Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries

by Paul Donnelley

  Gordon MacRae

  Born March 12, 1921

  Died January 24, 1986

  Alcoholic actor. The son of a Scottish toolmaker, Gordon MacRae was a musically gifted child at school, playing the clarinet and piano and singing in the choir. He also excelled at American football and lacrosse. At the 1939–1940 World’s Fair he won a singing competition for amateurs. This led to a two-year gig singing with a band. During World War II he served as a navigator. Following the cessation of hostilities he moved to Hollywood and appeared in The Big Punch (1948) as Johnny Grant, The Daughter Of Rosie O’Grady (1950) as Tony Pastor, The West Point Story (1950) as Tom Fletcher, On Moonlight Bay (1951) as William Sherman, By The Light Of The Silvery Moon (1953) as William Sherman, The Desert Song (1953) as Paul Bonnard, Oklahoma! (1955) as Curly, Carousel (1956) as Billy Bigelow and The Best Things In Life Are Free (1956) as B.G. ‘Buddy’ De Sylva. He married the actress Sheila Stephens on May 21, 1941, and they had four children: actresses Meredith (b. Houston, Texas, 1944) and Heather (b. 1946), Bruce (b. 1948) and Garr (b. 1954). They divorced on April 15, 1967, and on September 25 of that year he married Elizabeth Lambert Schrafft. Their daughter, Amanda, was born on May 2, 1968. MacRae admitted that he had been an alcoholic for much of his life and in 1983 became honorary chairman of the National Council of Alcoholism.

  CAUSE: He died in Lincoln, Nebraska, of cancer of the jaw and mouth complicated by pneumonia. He was 64 years old.

  Guy Madison

  (ROBERT OZELL MOSELEY)

  Born January 19, 1922

  Died February 6, 1996

  Uniform dreamboat. Born in Bakersfield, California, Madison had a varied life before joining the navy in 1942. He was a lifeguard, a telephone linesman and a champion swimmer. Once in uniform, he became a marine where he was spotted by a talent scout who recommended him for a small part in Since You Went Away (1944). Using a seven-day pass, he played Harold Smith, a sailor who flirts with Jennifer Jones. Even though he was on screen for just three minutes, Madison made a huge impact on the female audience and received 4,000 fan letters. Following demob, he was offered a contract. He said, “I knew stars made lots of money. That meant clothes, cars, maybe a boat. That was for me.” However, his performances soon led studio bosses to realise that Madison (the name came from a press agent) was just a pretty face. In 1945 he met actress Gail Russell who was singularly unimpressed by the blond hunk. A few months later they met again at the home of the homosexual agent Henry Willson, the man who named Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter and many more. This time the couple fell in love but it did not stop Gail spending a lot of time with John Farrow, the director and husband of Maureen O’Sullivan. In February 1949, Madison and Gail went on a month-long holiday to get to know each other better and visit her innumerable relatives. On August 31 they married at the Biltmore Hotel in Santa Barbara. The bride wore the outfit designed for her by Edith Head for the film Captain China (1949). Gail’s mother, father and brother were notable for their absence from the ceremony. The Guy Madisons honeymooned in Yosemite National Park. Her alcoholism and insecurity caused rows between the couple and they separated. In October 1953 Gail was named as co-respondent by John Wayne’s estranged wife, Esperanza ‘Chata’ Diaz Ceballos. Gail and Madison reconciled but it was never a love match. Gail entered a sanatorium in Seattle, Washington, to try to recover but in November 1953, she was arrested for drink driving. Madison bailed her out but on October 6, 1954 they were divorced. It was in his thirties that Madison began to show some minor acting talent. His pretty boy looks had started to fade and he was able to land parts that allowed him some measure of respectability. However, not all his films were quite so, er, normal. In The Beast Of Hollow Mountain (1956) he played Jimmy Ryan, a rancher whose cattle were eaten by a dinosaur that had somehow managed to survive the various travails that had killed off all the other species. In April 1951, Madison turned to television and appeared in the title role in The Adventures Of Wild Bill Hickok, a gig that lasted seven years. Six foot Madison would introduce himself on screen as “James Butler Hickok, mister” only for his sidekick Jingles P. Jones (Andy Devine) to pipe up, “That’s Wild Bill Hickok, mister. The bravest, strongest, fightingest US marshal in the whole West.” Many of the Hickok adventures were made into second-feature films for overseas distribution including The Yellow Haired Kid (1952), Trail Of The Arrow (1952), The Ghost Of Crossbones Canyon (1952), Behind Southern Lines (1952), Two Gun Marshal (1953), Six Gun Decision (1953), Secret Of Outlaw Flats (1953), Border City Rustlers (1953), The Two Gun Teacher (1954), Trouble On The Trail (1954), Outlaw’s Son (1954), Marshals In Disguis e (1954), The Titled Tenderfoot (1955), Timber Country Trouble (1955), Phantom Trails (1955) and The Matchmaking Marshal (1955). His other films included: Till The End Of Time (1946) as Cliff Harper, Honeymoon (1947) as Phil Bowen, Texas, Brooklyn And Heaven (1948) as Eddie Taylor, Massacre River (1949) as Lieutenant Larry Knight, Drums In The Deep South (1951) as Will Denning, Red Snow (1952) as Lieutenant Phil Johnson, The Charge At Feather River (1953) as Miles Archer, The Command (1954) as Captain Robert MacClaw, 5 Against The House (1955) as Al Mercer, The Last Frontier (1955) as Captain Glenn Riordan, Reprisal! (1956) as Frank Madden, On The Threshold Of Space (1956) as Captain Jim Hollenbeck, Hilda Crane (1956) as Russell Burns, The Hard Man (1957) as Steve Burden, Bullwhip (1958) as Steve, Jet Over The Atlantic (1959) as Brett Murphy. In the Sixties he worked mainly in Europe appearing in many spaghetti Westerns and low-budget period pieces such as La Schiava Di Roma (1960) as Marco Valerio, Le Prigioniere Dell’Isola Del Diavolo (1961) as Henri Valliére, Rosmunda E Alboino (1962) as Amalchi, Il Boia Di Venezia (1963) as Rodrigo Zeno, Il Vendicatore Mascherato (1964) as Massimo, Sandokan Contro Il Leopardo Di Sarawak (1964) as Captain Iannis, Sandokan Alla Riscossa (1964) as Iannis, I Misteri Della Giungla Nera (1964) as Souyadhana, L’Avventuriero Della Tortuga (1965) as Alfonso di Montélimar, I Cinque Della Vendetta as Tex, Testa Di Sbarco Per Otto Implacabili (1967) as Captain Murphy, I Lunghi Giorni Dell’Odio as Martin Benson, Il Figlio Di Django (1967) as Father Fleming, Un Posto All’Inferno (1968) as Marc McGreaves, La Battaglia Dell’Ultimo Panzer (1968), Il Re Dei Criminali as Professor Wendland, Sette Winchester Per Un Massacro (1968) as Colonel Thomas Blake, Reverendo Colt (1970) as Reverend Miller, Comando Al Infierno (1970) as Major Carter and a star at the film screening in Won Ton Ton, The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976). In 1954 he was married a second time. His later wife was Sheilah Connolly and they had three daughters, Bridget (b. 1955), Erin (b. 1956) and Dolly (b. 1957), before their 1963 divorce. Away from the screen he enjoyed hunting and even made his own bows and arrows with which to hunt game.

  CAUSE: Madison died aged 74 in Palm Springs, California, of emphysema.

  Anna Magnani

  Born March 7, 1908

  Died September 26, 1973

  ‘Nannarella’. Born in Rome, half-Italian, half-Egyptian and fully illegitimate, Magnani was educated at a convent school but became a singer in a nightclub belting out saucy songs. In 1926 she began appearing in dramas and made her film début in Scampolo (1927). It would be seven years before she performed before the cameras again, in La Cieca Di Sorrento (1934). In 1935 she married director Gorfredo Alessandrini. They were divorced in 1950. By that time she had given birth (in 1942) to a polio-ridden son, Luca, by actor Massimo Serato. She made her name in Roberto Rossellini’s Roma Città Aperta (1945) and won an Oscar as Serafina Delle Rose in The Rose Tattoo (1955) opposite Burt Lancaster and two years later was nominated again for Gloria in Wild Is The Wind (1957). Cecil Beaton opined: “She conforms only to the law of nature at its most primitive … She is a wild animal with its grace, health and vitality.” She found work increasingly difficult to come by after that and returned to Italy where she made films for television.

  CAUSE: She died in Rome of a cancerous tumour in the pancreas aged 65. Her funeral was spectacularly well attended.

  Jock Mahoney

  (JACQUES O’ MAHONEY)

  Born February 7, 1919
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br />   Died December 14, 1989

  Acting jock. Born in Chicago, Illinois, of French, Irish and Cherokee extraction, he was educated at the University of Iowa where he excelled in American football, basketball and swimming. At the outbreak of the Second World War he became a Marine fighter pilot and instructor. Mahoney was a tall (6˝4˝), handsome, athletic specimen who began making films as a stunt man before playing villains in cheap Westerns. He screen-tested to replace Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan but lost out to Lex Barker. He appeared in two successful television series before playing the baddie, Coy Banton, in Tarzan The Magnificent (1960) and then taking over (as the 13th actor to do so) the part of the Lord of the Jungle from Gordon Scott in Tarzan Goes To India (1962) and Tarzan’s Three Challenges (1963). He did all his own stunts and during the filming of his second Tarzan film he was ill with dysentery, dengue fever and pneumonia. The producer had also decided that he wanted to make a Tarzan television series and Mahoney was too old for this. They parted company reasonably amicably and Mahoney went home to recuperate. He was married three times. His first wife was Lorraine O’Donnell by whom he had two children: Kathleen and James. The second Mrs Mahoney was Margaret Field, whom he married in 1952 and by whom he had a daughter, Princess. He also became stepfather to Margaret Field’s children, one of whom is the actress Sally Field. His final marriage in 1967 was to Patricia who was nicknamed Autumn, and she survived him.

  CAUSE: In 1973 while filming an episode of Kung Fu he suffered a stroke that virtually ended his career. On December 12, 1989, he was involved in a car accident and was admitted to hospital in Bremerton, Washington. Two days after admittance he suffered a second stoke that ended his life at the age of 70.

  Louis Malle

  Born October 30, 1932

  Died November 23, 1995

  New Wave auteur. Born in Thumeries, France, Malle began his cinematic career working for Jacques Cousteau and after two years he worked as a cameraman on Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle (1958) before making his first solo effort, Lift To The Scaffold (1957). His next film The Lovers (1958) aroused condemnation for what was considered at the time to be its explicit sexuality; Malle tended to ignore the criticism. Brigitte Bardot starred in his Le Privée (1961) and then he made Le Feu Follet (1963) regarded by many as his finest work. In 1978 he once again irked puritans when he made Pretty Baby, which featured a 12-year-old Brooke Shields playing a child prostitute. Atlantic City (1980) was praised. Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987) was an autobiographical film about Jewish children attending a Roman Catholic school during World War II. He married actress Candice Bergen on September 27, 1980.

  CAUSE: He died aged 63 of lymphoma complications in his Beverly Hills home.

  Joseph L. Mankiewicz

  Born February 11, 1909

  Died February 5, 1993

  Oscar-winning director. Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was the third and youngest of the Mankiewicz family. (Brother Herman wrote most of Citizen Kane [1941].) He began as a journalist and then moved into translating German subtitles. He joined Famous Players-Lasky-Paramount where he worked on films including The Dummy (1929), Close Harmony (1929), The Man I Love (1929), Thunderbolt (1929), River Of Romance (1929), The Mysterious Dr Fu Manchu (1929), Fast Company (1929), The Virginian (1929), Slightly Scarlet (1930), Only Saps Work (1930), Finn And Hattie (1931), Skippy (1931), for which he was nominated for an Oscar, Million Dollar Legs (1932), Alice In Wonderland (1933) and many others before moving to MGM where he became a producer on films such as Three Godfathers (1936), Fury (1936), The Gorgeous Hussy (1936), Love On The Run (1936), The Bride Wore Red (1937), Double Wedding (1937), The Shopworn Angel (1938), A Christmas Carol (1938), Huckleberry Finn (1939), Strange Cargo (1940), The Philadelphia Story (1940), The Feminine Touch (1941), Woman Of The Year (1942) and Cairo (1942). Moving to 20th Century Fox he began to direct, “because I couldn’t stomach what was being done with what I wrote.” His canon included Dragonwyck (1946), The Ghost And Mrs Muir (1947), Escape (1948), A Letter To Three Wives (1949), for which he won Oscars as Best Director and Best Screenplay, House Of Strangers (1949), No Way Out (1950) for which he was nominated for an Oscar, All About Eve (1950), probably his best film and certainly the one that showed his talent for bitchy dialogue to greatest effect, and for which he again won Oscars as Best Director and Best Screenplay, People Will Talk (1951), Julius Caesar (1953), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), Guys And Dolls (1955), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), Cleopatra (1963) and Sleuth (1972). He was married three times. On May 20, 1934, he married actress Elizabeth Young. They had a son, Eric, born at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, Los Angeles, on July 1, 1936. Mr & Mrs Mankiewicz separated on November 24, 1936, reconciled, separated again on April 30, 1937, and finally divorced on May 20, 1937, their third wedding anniversary. He married actress Rosa Stradner (b. Vienna, Austria July 31, 1913) on July 28, 1939 in New York. They had two sons: Christopher (b. October 8, 1940) and Thomas Eddie Mannix (b. June 1942). She was plagued with mental problems and died by her own hand aged 45 via an overdose of sedatives on September 27, 1958. On December 14, 1962, he married production assistant Rosemary Matthews in New York.

  CAUSE: Mankiewicz died in Bedford, New York, of heart failure six days before his 84th birthday.

  FURTHER READING: Pictures Will Talk: The Life And Films of Joseph L. Mankiewicz– Kenneth L. Geist (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978).

  Jayne Mansfield

  (VERA JANE PALMER)

  Born April 19, 1933

  Died June 29, 1967

  Pneumatic blonde. Jayne Mansfield was no stranger to notoriety. Her numerous affairs were regularly chronicled in the gossip columns. Promoted as another Marilyn Monroe, 5́ 5˝ Jayne simply did not have the talent to compete with the star. Jayne was a publicity stunt maniac and a firm believer in the school of thought that maintained, “Say what you like about me, just spell my name right.” She was born by Caesarean section in Bryn Mawr Hospital, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, the only child of successful lawyer Herbert Palmer and his wife Vera. At birth she weighed 9lb 10oz. Her father doted on her and she on him but when she was three Herbert Palmer was felled by a massive heart attack. Her mother remarried with, according to neighbours, unseemly haste and the family relocated to Dallas. When Jayne was ten she fell in love with Johnny Weissmuller and plastered her bedroom walls with his posters. According to Jayne, never the most reliable of witnesses, she was upset when she had to wear a bra and girdle to hide her fulsome curves. Her claims for her vital statistics ranged from around 39-23-36 to 46D-23-37. Her school friends remember her dressing to show off her figure; Jayne had the body of an adult but not the maturity to match. She eloped to Fort Worth, Texas, with blond Paul Mansfield (who was born in 1925 and whom she met on Christmas Eve 1949) on January 28, and quickly fell pregnant with her first child, Jayne-Marie, who was born at 10.50am on November 8, 1950 in Austin, Texas. An official wedding took place on either May 6, 10 or 30, 1950. After the birth Jayne enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin and began to study drama. Paul Mansfield was not a jealous man but he began to feel a sense of unease when Jayne skipped lectures to pose nearly nude for the art class on the campus. The money was good, Jayne told him. In Paul Mansfield was drafted into the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) and Jayne went to Los Angeles to enrol in UCLA and also entered the Miss Southern California of 1951 contest. Her husband disapproved, so Jayne pulled out. The following year Paul was posted to Camp Gordon in Augusta, Georgia, where Jayne joined him. She outraged the other army wives by dying her hair jet black and doing her aerobics on the barrack lawn in either a skimpy leotard or a velvet bikini. After several complaints she dressed more ‘suitably’. She appeared in an amateur production of Anything Goes on the base. When Paul was sent to Korea, Jayne took herself and her dogs and baby off to Dallas, where she took drama classes at Southern Methodist University and earned a living by nude modelling, both for art classes and, occasionally, a Dallas photographer. Before he was shipped off to war Ja
yne had extracted a promise from her husband that when he returned they would all go off to Hollywood for six months so she could fulfil her dreams of acting stardom. In the summer of 1954 Paul returned from Korea and begrudgingly kept his promise. Jayne would later claim that as the car crossed the Californian border, she insisted her husband stop the vehicle so she could get out and kiss the ground, saying, “I am home!” Never a wallflower, Jayne, now blonde, rang up Paramount and on April 30, 1954, had a screen test for Joan Of Arc. However, she was told her body was rather too bountiful to play the waif-like saint. Much to her husband’s annoyance, Jayne spent what little money they had buying new outfits and shoes. Los Angeles Daily News photographers saw her determination and did test shoots and gave advice for free. Just as their money finally ran out Jayne received an inheritance from her grandmother and used the money to put down a deposit on a small house at 9840 Wanda Park Lane. It was the final straw for Paul Mansfield who packed his bags and returned to Dallas. He later launched an ultimately futile custody suit for Jayne-Marie claiming that Jayne’s nude photos hardly made her a fit mother. Jayne was helped by her friend and later lover, he-man actor Steve Cochran although she later confessed: “He was not a good lover.” Her first television appearance – all of 30 seconds – came on October 21, 1954, for Lux Video Theater in the live broadcast of The Angel Went AWOL. Then she was paid $100 for appearing in Hangover (later re-titled The Female Jungle). She told her friend and later biographer May Mann: “I loved me up there on the screen. I was filled with a chill. I had finally made it and wanted to stay there. ‘I love you Jayne Mansfield,’ I told my image, ‘I’ll work hard for you! Nothing or no one could ever make me let you down.’” Then Jayne employed Jim Byron as her press officer. His first stunt was for her to dress up as Father (Mother?) Christmas and visit all the newspaper offices in the area and deliver a bottle of whisky and a kiss to Jim’s reporter friends. It got her lots of press coverage. Her next photo opportunity was even bigger. She gatecrashed the party for the Jane Russell film Underwater wearing a skin-tight red lamé one-piece swimming costume and proceeded to accidentally fall into the pool, breaking one of the straps on her cozzy as she did so. According to Variety of January 12, 1955, the stunt proved Jayne to be “worth her weight in cheesecake”. Now that her attempts to break into Hollywood were picking up a little steam, Jayne hired a lawyer, Greg Bautzer (who else?), a manager, Charles Godring, and an agent, Bill Shiffrin. She also began an affair with Jim Byron. A bidding war started for Jayne’s services between Warner Bros and Howard Hughes. In bed Byron advised Jayne to go for Hughes while out of bed the astute Shiffrin was advising Warner Bros. Jayne signed for Warners at $250 a week on a six-month renewable contract. It wasn’t a good deal and Jayne still found herself caught between her advisers. Byron said she should capitalise on her “tits and ass” while Shiffrin and Bautzer advised a more conservative and ultimately long-term approach. Jayne went for Byron, possibly because he was bedding her but more likely because he was talking to her in terms she could understand – sex sells. Her first three films – Illegal (1955) as Angel O’Hara, Pete Kelly’s Blues (1955) and Hell On Frisco Bay (1955) – were disappointing and Warner Bros dropped Jayne’s option. She maintained a high press profile and won several spurious beauty contests during 1955 including Miss Negligee, Miss Nylon Sweater, Miss Freeway, Miss Electric Switch, Miss Geiger Counter, Miss 100% Pure Maple Syrup, Miss 4th of July, Miss Fire Prevention and Miss Tomato! She was also the unnamed and brunette Miss February 1955 in Playboy. Columnist Earl Wilson reported: “Jayne surrendered all her privacy and considerable dignity to the daily job of getting her name and picture in the papers. Her home, whether it was a house, apartment, or hotel suite, was always open to reporters, and photographers were constantly running in and out, stumbling over her dogs and cats or her little daughter Jayne-Marie.” On October 12, 1955, Jayne opened at the Belasco Theater on Broadway in George Axelrod’s play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? as Rita Marlowe starring opposite Walter Matthau. Of her character, Jayne opined: “She is brassy and extroverted, refreshing and direct and not entirely oblivious of her bombshell of a body. The role gives me a chance to act on stage the way I would like to behave off stage.” Jayne did what Jayne knew best. Within days of arriving in New York she was posing in fur bikinis and stilettos. But the publicity was fine – the question was, how would she handle the daily rigours of a play? Like the proverbial duck to water. As Jayne had the traditional first night repast in Sardi’s the congratulatory telegrams poured in. Jayne dyed her hair even blonder, dyed one of her dogs pink and killed it in the process, dyed her new Jaguar pink and offered life-size cut-outs of herself to any shop that wanted one. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? ran for an amazing 452 performances. On May 26, 1956, at a Mae West show, she met bodybuilder and former Mr Universe Mickey Hargitay (b. Hungary, 1930). There were three problems to their relationship: Paul Mansfield, Mrs Hargitay and their five-year-old daughter. In the meantime 20th Century Fox had bought the film rights to Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and Jayne was to star in it. The studio was unhappy with the presence of Hargitay, however. In the meantime she played gangster’s moll Jerri Jordan in Fox’s The Girl Can’t Help It (1956) and Gladden in the low-budget The Burglar (1957) for Columbia. The film of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? wasn’t quite as successful as the stage version, but it made money. Her next films Kiss Them For Me (1957) in which she played Alice Kratzner opposite Cary Grant and The Wayward Bus (1957) as Camilla were also not well received. Her co-star in The Wayward Bus was Joan Collins who went into Mansfield’s trailer one day to find Jayne “wearing nothing but a big smile and a small bra, legs akimbo, one foot on a chair. Kneeling before her, razor in hand, was the make-up assistant, liberally applying shaving foam to Jayne’s crotch. ‘Dick here is getting me ready for a swimming pool shoot tomorrow. Can’t have those tell-tale blackies sprouting out from my teeny-weeny bikini, can we? By the way, didja know it’s Valentine’s Day? Dick’s trimming things into a heart shape … Mickey can’t get enough of it.’” On January 8, 1958, she and Paul Mansfield were divorced and, five days later at 8pm, she and Mickey Hargitay were married at the Wayfarers’ Chapel, in Palos Verdes Estates, California. For six weeks they performed a nightclub act at the Las Vegas Tropicana for which their remuneration was $25,000 a week – twenty for her, five for him. They bought what was to become famous as her pink mansion at 10100 Sunset Boulevard. The house had eight bedrooms, 13 baths, a heart-shaped bed and fireplace and a heart-shaped swimming pool that had “I Love You Jaynie” in two foot high gold mosaic tiles on the bottom. Jayne flew off to England to appear as saloon owner Kate in Fox’s The Sheriff Of Fractured Jaw (1958) opposite Kenneth More. Just before she departed, she discovered she was pregnant. The film wasn’t a success but the shoot was an enjoyable experience for Jayne. However, when she returned to America in the summer of 1958 she found herself more in demand for pictures than movies. At 5am on December 21, 1958, Miklos Jeffery Palmer Hargitay made his début in St John’s Hospital, Santa Monica. The following year Jayne disposed of her retinue of Byron, Shiffrin and Bautzer. Looking after her newborn son Jayne was absent from film-making during 1959. In June 1960 she was the guest of honour on This Is Your Life and two months later on August 1, 1960, she gave birth to son Zoltan in Santa Monica. In December of that year she and Hargitay were performing their act entitled The House Of Love in Las Vegas. Her next films – Too Hot To Handle (1960) as stripper Midnight Franklin and The Challenge (1960) as bullion thief gang leader Billy in which she went topless for the first time on film – were not especially good. She also made her first European (non-British) film because Mickey Hargitay was offered a part in it – Gli Amori Di Ercole (1960), as Queen Dianira. She went on to star in It Happened In Athens (1960) as Eleni Costa and The George Raft Story (1961) as Lisa Lang, but neither was ever going to set any box-office records and it looked as though her marriage was also failing. A second honeymoon in Nassau in February 1962 almost ended in tragedy when
the couple’s boat overturned and Jayne was admitted to hospital suffering from shock and exposure, although not the kind she usually coveted. However, the press suspected a hoax, much to Mickey Hargitay’s fury. In mid-1963 Jayne was touring the rubber chicken circuit telling a few jokes, singing some songs and then taking her clothes off. It was rather successful. A separation ensued but soon the couple were reunited and daughter Mariska Magdolna was born weighing 8lb 9oz in January 1964 in St John’s Hospital, Santa Monica, although rumours have long persisted that her real father was married Brazilian singer Nelson Sardelli. Certainly, Jayne and Mickey were divorced just seven months after the birth on August 26, 1964. Never single for long Jayne married short, hairy, pornographer Matt Climber (b. 1935, as Thomas Vitale Ottaviano) on September 24, 1964, in Baja California, Mexico. None of Jayne’s films during this time were remarkable – Panic Button (1962) in which she played Angela, Heimweh Nach St Pauli (1963), Dog Eat Dog (1964) as Darlene, L’Amore Primitivo (1964) as Jayne – except one, and that was for all the wrong reasons. Promises! Promises! (1963) was a piece of exploitative trash. Film critics Mick Martin and Marsha Porter call it “silly and crude,” adding, “The only thing going for this film is the scenes of a next-to-totally naked Jayne Mansfield” and that was about once every nine minutes. Neither respected critics Leonard Maltin nor Leslie Halliwell even bothered to include the film in their directories. Playboy magazine asked Jayne to pose for them as part of the publicity machine and since Jayne owned ten per cent of the film she agreed. Seen today the pictures are innocuous, but they were regarded as scandalous at the time and resulted in publisher Hugh Hefner being fined for obscenity. Promises! Promises! flopped, and with it Jayne’s career. In the summer of 1964 Jayne and a male friend met John Lennon and journalist Chris Hutchins in Los Angeles. The remaining Beatles had gone to the Whiskey-A-Go-Go nightclub on Sunset Boulevard and Jayne suggested joining them. Lennon didn’t want to and offered Jayne a drink. She asked for a cocktail and the ever helpful Chris Hutchins offered to make it and then realised he had no idea what to put in a cocktail. He stood in the kitchen with Lennon examining various bottles until Lennon told him to include “A drop of that, that, that and that, and then you pee in it.” Chris made the drink and then handed it to John who added his own special ingredient, which Jayne duly drank pronouncing it “a real humdinger”. Flirting with Lennon, she tugged his mop top hair and asked, “Is this real?” Lennon, who loathed being touched, eyed her breasts and inquired, “Are those real?” Jayne smiled and replied, “There’s only one way to find out.” Just then Jayne’s friend announced he would read their fortunes with his tarot cards. The reading proceeded, then suddenly the man stopped, horrified by what the cards revealed: “I see an awful ending to all this.” The paranoically superstitious Lennon threw them out. Then he and Chris Hutchins headed for the Whiskey-A-Go-Go to join the others. Jayne turned up and as photographers lined up to take pictures of the Fab Four she eased herself into the frame next to John. George Harrison was not impressed and threw his Scotch and Coke at a photographer, missed, and instead hit Mamie Van Doren square in the face. In the mêlée John told Jayne what had really been in the cocktail and bolted for the door. On October 17, 1965, Jayne gave birth to Antonio Raphael Ottaviano Climber at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, Los Angeles. Her films, The Fat Spy (1965) as Junior and The Las Vegas Hillbillies (1966), continued to flop. She was even cut from The Loved One (1965). She and Climber split on July 11, 1966, and Jayne’s lawyers filed for divorce eight days later. Jayne flew to Caracas, Venezuela, where she had an affair with a student called Douglas Olivares (b. October 1945). She also contracted a venereal disease. By October 1966 Olivares was back in South America. She took up with short, balding, Jewish lawyer Sam Brody whose wife named Jayne in her divorce petition. Brody had been Jack Ruby’s lawyer when the nightclub owner was tried for murdering Lee Harvey Oswald who was alleged to have shot John F. Kennedy … who had had an affair with Jayne. The relationship with Brody was violent. He regularly beat her and once smashed her head against a toilet bowl. Still, he wanted to marry her. It was around this time that Jayne supposedly became involved with Anton La Vey’s Church of Satan in San Francisco. Jayne, raised a Baptist, had also shown an interest in Catholicism and Judaism. To maintain her extravagant lifestyle Jayne was forced to return to the nightclub circuit.