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Interview with Jayne Mansfield in Newcastle

The Hollywood star Jayne Mansfield finds herself out of step with the times on Tyneside in the 60s.

Magazine and Review show 1967 2 mins

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Overview

The archetypal 'blonde bombshell' of the 50s, Jayne Mansfield, bravely defends herself against negative tabloid reviews on a cold Newcastle street. From Las Vegas's first – and highest paid – female headliner to a cabaret act on the Northern club circuit in Britain, Mansfield was a Hollywood movie star on the skids who had swapped a promising acting career (with a Golden Globe Award for 'The Girl Can't Help It' in 1957) for an obsessive merry-go-round of publicity.

Three months after this interview with Bob Langley for the Tyne Tees TV Late Look news magazine Jayne Mansfield died in a car crash in New Orleans. Born Vera Jayne Palmer in 1933, a violin and piano prodigy who spoke five languages, Mansfield had once studied with Baruch Lumet, a celebrated Yiddish Theatre actor and father of director Sidney Lumet. She shot to stardom on Broadway, and on screen, as the character Rita Marlowe in the Faustian comedy 'Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter', playing a caricature of Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe. The 'dumb blonde' 50s fiction of womanhood dominated the rest of her public life. She has been described as a 'reality star' ahead of her time.