When Jayne Mansfield died in 1967, killed in a car wreck at the age of just 34 years old, the multitalented actress had already garnered enough fame and fortune during her short lifetime to have people lining the streets to watch her funeral procession. But whether spectators were there to pay their respects to someone they admired or to gawk at the cortège for another one of Hollywood’s dead blondes is its own question. This was just five years after the tragic death of Marilyn Monroe — one of Mansfield’s notable silver-screen inspirations — and in the time since her death, Monroe had jettisoned from famous to infamous. For onlookers, Mansfield’s wake was the chance to see history being made; it was also the kind of story they could use to impress people for decades to come. Fame is fickle that way. Once you have some, everyone either wants a taste or starts running as far away from it as possible.
For Mansfield’s youngest daughter, Mariska Hargitay, her mother’s legacy spurred a unique combination of both reactions. Hargitay was only three at the time of her mother’s death and had been sitting in the back seat of the car with her siblings, all of whom came away unscathed, apart from the overall tragedy of the wreck that claimed Mansfield’s life. Hargitay doesn’t remember anything about her mother, and what she can conjure comes in a fog so opaque that she’s not sure whether it’s real or imagined. Growing up, she knew only what her family told her and what she could see in photographs and films — two insights that often warred, given Mansfield’s increasingly bubbly, high-pitched, “dumb blonde” public persona and the warm intelligence her siblings and father retained. Hargitay resisted that manufactured side of her mother, setting out to “do it differently” once she became an actor in her own right, catapulting to stardom and sitting there comfortably for the last 26 years as the hard-nosed, take-no-bull detective Olivia Benson on “Law & Order: SVU.”
Through a tender touch that only a daughter could have for a parent, Hargitay beautifully excavates the truth from a memory long lost, finally letting go of the one mystery that kept her from her mother for so long.
But as the years went by, Hargitay found herself stuck on the same questions about her mother, curious to reconcile them with parts of her childhood that never quite made sense. In her new, self-directed HBO documentary, “My Mom Jayne,” Hargitay works to fill in the gaps one by one, interviewing her siblings and the people close to her family about the times before and after the tragedy that took her mother’s life. And though she uncovers long-held truths and confronts those who peddled her mother’s secrets, “My Mom Jayne” is most moving when Hargitay challenges her lifelong trepidation about getting to know her mother better. Through a tender touch that only a daughter could have for a parent, Hargitay beautifully excavates the truth from a memory long lost, finally letting go of the one mystery that kept her from her mother for so long.
Unlike your standard retrospective doc on a famous subject, Hargitay’s film is far more intimate. It is abundantly clear that this is a project that has taken some time and even more consideration to come to fruition. Hargitay doesn’t flit between talking heads at warp speed to feed the viewer information, or overly rely on archival footage and old photos to make the film feel like a glorified Wikipedia deep dive. Instead, “My Mom Jayne” strikes a delicate balance between fact and feeling, allowing the audience to walk alongside Hargitay as she embarks down a path toward clarity, somewhere in the distance.
Instead of casually wading into the shallow end, skimming the surface with tepid bits of history about Mansfield’s life and career, Hargitay opts for a cannonball. She wisely knows that her relationship to her mother’s legacy and memory is too stilted, and thus, she begins by sitting her siblings down to have candid talks with those who knew Mansfield better. But clearly, Mansfield’s public persona as just another Tinseltown airhead is something the other Hargitay siblings have had to contend with, too. After all, when the whole world sees someone you love in an entirely different, far more critical way than you ever did, how can talking about all of the ways that they loved you — the ones no one else was privy to — not upset you? For Ellen, Mickey Jr., and Zoltan Hargitay, “My Mom Jayne” isn’t just a chance to celebrate their mother, but an opportunity for a formal reconsideration, something to define Mansfield’s life beyond what the public made of it.
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When Mansfield was coming up in Hollywood, the industry was still very much dominated by men — not that much has changed today, but you get the idea. If you were a woman who wanted to be a serious actor, your only chance to break into serious roles was to look pretty and perform well enough for someone to take note of your prowess. Even then, it was a gamble. Mansfield spent her entire adult life attempting to prove herself, whether onscreen or onstage. In one archival clip from an appearance on a 1962 episode of “The Jack Paar Show,” Mansfield picks up a violin, which she had started touting as part of a larger performance act intended to demonstrate that she was more than just a pretty face and a faux falsetto. After playing a few bars, Paar rudely interrupts her, saying, “Who cares, kiss me!” The audience erupts into laughter, and though Mansfield tries to keep playing, she quickly relents, forcing a smile.
Hargitay’s siblings say that that version of Mansfield, the one who put up with being put upon, was only one layer of the mother they knew. In one particularly sentimental scene, Hargitay’s brother Zoltan recalls one of his warmest memories of Mansfield. Zoltan describes being a child and having his mother tuck him into bed, only to come back a few minutes later just to give him another hug and a kiss when she thought he was fast asleep. Like so many tender moments between a parent and child, it’s significant because it’s small, the kind of thing that those looking in from the outside could never see. It seems that for Hargitay, part of the reason for making this documentary is to deal with a part of her that resents that she never got to experience that tenderness, and only having the silhouette of a mother to build a life upon. And even that contour was ever-changing, different depending on what form Mansfield took on to please the world.
Suddenly, Hargitay realizes there’s no point running from a legacy she’s cosmically intertwined with. Maybe Hargitay’s career as a serious actress wasn’t just “doing it differently,” but doing it in the way her mother rarely got the chance to, despite how hard she tried.
When Hargitay challenges this spite, her film breaks open, unspooling new threads that all wrap back around to connect with one another. Now a mother of three children and in her 60s, Hargitay describes feeling a maternal empathy for her mom, who was just 16 when she got pregnant with her first child. And with that empathy comes the ability to understand why secrets are kept. The bombshell, handled with great care, comes when Hargitay burrows into the mystery of her early life, going back and forth between being called Maria and Mariska. In her 20s, Hargitay learned from a fan of her mother’s that there was a rumor she wasn’t the daughter of Hungarian bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay, but Italian singer Nelson Sardelli. While her father adamantly denied it, Hargitay sought an answer from Sardelli himself at one of his shows in Vegas, and the two immediately formed a kinship that spent 30 years as a secret.
Throughout “My Mom Jayne,” Hargitay and her interviewees return to one question repeatedly: What good would knowing the truth do? Hargitay’s half-brother, Tony, born to Mansfield’s third husband Matt Cimber, says this to Hargitay almost verbatim when he admits he’s reluctant to hear the details of the abuse his mother faced at the hands of his father. “I don’t want to carry it, because I don’t know what good it does,” he tells Hargitay.
But Hargitay has been resistant to the truth her entire life, and the truth has nipped at her heels anyway, trying to come to light. No matter how fast we run from them, these things have a way of catching up with us. And when Hargitay debates whether or not she wants to reveal the truth about her biological father — possibly doing some form of disrepute to the memory of Mickey Hargitay or Mansfield in the process — she lands on a complex question of what defines a legacy. For Hargitay, the dots are connecting. Mansfield’s father happened to die in a car crash, with Mansfield in the car, when she was three; Mansfield’s wreck happened while Hargitay was the very same age. Suddenly, Hargitay realizes there’s no point running from a legacy she’s cosmically intertwined with. Maybe Hargitay’s career as a serious actress wasn’t just “doing it differently,” but doing it in the way her mother rarely got the chance to, despite how hard she tried.
In a scene toward the end of the film, after a sit-down with Sardelli to discuss their hidden, 30-year relationship, Hargitay, Sardelli and Sardelli’s two other daughters, Giovanna and Pietra, gather around a table together, reminiscing about life and the pain that keeping secrets causes. “I would love to have had one more conversation with your father before he passed away,” Sardelli tells Hargitay. “Because I also would like to apologize to him. I’m sure I was also part of this whole suffering. I’m so happy that I have been given the chance to say these things.”
Pietra then chimes in, adding, “Well, you’re 89, so you’ll get to tell him soon enough!” Outside of the murkiness of Mansfield’s reputation, seated in the warm glow of four family members erupting in laughter around the table, it’s easy to see why keeping secrets doesn’t serve anyone. Had Sardelli remained a mystery to Hargitay all her life, she would’ve lost the chance to share all of this laughter and the love that comes with it. These are memories with a parent being made in real time, filling in the gaps left when Hargitay lost her mother at such an early age. And though it might’ve taken some time to tape back together, this picture of a family finally looks whole.
