Mans­field ⁶⁶⁄₆₇

This film opens with a dis­claimer: ​‘A true sto­ry based on rumour and hearsay.’ Briskly paced and cheeky, it offers a fun primer on a curi­ous bit of Hol­ly­wood his­to­ry, though some audi­ences may be left want­i­ng. It details the final years of actress Jayne Mans­field and her rela­tion­ship with Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan.

While the famous pho­tographs of LaVey and Mans­field togeth­er are indeed delight­ful, the film seeks to draw too much mean­ing from what was essen­tial­ly a chance pho­to op, as it sug­gests the two eccen­tric fig­ures may have had an a air and LaVey may have had some pre­mo­ni­tion of Mansfield’s untime­ly death in a car crash. Whether any of these the­o­ries car­ry weight is up for debate, but the mere idea of Mansfield’s allur­ing­ly over-the-top fem­i­nin­i­ty com­bined with Satanism cer­tain­ly makes for a juicy doc­u­men­tary pitch.

LaVey and Mans­field are both indi­vid­u­al­ly fas­ci­nat­ing, and one sens­es that each could mer­it his or her own more in-depth doc­u­men­tary. The strength of this film lies in its shrewd use of archival footage. There’s a trea­sure trove of clips con­tain­ing Mans­field, from films, TV appear­ances and inter­views, and some of the clips are spliced in to act as a kind of pithy commentary.

The selec­tion of talk­ing heads is also strong, with the always great John Waters giv­ing Mans­field the high­est com­pli­ment, call­ing her a ​“dumb genius blonde.” Ear­ly on, con­tex­tu­al­is­ing Mansfield’s career as a blonde bomb­shell too often dis­missed as a poor man’s Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, there’s a super­cut of the many breathy, near-orgas­mic sounds she emit­ted through­out her fil­mog­ra­phy. They must be heard to be believed – tru­ly, Mans­field car­ried her­self like a car­toon char­ac­ter made flesh, and for this she should be cel­e­brat­ed, not shrugged off.

Mans­field embod­ied cheese­cake ​’50s sex­u­al­i­ty, and the doc­u­men­tary explores some of the dif­fi­cul­ties inher­ent in the actress’ uneasy tran­si­tion into the ​’60s with its more lib­er­at­ed take on gen­der. To its cred­it, the film doesn’t set up Mans­field as a punch line, or give her the melo­dra­mat­ic E! True Hol­ly­wood Sto­ry treat­ment. The schol­ars and direc­tors inter­viewed here speak of a cer­tain savvi­ness with regard to her image, and var­i­ous clips show Mans­field speak­ing mul­ti­ple lan­guages, play­ing vio­lin and espous­ing lib­er­al philoso­phies in her charm­ing voice.

Mans­field is ripe for a fem­i­nist recla­ma­tion, with her potent com­bi­na­tion of tal­ent and beau­ty, and her kitsch sta­tus which mer­its a clos­er look. Mans­field ⁶⁶⁄₆₇ is a bit too wink­ing at times, with its use of exag­ger­at­ed reen­act­ments and blonde-wigged dancers in inter­sti­tial sequences. Such moments don’t add much – when you have such great source mate­r­i­al as Mans­field, you don’t exact­ly need more pop ele­ments on top.

Those going into the film with­out much knowl­edge of the actress are like­ly to want to delve into her fil­mog­ra­phy. It feels slight at times, but does at least present the actress as a com­pelling woman both com­plete­ly of her time and can­ni­ly ahead of it. As the bomb­shell her­self says in an old inter­view, ​“If you can’t laugh at your­self, you may as well give up.” Excel­lent advice, made all the more potent by who’s giv­ing it.