs of the crashed car with its top virtually sheared off and what resembled a blonde-haired head tangled in the car's smashed windshield. Mansfield's death certificate gives her immediate cause of death as "crushed skull with avulsion of cranium and brain".
Known technically as the Rear Underrun Protection System, the steel tubular bars immediately gained the name Mansfield bars: likely due to the gruesome severity of the crash, and Mansfield’s star status. Following her death, the U.S. government mandated trailers have a rear bumper to help prevent similar deaths.
I hate that I remember that.
ReplyDeleteTerrible,Amigo venezolano, Cúcuta
ReplyDeleteYes, I remember that too, and yes, the rumor of the decapitation was widespread. Jayne and one of her husbands, Mickey Hargitay the bodybuilder, were the couple with the over-the-top bodies of that period. He raised the actress Mariska Hargitay of Law and Order: SVU fame as his own child after Jayne's death, even though she was the child of an affair her mother had when Jayne and Mickey were separated for a period. One of the most famous pictures of Jayne Mansfield is with Sophia Loren sitting at a table at an awards show or restaurant, a photo I refer to as "The Competition of the Cleavages" for obvious reasons. Miss Loren, with eyes popping out of her head, was the loser in this round.
ReplyDeleteThe Battle of the Boobs at famed Hollywood restaurant Romanoff’s.
DeleteLoren at the time had just come to make her first film in Hollywood and was being introduced to the Hollywood press. When Mansfield decided to crash the party and give Loren, the public and the press a night they would never forget. Not only did Jayne wear a very low cut dress, she wore no bra ! At times her nipples were exposed when she would bend over the table. In later interviews, Loren commented that she feared Mansfield’s breasts would pop out of the top of her dress and spill on the plates !
-Rj
Horrible way to go for Jayne, Sam
ReplyDeleteBrody her lover, manager and divorce attorney, and Ronnie Harrison their driver.
Highway speeds and drum brakes are a bad combination. A heavy car like the Buick, leant to them by club owner Gus Stevens equipped with only drum brakes, would need at least 300 feet to come to a complete stop at highway speeds. By contrast a car with front disc brakes would only need 120 feet to come to a complete stop at highway speeds. Not to mention brake fade, which drum brakes were notorious for. Both issues are reasons disc brakes became an auto industry standard.
-Rj
This car accident would have been truly devastating if the 3 children in the back seat would have also been killed. Great background stuff Rj
DeleteMy father was a newspaper man at the time (in Ohio) so he showed me some of the police photos, some of which were not suitable for publishing. I did see the blonde wig on its stand so I can see why the rumor started. Mariska said that she has no memory of the accident, since the children were asleep in the back seat--which, undoubtedly, saved their lives.
ReplyDelete