Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay was only 3 years old in 1967 when a horrendous car accident took the life of her mother, Jayne Mansfield as she and two of her siblings slept in the back seat. The Chauffeur and Mansfield’s lawyer/boyfriend were also killed that night, and Hargitay was found injured under the passenger side seat. Now nearly 60 years later Hargitay, an award winning star in her right, is coming to terms with not only losing her mom at such a young age, but also getting to discover just who she was, a parent she says she has no memory of ever knowing.
To do this she has directed and narrates a new HBO Films documentary, My Mom Jayne which explores her very personal, and highly emotional journey to meet the woman the public knew well as a blonde bombshell movie star of the 50’s and 60’s, but also a person very different behind the scenes, a mother of five over three marriages that Mariska finally met during the process of making this film. It had it’s world premiere Saturday night in the Cannes Classics section of the Cannes Film Festival and will premiere on HBO June 27 after a short theatrical release.
It opens with her walking the ruins and remains of the Beverly Hills home in which she lived with her mother and father, former Mr. Universe Mickey Hargitay, and brothers Mickey Jr, Zoltan Hargitay, and sister Jayne Marie Mansfield from her first marriage to Paul Mansfield. It had been torn down after the next occupant of the fabled pink mansion, singer Englebert Humperdinck sold it for $10 million. For the film Hargitay conducts interviews with all of them separately, gets access to Jayne’s storage locker that had been untouched for decades and contains a treasure trove of memorabailia from her mother’s career as well as the lives of her kids, plenty of home movies, and more including a wonderful scene where Hargitay, joined by her siblings, finds Mansfield’s long buried 1956 Golden Globe, an award her daughter would eventually get decades later. They now sit side by side in her home.
Hargitay is more like a detective in piecing together the story of her mother and her own relation to it, one that brings a startling and shocking revelaton late into the film that Hargitay has carried secretly for the past three decades after learing casually at age 30 from one of Jayne’s super fans that Mickey Hargitay was not her birth father, but rather an Italian singer named Nelson Sardelli with whom Jayne had a whirlwind affair in europe while still married to Mickey.
But before that riveting blockbuster reveal, and interviews with Nelson and his two daughters ( her up to then unknown half sisters), there is much to cover and tell including the details as tearfully remembered reluctantly and haltingly by Zoltan of that fatal car crash with their mother was on her way to performing a night club gig in Biloxi, Mississippi in June of ’67. Mansfield’s career is covered in biopic fashion for a bit from her desire to leave Pennsylvania and head to Hollywood to Playboy playmate, performer, Broadway star in the hit comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, and later the film version in 1957 when she was under contract to 20th Century Fox which groomed her as their second tier version of Marilyn Monroe in movies like The Girl Can’t Help It , The Sheriff Of Fractured Jaw, and her rare dramatic role (she tried valiantly to be considered a serious actress) with another Fox contract player Joan Collins in The Wayward Bus before her short-lived major studio stardom gave way to cheaper indies with nude scenes like Promises Promises and then a nightclub act to keep her working as the lights dimmed a bit.
She was not her dumb blonde image as she tried to point out in interviews with Jack Paar, Edward R. Murrow, Groucho Marx and others. In fact she was fluent in several languages, and played both violin and piano (the distinct piano she owned is the object of a wonderful surprise moment late in the film for Hargitay). There is great footage from appearances with Bob Hope and other interviews including one on Merv Griffin where Mariska (then called Maria) steals the show from her siblings and mom, and much more including a frank talk with her 100 year old former publicity man, Rusty Strait who later wrote a tell all book about Jayne (Hargitay scolds him for sharing private stories), and a very poignant interview with Ellen Hargitay, her stepmother who married Mickey short after Jayne’s death.
But this film is less standard show biz bio, and more on Mariska’s effort to use the documentary format to uncover the past, to find her own place in her mother’s life, and to move on in what is essentially a journey to healing, and that includes a very happy ending that just might have you in tears. It is indeed quite a ride, quite a life, and quite an extraordinary film.
Title: My Mom Jayne
Festival: Cannes Classics
Distributor: HBO Films
Release Date: June 20 (theatres); June 27 (HBO)
Director: Mariska Hargitay
Cast: Mariska Hargitay, Zoltan Hargitay, Mickey Hargitay Jr. , Jayne Marie Mansfield, Nelson Sardelli, Rusty Strait
The post ‘My Mom Jayne’ Review: Mariska Hargitay’s Emotional Journey To Discover Her Movie Star Mother And The Stunning Family Secret She Kept Hidden For 30 Years Until Now- Cannes Film Festival appeared first on Deadline.
