Butler's Cinema Scene

Jayne Mansfield (right) with pulchritudinous competitor Sophia Loren.

“MANSFIELD 66/67” My rating: C+ (Opens N ov. 3 at the Screenland Tapcade)

84 minutes | No MPAA rating

Given the aura of cheesy tackiness that still hangs over her life and career, perhaps it’s appropriate that the new documentary about sex bomb Jayne Mansfield is itself a triumph of cheesy tackiness.

P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes’s films opens with the declaration that it is a “true story based on rumor and hearsay.”  Well, it certainly isn’t your History Channel approach to documentary biography.

For one thing, no cooperation was offered by any member of the Mansfield family (the most prominent being her actor daughter, “Law & Order’s” Mariska Hargitay).

The film clips, photos and other archival elements were taken from public sources. Mostly the filmmakers relied on talking-head interviews with Mansfield admirers (John Waters, Mary Waronov), fellow show-biz types (Mamie Van Doren), a slew of feminist and pop culture scholars, and Kenneth Anger, the great chronicler of Tinseltown tawdriness who put Mansfield’s picture on the cover of his great expose Hollywood Babylon.

The doc is also peppered with animated segments and “production numbers” in which a chorus of college-age performers in blonde wigs do garishly-lit  go-go routines or engage in artless “interpretive” dances.

It says something about the filmmakers’ intentions that the first thing they address is Mansfield’s 1967 death in a horrific car accident and the long-standing rumor that she was beheaded in the crash.  The man who embalmed the movie star says her scalp was torn off but that her noggin remained attached to that voluptuous body.

Satanist Anton LaVey with acolyte Jayne Mansfield

The film’s first half is the most coherent. Mansfield was the most prominent of the blonde sex symbols who sprang up in the wake of Marilyn Monroe. Her films — wildly popular at the time and all but forgotten today — were silly comedies in which she displayed her staggering cleavage and read her lines in a breathy giggle.

Off screen she is described as incredibly smart and fluent in several languages. She was an attentive mother.

But she was a publicity whore of the first order, a woman who would do almost anything to polish her star. As her grasp on fame began to loosen — her 1950s style of bimbo-ism did not wear well in the swinging ’60s  — her ploys for attention turned desperate. Mansfield was banned from a San Francisco film festival after crashing the event and disrupting things with her breast-waving presence.

The second half of “Mansfield 66/67” is devoted mostly to speculation about the actress’s relationship with another ink hound, Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan who presented himself in black cape, skullcap and horns. He looked like he had stepped out of a silent fantasy by Georges Méliès.

Apparently LaVey was offended by Mansfield’s boyfriend, lawyer Sam Brody.  The satanist allegedly put a curse on Brody, announcing that he would die in a car crash.  Which he did, taking Jayne with him.

There’s only so much speculation one can entertain about this nonsense before the viewer’s eyes start to glaze over.

Likewise, the film’s pulp magazine approach quickly loses its charm.  Even at 84 minutes the documentary feels long.

| Robert W. Butler