“My Mom Jayne” Is a Family’s Reckoning and a Reclamation of an Iconic Bombshell

Saved by being asleep in the backseat, Mariska Hargitay has no memory of the horrific car accident that took the life of her mother, Jayne Mansfield. Just three years old at the time, Hargitay was left to remember her only by her public image—that of the ’50s pinup bombshell once dubbed “Hollywood’s smartest dumb blonde.”

In My Mom Jayne, a deeply personal excavation now airing on HBO Max, the television giant who has starred as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’s Olivia Benson since 1999 steps behind the lens to uncover the real person behind her mother’s Hollywood persona.

HBO

The narrative of the film, of Mansfield’s life, is told to us and to Hargitay by those who are old enough to remember her. In separate to-camera interviews, her eldest children—Jayne Marie, Mickey Jr., and Zoltan—powerfully recount memories and stories of their mother to their younger sister. Hargitay admits that she felt shame about Manfield for the choices she made in her career and that that shame led her to shy away from learning more about her. From just beyond the camera, she tells each of her siblings that she has been “waiting for this moment for a long time.”

Right away, the magic of this documentary becomes clear. This is not another retelling of a classic old Hollywood tale. Rather, My Mom Jayne is a glimpse into a family, hand in hand, piecing together the truth of their story. The love that lives between the siblings is immediately present as the interviews begin. There is a familiar sense of protection from all parties, their grief and shared longing exchanged easily and without words.

Mickey, Mariska, Jayne Marie, and Zoltan Hargitay. Courtesy of HBO

Between these interviews, the film skillfully splices in archival footage of Mansfield, who, at the height of her career, was reportedly the most photographed woman in Hollywood. Jayne Marie recounts bearing witness to their mother’s meteoric rise to fame, beginning with Mansfield’s dream of becoming a movie star, which set them on the journey from Texas to Los Angeles when she was only in her early 20s. Fame did not come immediately for the actor, who, when given a chance to audition for head of Paramount Studios Milton Lewis, read a soliloquy from Joan of Arc. Lewis suggested she embrace her “obvious talents” and, in Jayne’s words, “tighten her dress and lighten her hair.” So that is what she did.

After following this advice, Mansfield began getting small parts in low-budget films, eventually leading to her breakout Broadway performance as Rita Marlowe in George Axelrod’s Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? Shortly after, she signed to Twentieth Century Fox in a six-year contract that led to films such as Frank Tashlin‘s The Girl Can’t Help It (1956), the film adaptation of Steinbeck’s The Wayward Bus (1957), and the onscreen production of Rock Hunter (1957). It was through this work that Mansfield found her great fame, the movie-star life she had dreamt of back home in Texas. However, it required that she lean into the image of the blonde bombshell, accompanying her looks with a high-pitched baby voice.

Hargitay, who remembers this voice bothering her deeply throughout her childhood—and can do a scarily good impression of it—presses her siblings on what they thought of their mother’s public persona. Each of them has the same answer: When they heard the voice, they looked the other way.

Hargitay and Mansfield. Photograph by Alamy Stock Photo/HBO

Hargitay admits that it was this deep shame over Mansfield’s choices that drove her to shape her career as the antithesis of her mother’s—which she has certainly done, nearly 600 times over. But in watching the archival footage, it seems that the person who was perhaps most bothered by Manfield’s persona was Mansfield herself. Beginning in the early 1960s, she tried desperately to shift the attention from her physique to her sharp intellect. She spoke several languages and had a passion and great talent as a violinist and pianist—but all were only ever met by wrinkled noses and cruel jokes.

Mansfield became trapped in her image and the vicious Hollywood machine that does not care for the whole person, especially if you are a woman. Her frustration led to what those around her recalled as depression, followed by a struggle with substance abuse. In a 1989 interview, Mickey Hargitay (Mansfield’s second husband and arguably the love of her life) recalled that she had lost herself at this time and what followed seemed like a string of bad decisions, influenced by having the wrong people around her.

There is a vulnerability and a familiarity in the way that Hargitay works to untangle the weight of these decisions. Getting to the core of someone, understanding what made them exceptional and also what made them human, is a huge task for anyone to take on, let alone when the person is one’s own mother. And it is in this undertaking that the film becomes not only about Jayne’s story but Mariska’s as well. About two-thirds of the way into My Mom Jayne, it takes a brave turn into a twist that is better explained by those who lived it, but one that speaks deeply to the universal truths of family.

Seeing the tragedy and sacrifice of Mansfield’s life and the miracle of Hargitay’s, side by side, feels nothing short of a deep universal wrong being reversed. For Hargitay to have accomplished this outstanding, historic career in her own right—to exist in the Hollywood machine in a capacity so far beyond her mother’s wildest dreams—is incredibly touching. For her to have then leveraged her artistic knowledge and capability to make this film shows that she’s one of our best.

My Mom Jayne is a moving portrait of family and the stories that bind us to one another. It is a raw and honest look into fame, sacrifice, and how the two are often forced to exist in tandem. It is an exploration of grief and the universal desire to understand your parents. It is a reclamation of something that was taken from Mansfield and her family: her truth.

Toward the end of the film, Hargitay brings her siblings to the family’s storage unit, a place she has been excavating herself in order to make the documentary. Together, they find Jayne’s 1957 Golden Globe award. They quickly suggest that Hargitay keep it and put it next to her own, telling her, “You’ve earned it. You made it.” Later, we see the award displayed on a shelf next to Hargitay’s, the two of them, at last, finally making it. Together, Mariska and Jayne remind us that memory never ends, love never stops, and there is always a way forward.