Jayne Mansfield

Her acting career began in Hollywood with a bit role as a cigarette girl in Pete Kelly's Blues (1955). That year she also appeared in Hell on Frisco Bay and Illegal. Her breakout role came in The Burglar (1957). She became known as the poor man's Marilyn Monroe after starring in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) and Playgirl After Dark (1960). Movie executives kept her in dumb blonde stereotype roles, despite her real talent. By the 1960s, her career options shrank. She made guest appearances on game shows like What's My Line?, appearing four times between 1956 and 1966. In 1962, 20th Century Fox dropped her. The rest of her career consisted of B movies, low-budget films, and performances at food stores and small nightclubs.

Tragedy struck in the early hours of June 29, 1967, when she was killed instantly in a car crash on Highway 90 in Slidell, Louisiana. She was riding from a nightclub in Biloxi, Mississippi, on her way to a television appearance in New Orleans. The car slammed into the back of a semi-tractor trailer truck at nearly 80 miles per hour. Her boyfriend Samuel Brody and their driver Ronnie Harrison also died. She was not decapitated, as was long misreported; she was 34 years old. Her funeral was held on July 3, 1967, in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania. Hundreds of people lined the main street. She was buried at Fairview Cemetery in Plainfield, next to where her father was buried. Her final film, Single Room Furnished (1966), was released posthumously in 1968.

She was a Playboy Playmate of the Month for February 1955, and she did topless solo work. She won beauty contests in Texas, including Miss Photoflash, Miss Magnesium Lamp, and Miss Fire Prevention; she turned down Miss Roquefort Cheese, saying it just didn't sound right. Mansfield was married three times and divorced twice. She had children with each husband, including actress Mariska Hargitay, known for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and model Jayne Marie Mansfield. After her death, her mother and ex-husband Mickey Hargitay were among those who filed unsuccessful suits to control her estate, which was initially estimated at $600,000. By 1977, her four eldest children found the estate insolvent due to debts and litigation.