Jayne Mansfield

Jayne Mansfield was an American actress, singer, model, and entertainer whose 12-year Hollywood career — abruptly ended by her June 29, 1967 automobile-accident death at age 34 — produced her late-1950s American Hollywood blonde-bombshell public profile. She was born Vera Jayne Palmer on April 19, 1933, in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Her father Herbert William Palmer was an attorney and her mother Vera Jeffrey Palmer was a schoolteacher. The 1936 sudden death of her father from a heart attack at age 30 shaped her subsequent later autobiographical narrative.

Her education at the University of Texas at Austin (1950–1951) and the University of California, Los Angeles (1955; without earning a degree) was eclipsed by her 1950 first marriage at age 16 to Paul Mansfield (whose surname she retained for her stage name) and her 1951 first daughter Jayne Marie Mansfield. The 1953 Mansfield family relocation to Los Angeles launched her early-career Hollywood-modeling career.

Her 1954 Warner Bros. Pictures contract — and her February 1955 Playboy magazine "Playmate of the Month" appearance (across the February 1955 issue) — launched her 1955–1956 Hollywood breakthrough. Her 1955 Broadway debut as Rita Marlowe in George Axelrod's stage comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? — for which she won the 1956 Theatre World Award — launched her late-1950s American film career.

Her 1956 lead role in Frank Tashlin's film The Girl Can't Help It — opposite Tom Ewell — produced her late-1950s American Hollywood blonde-bombshell public profile. Her 1957 lead role in Frank Tashlin's film adaptation of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (opposite Tony Randall) produced her 20th Century Fox 1957 commercial peak. Her subsequent late-1950s and 1960s career produced multiple American films and 1960s European film productions. She died on June 29, 1967, at age 34, in a Mississippi U.S. Highway 90 automobile accident on her way to a New Orleans nightclub appearance.

Her name Jayne began as a personally-modified spelling of Jane (from the Hebrew Yochanan meaning "God is gracious"). Jayne has been a popular American girls' name across the 20th century.