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J‘J‘

(SINGING)

(EERIE ORGAN MUSIC PLAYING)

You can write anything when someone's dead.

You don't... Like... You can write a whole book of lies

and there's nothing you can do.

Jayne Mansfield, her hair dresser, her best friend

as soon as she died, wrote a book

and said all sorts of gossip about her.

Don't trust your hairdresser.

(TELEPHONE RINGING)

WOMAN (IN SENSUAL VOICE) Hello.

Yes, this is Jayne, baby.

WOMAN 2: There's Jayne Mansfield and this was her first film.

That was her first film.

She had a very short career.

And she was very busy being a star

and she got killed in a very bad way.

She pursued her career in personal appearances

and she went all over the country in a big car.

And in that car she had a really tragic accident and died.

She was standing up in an open convertible

and the convertible hit a truck

and rolled under the truck and decapitated her.

WOMAN 3: Was she decapitated or even (indistinct)?

She wasn't at all.

NEWSREADER: Traffic was light, the weather was clear.

A truck slowed down and apparently disappeared momentarily into the cloud.

Behind it, the car carrying Ms. Mansfield did not slow down.

It crashed into the rear of the truck shearing off the top of the car.

The three adults in the front seat were killed instantly.

Ms. Mansfield was decapitated.

MAN: A false report circulated thatJayne had been decapitated.

MAN 2: She was not decapitated, she was scalped.

Just the top of her head came off.

And there was a liquor bottle or something...

-Well, I might be making that up. -(MAN LAUGHS)

MAN 3: Rumors of the curse.

MAN 4: I, frankly, think it's all a bunch of bullshit.

MAN 2: Like, a movie star gone crazy. What is the matter with you?

You're, like, so glamorous, you're insane.

MAN 5: Jayne wants to meet Anton LaVey.

This is the guy that runs the Church of Satan.

MAN 6: Anton had a headpiece with the horns.

MAN 7: I like my devil serious and scary.

I like humor, but I'm not sure I like cavorting plastic horns.

MAN 5: So, we're left to wonder.

Was Jayne Mansfield's life spinning out of control?

Or did the devil make her do it?

WOMAN 4: Most of what we know ofJayne's life

comes from newspaper coverage.

But it's all based on that sort of public record.

And by public record I mean publicity.

I don't mean things like a birth certificate.

Could you please take the stand?

You solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth,

and nothing but the truth so help you God?

Yes, sir.

ANNOUNCER: This Is Your Life, Jayne Mansfield.

(ALL CHEERING)

MAN: This Is Your Life! Come on!

(PEPPY ROCK AND ROLL MUSIC PLAYING)

(MUSIC CONTINUES)

(APPLAUSE)

(ORGAN MUSIC PLAYING)

(MAN SPEAKS LATIN)

MAN: In the name of our most exalted God,

Satan, Lucifer,

I command thee to come forth.

Come forth and bestow these blessings of hell upon us.

Come forth by these names,

Sata n,

Lucifer,

Asmodai,

BeUaL

Leviathan,

Shemhamforash.

PEOPLE: Hail Satan!

(PEPPY MUSIC PLAYING)

BOY: Get your morning papers!

(MAN WHISTLES)

CHERYL: Jayne Mansfield is a full-bodied, full-breasted,

blond bombshell,

you know, full sex appeal,

all the curves in the right places. You know, sex symbol.

WATERS: I always liked Jayne best.

To me, she was the ultimate movie star.

She was so exaggerated

that people were scared of her, Ithink.

She was always in on the joke.

MAN: People just considered Jayne Mansfield a punchline.

REPORTER: And why is Jayne's name on the news?

For two perfectly obvious reasons.

(LAUGHTER)

When you're in England, and you think of America,

you think of cowboys and Indians,

gangsters,

Jayne Mansfield.

Rome wasn't built in a day.

She ain't Rome.

What we're talking about is already built.

You think of icons,

you've strive to be someone like her,

but is someone you want to be.

As far as American stories go, hers is a triumph.

Which is to be rich, famous, live in a pink palace,

all those things that she got.

When I first came to California, I wanted to see her pink house

on Sunset Boulevard.

Oh, my goodness.

I even bought one of those maps.

Actually, for a good period of time,

she was one of the biggest stars in the world.

I mean, you know,

there was a span there where the first four studio movies for Fox

which she did, were massive hits.

Well, The Girl Can't Help It, to me, was a life changing movie.

I mean, I grew my mustache after Little Richard in that movie.

And it has the color of any movie ever,

I don't think anyone's ever talked, really, about her walk.

You really see it in The Girl Can't Help It.

She keeps having to walk through rooms

where she'll be kind of doing this strange truck and strut.

And I'm sure if it's what the heels are doing to her or the outfit is doing to her,

but it's nothing like that practiced sexy deliberate wiggle

that's very sensuous, that Monroe perfected.

Jayne's early career was really designed

as a counterpart to Marilyn Monroe

to let her know that she was replaceable.

But don't leave me out.

I have to be important in my own incorporated.

But I can relate.

You know, anyone who's got like a, like, an alter-ego

Of a persona,

you have to differentiate where the line is.

WOMAN: It was Jayne Mansfield.

I mean Rita Marlow was Jayne Mansfield.

I mean, she did flamboyance,

so she was over the top.

Oh, Rock Huntington...

I know I'm, oh, so kissable,

but why don't you pour the champagne first, Lover Doll?

It's, uh, Hunter, not Huntington.

Shh. How can I remember?

I'm all excited because you're loving me up.

Hourglass and the hair and the... Eve... The lips.

...my oh-so-kissable lips.

(SQUEALS)

She's like a cartoon.

-(PEOPLE CHATTERING) -(MUSIC PLAYING)

Say something sweet to me.

I can say this. You have beautiful hair.

And it's natural, except for the color.

WOMAN: She was doing camp before it was ever invented.

If you were hired because you had to become Marilyn Monroe

because Marilyn Monroe was sort of not working anymore,

I mean, wouldn't you make fun of yourself?

(LAUGHS)

'Course you would. Whoever heard of such a thing?

What kind of moron thought that up?

Hence camp.

REPORTER: But most people do think of you as a sex symbol. Do you mind that?

JAYNE: Yeah, I think it's fun.

I think it's very campy.

I mean, I sort of dig being sexy, don't you?

Rocky kissed me and then...

(EXHALES) ...something happened.

(SQUEALS)

It's hard to even replicate...

In fact, you can't replicate this kind of squealing, exuberant noise.

(SQUEALS LOUDLY)

Well. Oh!

(LAUGHS)

(SQUEALING AND LAUGHING)

(SQUEALS)

(SQUEALS)

(SQUEALS)

Simple, huh? (SQUEALS)

You know, for most of us, we haven't seen her movies.

She was more of a sensation.

She was the kind of woman who we knew her name

and we may never have seen her movies.

J‘ Female Jungle, Pete Kelly's Blues J‘

J‘ The Burglar, IllegalJ‘

J‘ Hell on Frisco Bay, The Wayward Bus J‘

J‘ The Church You Had to Handle J‘

J‘ The Girl Can't Help It, Panic Button J‘

J‘ Promises... Promises! J‘

I Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? I

J‘ Single Room Furnished J‘

I would assume that you are in movies.

-(SQUEALS) -MAN: Ms. Newman.

Are you a, a, a beautiful, curvy lady?

(AUDIENCE CH UCKLES)

-(SQUEALS) -(ALL LAUGH)

The next thing that happens is we think about what she looked like.

BARBARA: Oh, yes, it's a breast-belly ratio.

You, you can have big breasts, and that's one thing. I mean, that's very useful.

But you know, if your belly is, is large as well,

that's less impressive.

So being an attractive woman is all about the breast-belly ratio.

It's not the only thing,

but it's a very useful tool.

And there's some connection between

the idolized figure of the 19505

and the, the pointiness of the breasts

and the missiles of the military industrial complex.

When they said "the blond bombshell",

she was the blond bombshell.

WOMAN: These cultural figures like the blond bombshell

do a lot of work for us.

They carry our desires

and our hopes and our fears

and we're fascinated with them.

But we rarely think about what that actually does

for the person who is in that position,

who is the one who is literally standing on the altar.

People don't realize that when you have blond hair,

you have a brain under that head.

...which confirms the theory of relativity.

Sincerely yours, Mathilda Gabriel West.

WOMAN: Jayne Mansfield wasn't given the chances that Marilyn had

'cause Marilyn was the top and she was the second.

The three M's is a very long story.

Well, actually, it's short for them and it's long for me.

(LAUGHS)

Some journalists decided

that we all had M's in our name.

(CH UCKLES)

Maybe we should've sat in Marilyn Monroe's section.

-Would you like some coffee? -Which one? There's two Monroes.

No, there's not.

That is Marilyn Monroe.

That is Mamie Van Doren.

I don't see Jayne Mansfield.

She must have the night off or something.

I think the exciting thing aboutJayne Mansfield

is that you really sort of, on first look,

accept this idea that she put out there

that she was another dumb blond

and that she was sexy and silly and kind of a dingbat.

WOMAN: My father photographed Jayne

more than any other photographer.

I always remember my father saying how intelligent a woman she was

and she had one of the highest IQs of any woman he ever met.

WATERS: If there was ever the dumb blond, she was the dumb genius blond.

JAYNE: Well, I went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas and also UCLA.

MAN: Even earning a grade of A in a philosophy course

I have that album Jayne Mansfield Reads Shakespeare...

JAYN E: "I arise from dreams of thee

"In the first sweet sleep of night..."

...and I remember she used to be on the Jack Benny show playing the violin.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

If you come in with a bu--

MAN: She spoke five languages fluently.

(SINGING IN GERMAN)

(SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

(LAUGHTER)

(SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

Yes, that's Spanish for "Happy Hanukkah".

Is that true?

Yes.

(SPEAKS FRENCH)

She spoke five languages.

I didn't know that.

-Do you speak Dutch? No. -A little bit.

-Little bit? Little bit German? -Mm-hmm.

(SPEAKS GERMAN)

Oh, wonderful.

-Pig Latin... -(LAUGHTER)

Well, because she was an exaggeration

and she was such a ludicrous woman,

that she wasn't offended if you made her more exaggerated.

If you can't laugh at yourself then you, you may as well stop.

If you ever start taking yourself too seriously,

then you, you may as well give up.

WATERS: She needed to be noticed

like a junkie needs drugs.

She had to have publicity.

And that influenced the (indistinct).

When Divine was posing for pictures and shooting up her eyeliner,

that's all from Jayne Mansfield.

Oh! Model! Model!

WATERS: I always said Divine was

Jayne Mansfield and Godzilla put together to scare hippies.

MAN: Whether they were talking about her in a good way or a bad way,

she was absolutely always talked about.

WOMAN: You can see why for Kenneth Anger the first Hollywood Babylon

had to have Jayne Mansfield on the cover.

She has it all going on.

She has the excess, she has the shamelessness,

she has the kind of Luciferian rebellion happening

through her self promotion,

but she already has, of course, already incipient in her,

this gory, morbid end

that in some ways is the end point of that kind of limitlessness,

that insistence upon fame at any cost.

There's a euphonious connection

between the three syllables in Hollywood

and three syllables in Babylon.

And they kind of rock together.

I feel that a star owes it her public

to, to bring the public into her life.

They, they feel...

The fans feel that they kind of own you

and if you, if you kept your life a complete secret,

it wouldn't be fair to them.

I heard thatJayne Mansfield has been in a car accident.

Well, there've been several near misses.

I've heard she's got nine lives.

I've heard she's got nine children.

And she's seen with all these different men-- (ALL CHATTERING)

Different ones every single night.

(ALL CHATTERING)

All of those girls, completely naked,

riding around on one of

-I think it's disgusting. -Utterly disgusting.

To me, she was like the first reality star.

She lived publicly,

she did everything she could for the public to know her.

She had children,

maybe like four.

No, five, having the fifth.

Ex-husbands.

WOMAN: And then she was married to

a beautiful hunk named Mickey Hargitay.

WATERS: Mickey Hargitay certainly was the love of her life

and he was the male her.

JAYNE: The studio doesn't want me to marry Mickey.

Marrying him could end my contract.

But I can't help it.

The studio keeps telling me it will spoil everything if I marry him.

Mickey's so in love with me.

He's so physically exciting.

Ijust have to marry him...

career or no career.

WOMAN: She got offered a part in a movie

and was pregnant,

so Kim Novak got it.

WOMAN 2: She had three children by Mickey.

MAN: She wanted to be a mom and kind of pulled back from it a little bit.

When she did that, Fox dropped her.

So, right now,

mm-mm, it's, it's, it's not a healthy spot to be,

I don't think, mentally.

You know, it's great that you're having a couple kids,

but you know what,

who knows how you really are paying the bills at this point.

MAN: After '59, '60-'61,

things started to turn sour for her.

There's a TV offer that comes in,

butJayne's a movie star.

But the TV offers to play a girl on a deserted island.

Jayne turns it down. How big could it be?

Probably the worst mistake of her life.

MARILYN: So, she's having children,

she's getting fat and fatter.

She's maturing, she's getting older. She's taking diet pills.

And if you get caught up in that,

you start trying to compete with your own image of yourself.

EILEEN: As the '605 progressed,

she looks more and more constrained.

She's like the fruit that's just bursting.

And that amazing tension

is what you want with Jayne Mansfield,

which is so much about the '505.

That terrible feeling of tension or something

just about to break through and go bleargh.

That is the '605.

And that engulfs Jayne Mansfield.

WOMAN: She tried very hard to stay youthful

and glamorous and hip.

And it was hard to pull off.

The new LA scene at the time

and actresses like Sharon Tate and Faye Dunaway coming on the scene.

You know, it's more imagination.

Sexiness, to me, is a part of every movement.

It's... You don't see the big, low-cut dresses anymore.

The male gaze objectified you,

and that was explicitly dis-empowering.

Every woman I know,

and every group discussion we ever had,

we talked about what that line was

between empowerment and exploitation.

Women were either idols like Jayne Mansfield,

or something that women were not allowed to be,

someone who could say whatever she liked,

somebody who wasn't following a mold

and presenting it perfectly.

In other words, if women were supposed to do this,

fine, I'll do the opposite.

Jayne Mansfield was the embodiment

of all of the things that feminism at that time stood against.

MAN: In 1963, Jayne does

the first nude scene for an actress in Hollywood ever.

She does a nude scene in Promises, Promises!

Actually, it was one scene that kept replaying every few minutes,

but essentially, she's the first actress to be nude on film.

It wasn't about the nudity,

it was the sexuality that really reflects the times.

It was such a time where everybody was trying to make up a difference

and make a statement in the '605.

I know that's why I did it, so...

I was the first English playmate in 1966.

May 1966.

Look it up.

And in those days, they only showed the boobs.

And I had pretty good boobs.

Are you still there? Yes. (LAUGHS)

Here I am, Miss December, and I was the first Jewish centerfold

in front of a Christmas tree who was a virgin.

The '505 is trying to hang on to a life, a perfect life.

Mom gets a dishwasher, Dad can fuck who he likes.

Then you go into the '605

and, uh, you know,

mom can maybe fuck who she likes.

That's real...

As she walks into culture in the early '605,

and trying to find a role or a place in it,

in the cinema's that are being birthed in this time period,

she didn't have a place in that.

So in 1966,

I did Chelsea Girls.

And in 1966

Jayne Mansfield did The Las Vegas Hillbillys or something.

She was too smart to be doing what she was doing.

She had a hard time making a change.

It wasn't Nat King Cole anymore, it's Euros.

It's The Doors coming and hanging out a the Whiskey.

So Jayne would take her pink Cadillac out of the pink palace

and drive down Sunset Strip and hit, like, the Whisky A Go Go.

I mean, how cool is that?

(PEOPLE SHOUTING) (PEPPY MUSIC PLAYING)

WOMAN: When someone is...so gorgeous to the public,

they've got everything.

What they really want is to be loved.

And people think, "They don't need anything.

"Look, if I could only look like them."

WOMAN 2: We really wanted to look like her.

We bought the kind of dresses she wore,

if we could afford them,

and we wanted her look.

WOMAN: Someone you want to be.

(LAUGHS)

What a great woman!

BENZA: When the Beatles came into town,

they asked the guys "What do you wanna do in America?"

And Paul said, "We want to meetJayne Mansfield."

(IN DISTINCT CHATTER) (MAN SPEAKING)

So they all go out to the Whisky A Go Go on Sunset Boulevard.

Uh, across the room was Mamie Van Doren.

Jayne is sitting there, then all The Beatles were there.

BENZA: Jayne really believed, "This is the pinnacle.

"I mean, I've made it. I mean, I'm on the Sunset Strip, I'm with The Beatles,

"Life's gonna get great."

But as we find out, life starts to go downhill.

That made the front page.

The men that came aboard her ship

had to have some kind of promise

that they could deliver celebrity or media attention.

And when that didn't happen, as often as she liked,

they were kind of cast aside.

But then she had all those bad husbands.

All those ones who seemed like they would beat her and were abusive.

MAMIE: I don't think it was a very happy,

um, relationship with Matt Cimber.

He made her a lot of promises that he never kept.

She had just had a baby.

BENZA: The thing that hurt the most about Matt Cimber,

when they had their trouble, he kidnaps the baby.

So, Matt kidnapping the child

developed into a, just an over the top calamity.

Things started taking a turn for the worst after that.

Not only does she get away from him,

she then finds another man to get the baby back

and obviously, ends up falling in that man's hands.

BENZA: Jayne essentially had to take responsibility for everything

since she's 14 years old.

Along comes Sam Brody.

And to be fair, he comes from a pretty good pedigree.

He works with Melvin Belli on the defense team forJack Ruby.

He comes into her life and basically tells her, "Your problems are solved.

"I'll take care of everything. I'll get you back on top."

So, what's a girl to think?

MAN: This guy, who's a lawyer,

who, on the surface,

looks like he'd be a good person for her,

ends up being the worst thing for her.

Itjust seemed very unhealthy

and very abusive,

very drug-fueled.

For... Just dark.

It's, like, very dark.

(EERIE NOISE)

BENZA: Sam Brody really is when her life pivots out of control,

when it really hits oily streaks.

JAYNE: Jayne's big downfall was her addiction to attention.

When she began to experience disappointment,

she turned to drinking.

An d, u nfortu nately,

the alcoholism, it's another addiction.

And you can use the word addiction

and not quite realize that

what that means is you lose choice.

So, you really get trapped.

Let's face it, before, before Sam, she's not drinking as much.

She's certainly not doing the drugs she was doing with Sam.

There was no LSD in her life.

MAMIE: Jayne did drugs, yeah.

I don't know which ones she did.

WOMAN: She was caving in to the addiction.

And it may be that the devil made her do it.

BENZA: Her whole life became just chaos

and, and drug use,

and, and alcoholism,

child neglect,

but she's definitely glamor and tragedy

all wrapped up in one being.

MARILYN: She was barely been holding on

without the drugs.

So you start adding all of that, it's like... Ugh.

The pivot point for the whole thing going downhill

is Sam Brody taking Jayne Mansfield

to the 1966 San Francisco Film Festival.

MIGUEL: Well, first of all, she, she did not get brung up. (LAUGHS)

She brought herself. She was uninvited.

And very quickly

made a persona non grata of herself.

The programmer, AlbertJohnson,

knew a lot of people in Hollywood.

BENZA: And everybody's there.

Every weirdo, every hot shot.

PENDAS: And by 1966, it was just fantastic, the roster of people.

Jack Nicholson was here.

Throw into the mix Roman Polanski,

who was on the verge of making a deal in Hollywood to do Rosemary's Baby.

BENZA: Ithink she quickly finds out

and then Sam quickly finds out.

They're in a different neighborhood.

This could either be very good for her

or it could be very devastatingly bad.

PENDAS: Jayne's picture was in the papers several times.

So, she was on the verge of a wardrobe malfunction at any moment.

So she was asked to leave after the first few days

because she was just crashing parties

and kind of drawing the attention with her antics

away from everything else that was going on.

She was making more of a spectacle of herself

than the festival events themselves,

which you want the publicity to be about, the work.

Leave and walk out on all this publicity? No.

MATT: So she's scheming for a way to steal the spotlight away.

You know, what better way to do that than to go visit Dracula

and call all the newspapers.

(EERIE ORGAN MUSIC PLAYING)

Oh, the Anton thing, the devil thing,

I never really believed she was that much of a Satanist.

She just did that for the photo op.

That explains it.

BENZA: It's not so much the film festival Jayne wants to crash.

There's many more characters there in San Francisco.

One character in particular is Anton LaVey.

And in the 19605, he's gaining a lot of notoriety.

MAN: He's the founder and high priest of the first Church of Satan,

Anton Szandor LaVey.

Oh, his name sounds very influential.

INTERVIEWER: He uses a somewhat of a creed or this timeless quote,

"Remember, 'evil' spelled backwards is 'live'."

(LAUGHTER)

BENZA: He was a musician, a police photographer.

MAN: He had been a lion tamer.

And he was very good with animals.

And he had this lion in the basement for a while.

-You live with a lion at home? -Yes, I do.

Now, is thatjust a publicity stunt?

No, he sleeps with me every night in the bedroom.

-How much does he weigh? -Five hundred pounds.

(LAUGHTER)

INTERVIEWER: Has he been de-fanged and de-clawed?

No.

-He's got full power. -Have you?

-(LAUGHTER) -No, not yet.

BENZA: He was a lot of things you don't necessarily need to be

before you become the leader of a Church of Satan.

I'm assuming Anton LaVey was tall from all accounts

and very, very sexy with dark eyebrows and a goatee.

And there was a part of him

that was obviously playing the part and very sinister.

MAN: Girls always like bad boys, don't they?

PEACHES: But he also exuded sexiness

that you either have or you don't.

Danger is like the forbidden fruit.

Anton is very, uh...

forbidden. (LAUGHS)

Crackers, you are cute.

On Walpurgis Night of 1966,

he ritualistically shaves his head

in the style of old executioners

and declares 1966 as Year 1

in the Age of Satan.

To 1966,

the Year 1!

He aesthetically draws inspiration from

horror films, from The Munsters,

from The Addams Family,

from things that already entered the cultural imaginary,

that people associated with the macabre aesthetic.

Did you ever hear of Satanism, the worship of the devil?

What kind of a girl do you think I am?

PEACH ES: When people started making movies

that dared to actually show the devil in any sort of serious way,

it terrified audiences

in a way now, that we can understand.

JANE: Anton's trying to looks like a Satanist.

And the image he gets of a Satanist

has to come from Hollywood.

It's such a problem because so much depends on your taste in devils.

I mean,

mm, the earliest is George Melies,

the famous cinematic pioneer

and he truly is wearing an Anton LaVey outfit.

I mean, he's got the, the magician's outfit.

That kind of cape formal wear,

the little horns, the widow's peak.

Satiny cap, little goatee.

His house on California Street was painted black

and the living room was turned into a temple.

And there was a way to get

through the fireplace from the basement,

like a sliding panel or something.

MATT: He wanted attention

he wanted to freak people out

He, you know, he forms, uh, the Church of Satan Incorporated

with a publicist.

MAN: Former New York socialite, Judith Case and John Raymond

are joined by Satan in unholy wedlock

before a live altar, a nude redhead.

Self-ordained sorcerer and minister, Anton LaVey,

presided at the San Francisco ceremony

and the blessings of Lucifer and Beelzebub are invoked.

The elaborate rites smacked of publicity

because next day, the bride and groom secured a conventional wedding license.

MAN: He was already doing a show...

WhatI call a show.

Nude on his altar...

That's the classic theme

with the Satanic masques.

On the spectrum of evil,

visually, Ithink, he's more related to like, Count Chocula

than, you know, Charles Manson.

Count Chocula has chocolate sweeties.

Around '605

or say even later in the '705

the whole devil thing was out there.

Just out there, like, for fun. It was light.

That whole "Bewitched" phenomena

which was so delightful. Wonderful show.

Hepzibah. What a lovely name.

-Biblical? -Hardly.

There was Flip Wilson on his show,

as Geraldine he would go, you know...

(IN HIGH-PITCHED VOICE) "The devil made me do it".

(IN HIGH-PITCHED VOICE) I didn't want to buy this dress.

The devil made me buy it.

(LAUGHTER)

Whoo!

He was hilarious. You just, you just crack up at it.

You put a woman up on the altar,

what do you get? Rosemary's Baby.

Yeah, Rosemary's Baby, of course, being

a film that's usually credited with inaugurating the so called satanic panic,

a huge gout of Satan oriented movies,

you know, most of it very, you know, trashy or B picture,

very borderline, lot of porn.

Abby was my favorite. It was the black rip off of the Exorcist

where she was, uh,

fringed African-American marriage counselor

and then all of a sudden the devil would get her and she'd be counseling people

and she'll say... She'll try this...

"Fuck the shit out of them!" And her head would spin around.

-Just fuck the shit out of them -Abby!

...that's what I'm gonna do.

(CLAMORING)

So, the rumor is that Anton LaVey was a consultant on Rosemary's Baby.

And the more wonderful part of the rumor is

that he actually plays the devil in those very close held shots of the devil

where she is focusing on his eyes,

um, that that's Anton LaVey impregnating Mia Farrow as Rosemary. (LAUGHS)

(EERIE MUSIC PLAYING)

This is no dream, this is really happening!

And it's such a wonderful rumor that we hang on to it and we love it.

(LAUGHS) We want to believe it.

And even though many would argue, who cares? It's complete horseshit.

Very insulting.

Anton was not a liar.

He wouldn't make it up if it didn't happen.

But there's no question. Yes, he was

eagerly a part of as much films

as he could get, he could get himself involved with.

MAN: The special participation of Anton LaVey,

high priest of the Church of Satan...

-(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS) -...The Devil's Rain.

EILEEN: Then suddenly working with Kenneth Anger

on, um, Invocation of My Demon Brother

you have him emerging in his patented little Halloween costume.

ANGER: Well, see, Anton was a showman

and his concept of satanism was show business.

It was just part of the San Francisco scene.

I think, back on this period in the '605,

where The Cockettes were over in North Beach

creating insane midnight movie experiences

and a few years later, Charles Manson would end up in the Haight, Ashbury.

You know, black power movement,

queer cultures exploding and being defined,

there's this booming outside of the image of what America was representing.

And what is your wish?

Iwould like Satan to arise an insatiable desire

in the heart of that lovely young bank teller

who's just moved in to my neighborhood.

He said his name was Roger.

Insatiable desire

shall follow Roger

and lust shall reign supreme.

In America, Satanism is sensationalized and kind of misunderstood.

And people associate it with worshiping the devil

and things like that.

But it's really a philosophy about, uh,

individuality and self-preservation.

It's about, uh,

you know, being your own god.

This is a very selfish religion.

We believe in greed, we believe in selfishness,

we believe in all of the lustful thoughts that motivate men...

MATT: His version of Satanism is a kind of

inflammatory inversion of Christian doctrine.

So if Christianity is saying

you know, "Live without sin", he's saying, "All the sins are awesome.

"Do 'em all the time."

If you're gonna be a sinner, be the best sinner on the block.

If you're going to do something that's, uh, naughty, do it

and realize that you're doing something naughty and enjoy it.

The devil has been the guy that's kept the church in business for many, many years.

Without him and the concept of evil,

where would the church be?

Oh, God!

God is dead!

Satan lives!

Truth is starting to be revealed in what our iconography is

and it's a scary thing to see something outside of that.

Probably, Anton represented some sort of answer.

Well, that's it for that part.

I don't think thatJayne Mansfield

would think much of going to the Church of Satan.

I'm sure she was into checking everything out

if there was something there

that would kind of shed a little light on her.

So, stranger,

do we have anything to talk about?

Sexual freedom is something we feel is very important.

You know, when you talk about a satanist,

you have to put it in context of Christianity.

The Satan part of Christianity was the denigration of sexuality,

especially women's sexuality,

and did a lot of things to make it a taboo,

to express that sexuality,

and Jayne was all about expressing that sexuality.

MARILYN: Catholicism is like, "You can look, but don't touch.

"You can touch, but don't taste.

"You can taste, but whatever you do, do not swallow."

It's like, "Well, why put it in your fucking mouth in the first place?"

You know, what am I here for? I'm not allowed have any sensory

involvement with the world.

WATERS: Jayne was drawn to it, so was Susan Atkins of the Manson family.

He's developing a Hollywood crowd.

Sammy Davis Jr., Tuesday Weld, Keenan Wynn.

She's always liked that dark side of things.

She always wants to investigate the dark side of everything.

What do you expect me to be, a nun?

BENZA: She wants to be photographed at the Church of Satan

and doing whatever they do there.

CHERYL: This is a way for her to go into that.

This is a way for her to explore her kind of concept of being black

and what a great way that blackness is represented

within the kind of culture of Satan,

the culture of darkness, the culture of something that's sort of unexplainable,

but spiritual in a way, too.

WATERS: And so,

the idea of her with the chalice

and Anton...

Anton liked publicity, too.

(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS) Well, they were a perfect pair.

I mean, here's a sex positive woman,

you know, she's been in Playboy, she's been nude in films...

WATERS: Was she really a practicing Satanist?

I can't picture her slaughtering goats.

I'm not under contract to Walt Disney.

I don't think

she ever got nude on his altar.

MATT: Jayne Mansfield is a powerful, natural witch.

Jayne was a very sensual woman.

There are so many things we'd like to know, Ms. Mansfield.

And what do you think of a European man?

-JAYNE: Absolutely divine. -(BOTH LAUGH)

Oh, they're just wonderful.

European men know just what to do with a woman.

They command their supreme masculinity

and at the same time they have a woman way up high on a pedestal.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, with the hand kissing you like, of course.

JAYNE: That's right, that's right.

And there's no place a woman would rather be than on a pedestal.

A part of my family's from Transylvania.

INTERVIEWER: Is it necessary to kill you by driving a stake through your heart

or would just a knock on the head do it?

I will never die.

MATT: They're both visually polar opposites

Sort of like Beauty and the Beast.

EILEEN: You can see why he and Jayne Mansfield

go together so beautifully.

And they're both, frankly, publicity whores.

The blond bombshell, perfect kind of whiteness

and the dark, evil satanic image,

and you put those two together and you get...sex.

ANGER: Well, Anton liked attractive women.

And she was a very attractive woman.

I'm sure they had an affair.

Which would be unnatural if they didn't.

CHERYL: In looking atJayne's sort of history of playfulness and the body

and knowing who she is,

here's this guy representing a movement

to be sex positive again in a different way.

WOMAN 1: He really actually was the one person in her life

who really celebrated her exhibitionism.

WOMAN 2: The power of her visit Anton LaVey

is you have to have a shockable community.

You have to have an operational patriarchy.

She has to have something to oppose in order to be awesome.

Well, at first look, the idea of Jayne Mansfield and Anton LaVey

being in a relationship together is absurd.

And it's kind of like, just sort of outrageous and silly

and you kind of think, "Well, that couldn't really be.

"I mean, she's not goth.

"She's not scary.

"She's not, you know, wicked."

But then, on deeper reflection,

it actually makes perfect sense in a lot of ways,

because both people have created this persona for themselves.

In a lot of ways, it's about celebrating the taboo

and really giving in to your desires.

Kind of going against the grain, of what, you know,

of the conservative or religious mainstream was saying was good or bad.

Think about the pictures that we do see of the moments

of Anton and Jayne.

In memory, it kind of makes it seem

as though Jayne Mansfield was just hanging out at the black house all the time.

And, you know, "This is me, drinking my blood

from a chalice."

They're really staged and posed.

It's not like somebody just popped them off

while they were doing something behind the scenes or whatnot.

I mean, I think they're both very conscious of their presentations

and having these pictures be released to the public.

So, I don't think either of them are playing dumb dumb

and forming an alliance and forming a moment of media spectacle

around their relating to each other.

I think it's what's behind the scenes

going on between the two of them and their friendship

is what's really interesting.

And that, she's starting to become a confidante

of somebody who is giving her spiritual comfort.

And, giving her solutions to some of her story tellings and spectacles about her life

to the point where, you know,

some of the wisdom that he gave her

and, you know, the answers that he gave her, they came up with together

became curses for people in her life.

Ifind it hard to believe

that Anton LaVey was a powerful enough magician

to be able to put a curse on somebody

and actually have it kill them.

Curses, shmurses.

I, frankly, think it's all a bunch of bullshit.

I don't go along with the idea that you can put a curse on like that

unless you are someone extraordinary.

The rumors of the curse,

I don't know!

After a while, the more you read,

the more you research, the more you learn,

a part of me wants to believe it.

Very few celebrities, they seem to have some ability

you'd almost swear to make this happen,

and you just get these crazy confluences

of impossible coincidences

that all seem to have to do with fame, notoriety,

lurid sex, and lurid death

and these things all come to certain stars only

and in a way that almost makes you believe

there's some sort of occult force.

Kenneth Anger does not give lectures about occult subjects.

It's something that either you

are on the wavelength

and then you understand, or you don't.

And then, if you are not on the wavelength, forget about it.

What about bad spells?

Well, we don't-- Your dad, your father was the founder, a Mason.

He put a spell overJayne Mansfield and it backfired.

No, it wasn't on Jayne Mansfield.

It's very dangerous to take a woman into any man's house,

let alone a man who worships the devil.

Now, you're really looking for trouble.

Of course, it's dangerous

and rather ominous.

The implications of what happened to people in real life.

So, Brody, like an idiot, you know,

takes her in the house

and he kind of debunks all of it.

He's kind of making fun of things that they go on,

and apparently, legend has it,

he lit a skull candle in Anton's lair.

And that pissed off LaVey.

Maybe more happened, but apparently, because of that,

there was a curse put on him.

A matter of fact, he said he would even die in a car accident.

It was spooky, and I love spooky things.

You have a curse on you and you're going to be dead within the year.

Excuse, I don't mean to be rude,

but what I want to get to, they put a spell on Sam Brody

but, unfortunately, she was in the car with him

so, the spell backfired.

She was told, "Distance yourself from this guy because it's in the post,

and, if you're next to him, you're gonna get it too."

For whatever reason, she... Went in here and out that one.

It's difficult when someone says you're gonna die in a car accident.

You've gotta drive.

So, every time you get in the car,

that voice is gonna be in your head.

You're gonna always be nervous of a car wreck.

(CAR HONKS)

NARRATOR: Evil has visited the Earth in many forms.

Now, it returns as the car.

(CAR HONKS)

But, was it because he cast a spell on Sam

or was it because Anton cast a spell on all of them

or the car itself? We don't know.

But, the fact is that

that... that spell that they cast on people

can become self-fulfilling.

You can keep thinking of it and almost make it happen.

I believe that hate is necessary in a controlled way

just as much as love is necessary.

The only people that I would cast a curse or a spell on

would be people, individually, that would, sort of, get under my skin.

NARRATOR: Her lover, lawyer Sam Brody,

was a decidedly unsavory character

was the one

who brought the curse upon himself.

There was, decidedly, a curse

marked in the presence of other people.

Jayne was warned

constantly and periodically

in no uncertain terms

that she must avoid his company

because great harm would befall him.

ANTON: Shemhamforash! Hail Satan!

And so, it is done.

I think there's an element to Mansfield's story

in which she is partaking

in something that is deeper and bigger

and is reminiscent of ourselves and our cultural heritage.

Jayne Mansfield is the Aphrodite woman

and in particular, the tragic Aphrodite woman.

When you look at her in that way,

gives you an opportunity to really get more of a sense

of why she was such a sensation.

It isn'tjust about her psychology.

It's really about her mythology.

Her beauty, the way men fought over her,

it seems as if it's bigger than just her.

Two issues about the tragic Aphrodite figure.

One of them is that she can't get old.

Beauty dies.

There's another dark side to Aphrodite.

And that is that she may engender that feeling

of you being very special.

But, she also, is going to be looking for who the next person is,

or next man is, that she can attract to herself.

And, that is really a big problem

because if men think they're very special to her,

and then she can kind ofjust move right on,

which is whatJayne did.

She really moved on

depending on, you know, what her feeling was for somebody.

Not necessarily what their feeling was for her.

Anton was not fond of Brody.

In fact, he wanted Jayne to leave Brody.

And he told Jayne, "You are with a bad guy. This is not a good guy."

MAN: Sam Brody still went out,

because he just couldn't disconnect.

But, maybe if she had, maybe if she had listened to Anton LaVey,

things would have been totally different.

It gets even crazier because,

you know, the kids see pictures of Anton's house,

they see pictures of Anton's lion, Togare.

Anton LaVey got him as a cub

and raised him in San Francisco.

ANGER: And, I saw the damn lion in the basement.

A lion is not a pussy cat.

How tame can a lion be?

It's a wild animal.

It could respect you as a human being

and it's another species still

which, ordinarily, it would eat.

They're apex predators.

They have no business being in people's homes.

I don't know. They say he makes too much noise.

I never really hear him.

I heard him.

He does make a little noise.

I heard him one time when Iwas walking past

but I don't think,

I don't really think he's that noisy.

(LION ROARS)

It became impossible for the lion to be living in San Francisco.

(SCOFFING) Surprise, surprise.

So, he came to us

with beautifulAlice, who was his lioness.

All we really knew about Togare

was that he lived with a man who practiced black magic.

Which, of course, gave it an aura of mystique

and he was the terror of the Shambala Preserve.

You know, he really had a great reputation.

A wonderful reputation.

What did the lion learn from this man, Anton LaVey?

-(LIONS GROWLING) -(MAN SHOUTING)

And, it was beautiful.

Physically, very beautiful.

NARRATOR: Roar.

And, one day, we found out that Alice was pregnant.

And, she had a little cub.

And, we named him after Bill Blatty

who was the author of The Exorcist.

We were introduced to Bill Blatty

and as Mr. Blatty was writing his book,

he would give me the chapters.

The upshot of that, is we named the little cub Bill... Billy.

It's fabulous.

A black magic background,

the author who wrote The Exorcist,

so, it all gets to be very...

...interesting

to say the least.

(GROWLS)

(GROWLS)

MAN: Jayne goes back to LA and tells her children about her experiences

and the kids, they all want to see a lion.

MAN: Sam Brody steps in and kind of one ups Anton

and says, "I'll take them to the zoo.

I'll let them meet a lion up close."

MAN: Jayne and her boyfriend, Sam Brody,

take the kids some place called Jungle Land

where there's a lion.

WOMAN:Jungle Land, USA, was a private zoo,

in Thousand Oaks,

that they housed all the animals that worked in show business and in the movies,

like the MGM lion.

(LION ROARS)

They were breeding animals there,

and they would let people go in

and have a relationship with the animals.

Ifind the confluence of the fact

that Anton LaVey had a pet lion

and that her child was mauled by a lion

in a totally different setting

to be just unbelievable.

I mean, this was the kind of thing, you can't make this stuff up.

(LION ROARS)

Welcome toJungle Land, USA.

Okay, everyone, don't be scared.

Simba's an actor. He's been in lots and lots of movies and TV shows.

Oh, he sure looks ferocious,

doesn't he, kids?

Can we pet him?

Sure, just be careful. And, nobody move too quickly, okay?

We've told Brody.

Nobody had to go all the way to Frisco

and shake the devil's hand

to just pet a lion.

Isn't he soft?

Alright now, it's time for Simba to take a nap.

Please, can we play with him some more?

I'll put him in his cage and you can look at him as much as you want.

How's that?

-(LION ROARS) -(CHILDREN SCREAM)

PHOTOGRAPHER: (LAUGHING) That's great.

CHILD: He's so cute.

Excuse me, Ms. Mansfield,

could me and the boys possibly get some shots of you with the chimpanzee?

-0h! (LAUGHS) -(CHILDREN LAUGH)

Oh, I think I found my new co-star.

She's trying to steal my scene.

-Perfect. -(MON KEY CHITTERS)

Oh! This chimp's a bigger ham than Mamie Van Doren

Hey, how about one of you and the kids?

Alright. Come on kids. Gather around me and Mrs. Banana.

Zoltan, where's Zoltan?

(SCREAMING)

-Oh. -CHILD: Get him off me!

-(LION ROARS) -(CHILDREN WHIMPER)

-(SCREAMING) -(LION ROARS)

Oh! My baby. My baby!

Let go of my baby.

-Jayne, no. No, no, stay back. -Oh, God!

The boy is alive. Call an ambulance.

-(SCREAMING) -Hurry up.

(EXCLAIMS) Oh, my sweet angel.

Oh. Oh, I pray to you, don't let my baby die.

(CRYING) Please. Please.

Please save my child.

Save, save my child.

Save my child.

Don't let my baby die.

Anton... Anton...

-Jayne. -(EXCLAIMS)

Yeah, I think everybody heard about it.

To me, it was... Well, this is one of the main reasons

why we should not have any human contact with these animals

even if they are in captivity.

MAN: The kid's getting last rites,

priests are brought in. I mean, it's over.

MAN: They're at the hospital and Jayne doesn't know what to do.

And, she's desperate

and she calls Anton LaVey to come and help.

She believes that this is all part of the curse.

MAN: Legend has it, Anton LaVey

goes up to the top of Mount Tamalpais in San Francisco.

He cast this incantation on top, for the boy,

forJayne's son to live.

(THUNDER RUMBLING)

Come forth, oh, great spawn of the abyss,

and manifest thy presence.

Let that which bears against the one known as Zoltan

be rendered powerless and devoid of substance.

Restore him to power, to joy.

to unending dominion

over the reverses that have beset him.

Fill around and within him the exultant radiance

that will herald his emergence

from the stagnant morass which engulfs him.

Shemhamforash.

(ECHOING) Hail Satan!

VOICES: Hail Satan.

(BEEPING)

(ECHOING) And so, it is done.

Hours later,

the doctors at the hospital

rush out of the room to tellJayne and Sam he's gonna make it.

Something's occurred, he's turned a corner, he's gonna be fine. He's back.

So, of course, this is met with gratification from Jayne.

She's just over the moon as anybody else would be

but, that's the kind of drama that she brought with her.

Especially that picture, where she's hugging her son,

in front of a Christmas tree,

who's just been released from the hospital

from being mauled by a lion of all mad things. (LAUGHS)

She really looks dreadful.

She looks very much like she's old,

she's coming apart at the seams,

at the same time, you can still... Technically, she's a young woman

and it's a very, very haunting and troubling image.

If you ask Anton LaVey to practice some of his black magic,

and save your son who's about to die,

and he does,

well, you're a convert for life.

And, I think that's when she, you know, became a witch and never turned back.

WOMAN: Mansfield was born a Methodist, raised a Methodist,

and then, she considers converting to Catholicism

and then, she flirts with Judaism,

and then, she moves into considering being a Satanist.

MAN: There are some folks who believe

thatJayne, actually, was a High Priestess in the Church,

and she'd memorized hundreds of verses, etc., of the Satanic Bible.

MAN: Anton LaVey kind of gifts these celebrity people

who are interested in him

with positions in the Church

as more of a, kind of, honorary title.

MAN: Was she that brilliant?

Did she memorize that much in the Satanic bible?

Was she, in fact, a High Priestess?

I don't know. I don't know.

(ECHOING) Only He knew what was in my heart.

Only He knew what was in my heart.

God has always been close to me.

Only He knew what was in my heart.

MAN: And so, it is done.

WOMAN: Devil, Jesus, Catholicism.

Jesus. Stars were made to suffer.

MAN: I know I have been rumored to have cursed Jayne Mansfield,

caused her death in that car crash.

Jayne Mansfield was a member of the Church of Satan.

Prices of superstar crisis.

(ECHOING) Only He knew what was in my heart.

Only He knew what was in my heart.

WOMAN: Generally, I think, most people would read her life story

and think, "What a mess." (LAUGHS)

You know, from early on, there's a kind of spinning movement

revolving men

that involves keeping them in her orbit

while she's brining in others and then, some are spinning out

her, you know, losing her children, getting them back,

a constant battle revolving door of the children,

always wanting more children.

Always working on the Pink Palace,

the kind of never-finished Pink Palace.

There's this quality of chaos

that she seemed to want to have around her

and, she also seemed to have to keep expanding

in her search.

So, to bring in someone who'll then say,

"Yeah, let's make that pact with the devil,"

she, almost without thought, says, "Sure, I'll take that bargain."

and then, wants to kind of take it back.

But then wants to keep re-bargaining and re-bargaining (LAUGHS)

with devil, God, devil, God.

So much of a part of, I think, her ability to even navigate this world at all

is that you've got to keep a constant, intense circuit

of desire going at all times.

I think, the worst thing that would have happened to Jayne Mansfield

is that the chaos would have stopped.

'Cause I don't think life would have been worth living for her

even if she didn't have this,

more babies, more chihuahuas, (LAUGHS)

more fame, more supermarket openings,

she just never wanted them to get off the merry go round.

You get a lot of those kind of damp readings,

of "if only she could have settled down..."

If she could have settled down, she wouldn't have been Jayne Mansfield.

MAN: Put yourself in Jayne's shoes.

What really, I think, kind of sucks Jayne

into the whole world of Anton LaVey

is that, you know, more than anything else,

we know that she was a great and doting mother.

And, she wanted her baby with Matt back.

Baby Tony was somebody she wanted back in a hurry.

Anton said he could deliver that.

And then he cast the spell or does whatever he does inside the Church of Satan,

and lo and behold, Jayne has baby Tony back

miraculously, or maybe not so much.

He comes back because Sam Brody brings the child back.

So, now, Jayne is torn.

Does she go on, then, to believe everything Anton says

and does she think every promise he makes is gonna be made good?

I mean, Sam's in her life. Sam's in her house.

She's in a bad position.

Does she feel good that Sam's back with the baby?

That's a blessing. But, is Sam a blessing

since he, kind of, has this whole spell cast on him by Anton?

At this point, bad things began to happen.

A matter of fact, Anton would warn Jayne, "Don't get in the car with him."

WOMAN: One of the things I find impossible that comes out of the legend

that Sam Brody was cursed by Anton LaVey

is the legend of seven different car accidents.

(CRASH)

In Sunset Strip, people drove really fast.

Up and down the road, it was very, very windy

and she lived at the windy section

close to Dead Man's Curve.

And, that's what the song was written about

where Jan crashed and died.

Very close to Jayne Mansfield's house.

(POLICE SIREN)

Her boyfriend Brody had a lot of car accidents

probably because of that road.

(CRASH)

Because, Sunset Strip, they're coming home late at night.

And, probably some late night drinking

and, you know, that's what happens.

(CRASH)

Some minor, some a little more than minor,

but in essence, it was proving true,

that the spell that Anton cast, maybe there was some truth to it.

She's banked everything on her ability to stop the room

and it's her flesh that stops the room

That's the deal she's stuck in.

Seems to me, at the end of her life,

she's struggling

trying to figure out what other deal she can cut now, with the cosmos.

JAYNE: Only he knew what was in my heart.

Only he knew what was in my heart.

One day, Sam, he leaves the house

and gets in the car makes a left on Sunset, I believe

and he gets broadsided, there's a huge accident on the street

and he falls out of the car with a terribly injured leg.

And that even makes her feel more sorry for Sam

because, again, is Anton really the cause of all this?

Sam, call him what you will, lawyer of course,

but he's many other things beside that.

And, he was actually handling a career through (indistinct) at that point.

JAYNE: I have no intention of ever marrying him.

But, he's got all my business.

Everything in his briefcase,

and he won't give them back.

MAN: He promised he'd get her back on her feet,

and really make her the huge star she wanted to be.

But, it doesn't work that way at all.

The great push me, pull you effect with Jayne Mansfield

really is most evident toward the end of her life

when Sam Brody promises her USO tour overseas.

He delivers on that.

And, at this point, she's so thrilled

that she can get work, that she kind of takes him back in.

REPORTER: Ms. Mansfield, you've been quoted as saying

you wouldn't mind entertaining for the Viet Cong.

Would you explain that, please?

What I actually said was this,

is that I feel that the Viet Cong soldiers,

soldiers here,

all over the world, in every branch of service,

all these soldiers are carrying out the orders of their superiors.

WORONOV: We have wars

when we don't need them, like Vietnam.

Vietnam is an enormous sacrifice,

we're killing boys,

left and right, and we're also killing a lot of Vietnamese.

And, we are excited

because we are aggressive again.

And, then, we're embarrassed

so, we slip it under the rug.

I will do whatever is necessary

to... to...

to extend world peace, to provide, to help

and to establish world peace.

Because, I believe war is a foolish, childish,

animalistic, unthinking,

unintelligent way of trying to accomplish a purpose.

It really is just, you just take lives,

and, and, destroy beautiful property.

Why?

It's ridiculous. It's sad.

You bring a sex pot like Jayne Mansfield overseas

to a bunch of guys who haven't seen a woman,

or been near a woman in a long time,

there's gonna be trouble.

And, this was like a scene out of Apocalypse Now.

(CH EERING AND WHISTLING)

The USO tour

she so badly wanted ends up being a disaster.

She's not herself. She's out of it.

She's loaded, or whatever.

The way she acted,

maybe it was the liquor.

Whatever it was, it spelled trouble.

The boys got rowdy.

It got so rowdy to the point that it was a bad scene,

they had to break it up and Jayne had to get out of there.

But, it wasn't a successful USO trip at all.

(PANTING)

JAYNE: There's no front line at Vietnam, you know?

The fighting is everywhere. Everywhere.

Everywhere that I was,

there was, there were people, you know, brought in,

dead, or half dead...

Either right before, or during, or right after,

there were mortar attacks in the Viet Cong,

or the Northern Vietnamese,

And, it's just an experience where you just...

If you feel that you'd make some...

anyone happy. Add something, you know?

You feel... You feel good.

But, I... I really, I got very broken

very broken up about this.

They're lying there without limbs.

And, there's no one.

There's no one there to hold their hand

and say I love you, everything's gonna be fine.

This one person in particular,

he just got to me.

He lost his leg, you know?

And, he was very beautiful,

was 25 years, they're all beautiful,

but he was 25 years old, and, and...

the thing... (SNIFFLES)

that upset me most is that the thing...

that none of them...

(VOICE BREAKING) They're so proud of what they did.

There's no bitterness at all, you know?

At some point, there's a breaking point and it's like,

you either break

or you go, "No, no, I'm not doing that."

Everything is becoming increasingly constricted

in her later life

where she's exhausted the possibilities

and Anton LaVey hasn't been able to come through with her.

Satanism is not going to work for her either.

MAN: And also, those spells that Anton cast,

that she still remembers over her head.

I mean, to the point where even her lawyer believed he was cursed

and actually, had to eat crow,

and go and apologize.

HAHN: There are pictures of Anton in his Satanist suit

with the children, with Sam and Jayne

and this seems to me to be, he's getting a tour of the house

and they're being photographed. It's as if he's a family friend.

The assumption that she is a High Priestess of Satan

and has been incorporated into his Church of Satan

and that he is the jealous lover,

they're playing with each other.

They're making use of each other

is what I get from the implication

that they're together in 1967 in her house.

So 1967,

Jayne and Brody went with Anton to La Scala

to basically, ask him to take this curse off of them.

So, if they're having a big argument,

I'm sure everybody is seeing it and would hear it.

The night that they left La Scala,

after they asked Anton to take the curse off of them,

he's going on Sunset Strip with Jayne and he crashes into a tree.

So, I guess the curse was not lifted.

(CAR TIRES SCREECHING)

(CRASH)

But, she still wanted to work.

When Jayne was showing her ass, she was really, she needed to make that money.

You seem to be concentrating more now on cabaret than films,

does this mean your career has moved into a new phase?

No, Ijust finished two very important films.

Two very important films.

One, Guide for the Married Man with Terry Thomas,

with 20th Century Fox

in Hollywood which will be released within two or three months.

The biggest film this year,

and Single Room Furnished.

Uh, we had to stop, unfortunately, for a flat tire,

in one of your towns, prior to reaching Tralee

and there were three or four hundred people

that crowded around the car,

thatJayne Mansfield was in

Now, this is a town of 500 people

apparent by the reaction, they love Jayne Mansfield.

The amount of choices she made, the amount of time she said yes,

far outweighed the amount of time she said no

and that's trouble in a way.

You gotta say no more often than yes, as you get older.

The last few days of her life were just one bad decision after another.

Jayne and Mamie Van Doren were both on this dinner theater circuit.

North Carolina, Mississippi...

Hello, Tawny, what are you doing out in the country?

Oh, hello, Boots darling. I thought it was about time to get acquainted with Woody.

You two kissing cousins enjoy yourselves.

I've got work to do.

MAN: Yeah, Mamie knew where her career was at.

She embraced it. She got the whole B-level thing.

Jayne thought she could take the B-level and jump right back to A status.

You can't do that.

She needs a big Hail Mary to get back.

And, I'm not sure dinner theater in Biloxi will get you there.

And, Mamie innocently asked her

"Can we, kind of, switch shifts or switch gigs?"

which was kind of commonplace back then.

Mamie had some other commitment, so, Jayne was thrilled.

She wanted to use it as a vacation, take the kids down,

she flies out there with Sam...

We always take our children with us.

MAMIE: Jayne always liked to go to the South.

It was right on the water, within Biloxi, Mississippi.

MAN: Let's have a big round of applause for Miss Jayne Mansfield.

MAN: She's doing a tacky show,

basically, she's sitting on old men's laps.

Listen, Nikki. I'm on my way to New Orleans

and I've worked out this fabulous new act.

Really now, really wicked. You know what I mean?

And, honey? I want you to do it with me.

Jayne, we have been through this before.

Sam can't drive because his leg is messed up from the accident on Sunset Boulevard.

So, a younger person was behind the wheel.

And, they're driving quick to make this appointment in New Orleans

for the next morning's TV gig

That damn spraying machine's gonna keep us here all night.

No, it's not. Jayne has to make that talk show.

We're gonna be late.

-(TIRES SCREECHING) -(JAYNE SCREAMING)

NEWS REPORTER: A bulletin hasjust been handed to me.

Hollywood star, the buxom and beautifulJayne Mansfield is dead.

She was killed instantly when the car she was riding in collided with a truck

a few miles from New Orleans, early this morning.

A flaming, grinding car crash

ended the bright movie career of famed Jayne Mansfield

on June 29th, 1967.

Jayne Mansfield died while driving to New Orleans.

At 33 years of age,

Hollywood's smartest dumb blonde

lay at the side of the road.

She died instantly

and was almost decapitated.

MAN: Her, Sam and the driver were in the front seat,

her three kids are in the back,

laying down, sleeping.

Had they been sitting up, they'd be dead too.

The car slides under the trailer

and essentially, just destroys the three people in the front seat,

Jayne, Sam and the driver.

So, things get very eerie if your Anton LaVey

because, on the morning thatJayne dies,

he's alone, cutting up pages of a German magazine,

of pictures of himself laying flowers down

at Marilyn Monroe's grave.

And, as he makes the particular cuts he's been making,

something in his body,

something in his being, he felt funny with one of the snips of his scissors.

When he's done cutting out,

he turns the page and realizes

that on the other side of the page was a picture ofJayne Mansfield

and that his scissors had cut through her neck.

And, in the next moment, they telephone him

because, of course, LaVey is the first person they would call.

They telephone him to tell him of her death

and he realizes he caused it.

He decapitated Jayne.

He only wanted to kill Sam Brody.

But, inadvertently, his great powers of Satanism,

by accident, gotJayne too.

So, what have we got?

It was at, approximately,

I'm telling you what I saw.

There was a crash and a bang, and a load of smoke.

(ECHOING) Now, this is all that is left

of a 1966 Buick.

That's the car thatJayne Mansfield,

the famous movie star, was killed in.

(SPEAKING OVER EACH OTHER) Now, a lot of people

don't like to look at dead bodies.

But, theyjust get up in there, jammed up in the car.

There was, apparently,

a wig set, approximately, just there on the dash.

And the reporters... Well, they came, in their droves

and they couldn't get it cleaned up before they came

and so, they saw that and theyjust ran with it.

-Now, a lot of people think... -(CRYING)

...thatJayne's head came right off

but, I can tell you

it was intact.

A lot of people believe that.

A lot of people still do believe that.

But, a lot of people believe that and still believe it.

But, she wasn't. I embalmed her.

So, I know she wasn't.

MAN: Jayne dies June 29th, 1967.

And, she's laid out in a cemetery in Argyl, Pennsylvania

with a white marble, heart-shaped tombstone

that says, "We live to love you more each day."

MAN: I know that the mother took it back, right?

'Cause she wanted the body in Pennsylvania

which Jayne is still clawing.

I bet you're gonna hear her trying to get out of Pennsylvania.

If you go there at night, I bet you can hear her

clawing her way every once in a while

to get back to Hollywood where she belongs.

MAN: Jayne Mansfield was a starry-eyed romantic.

She had a passion for love.

And a passion for heart-shaped objects.

The house Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay shared

is more rightly called a mansion.

Engelbert purchased it years and years later and he was the last to own it.

And, unfortunately, he sold it in 2002 to developers.

We saw it demolished. It was like losing a piece of the community.

This was nothing like it.

There were no other Pink Palaces in the neighborhood.

This building is actually, fairly new for the neighborhood.

I believe it was built in 2008,

but, prior to that, it was the Church of Satan.

So, apparently, he grew up here. This was his parents' house

and he kind of came of age

and took over the house. He turned it into a Church...

of the Devil.

So, we used to have individual numbers for our address

that were, you know, listed horizontally.

And they all start with six, so it ended up having a vertical six, six, six.

Um, and they kept getting stolen.

So, we ended up having to get, like, one plaque, all together.

We were in escrow and that's when Ifound out.

There was one little line in the contract that said something like,

"Former Church of Satan,

"home of Anton LaVey,

"head of the Church of Satan," or something like that, I can't remember exactly.

And I didn't know what it was, but my parents both grew up in this neighborhood.

(BARKS)

So, Chuck, because of the history of the house,

every year, for Halloween... I'm not a big dresser-upper myself,

but this is a fun neighborhood at Halloween.

Lots of people out and about

and I dress Chuck up like a lion.

And one, because he kind of looks like a lion, he's got the right coloring for it.

And Anton LaVey used to have a lion that lived in the backyard.

He did die here, on the property.

And, in fact, I don't even think he owned the home anymore

I think the people that actually did own the home

just let him live out his days there.

The death certificate says Anton LaVey died on Halloween

and perhaps, that is fitting for a man

who became one of San Francisco's special characters

after he founded his own, so called, Satanic Church.

There were nudes on the altar, a pet lion and a house painted black.

He dies on October 29th,

and then, has his death certificate faked

so that it reads that he died on the morning of Halloween

which is, sort of a, you know, beautiful ending.

With Anton's death, the Church of Satan also died.

His house on California Street...

Um, I think it's been torn down, I haven't been by there recently

but someone told me it's gone.

If Kurt Cobain died for Rock and Roll,

then, the Black House died for Satan.

So, Anton's big black house that he lived in

was razed in 2001.

Several months later, in 2002, Jayne's Pink Palace is razed to the ground.

So, now, any physical manifestation

of these two, and the lives they led, is gone.

In a way, there is something that is more powerful

about a thing that doesn't exist anymore.

It's, sort of, the fantasy of what it was like back in the olden days.

Itjust lights up the culture

because there's a way in which everybody knows that story.

Everybody is tuned into that myth

that beauty doesn't last.

The culture needs a sacrifice.

Only, that's all wiped out.

I mean, the Greeks sacrificed all the time.

I mean, every time they had lunch, they had to kill a cow.

But, we don't do that anymore.

What we do, is submerged,

you know, like we killed witches in the beginnings.

If somebody who was too smart, ahead of our time, and has a weird death,

and is connected somehow towards devil worshiping,

it is considered a sacrifice and the culture enjoys it.

The culture enjoys sacrifice.

When Diana died,

they called her the people's Princess.

And, her death was actually celebrated

as being something that was to be mourned by the world

in a way thatJayne did not experience.

Then, when Jayne hit her tragic death,

people said, "We're not surprised.

"You know, she was taking chances.

"She was flirting with the devil.

"It was only a matter of time."

She probably crossed too many lines.

She took risks.

WOMAN: She was a pioneer in many ways

who was testing the limits

because, she was anticipating

the destruction of those old codes

and those prohibitions.

Jayne, in a lot of ways, isn't given the credit that she deserves.

She was unafraid to do things that opened doors.

But, when you're the first to do them a lot of times,

you're the one who's, kind of, like, spanked for it.

I never felt it was tragic, her life.

Never did I feel it was tragic.

Even when she died in a car accident, it was--

She would have wanted to go like that.

With blood, and guts

and a headline on the front page and a dead chihuahua.

That's her.

Her death was kind of the end

that old demonization

of female sexuality.

It wasn't very long after that

that the women's movement began,

that the idea of transforming female sexuality

into something that was a positive force

that there began to be a celebration

of the female sexuality.

And, isn't it kind of odd in some way

that part of her sensationalism

was to mark the end of that?

MAN: When a celebrity dies, we, all of a sudden, have, like a...

...kind of different perspective on what they were like

as people

and usually, it's an improvement.

WOMAN: You make up the story and you pack it up with evidence.

But, if the evidence itself is questionable,

if it's media coverage of a Hollywood starlet,

it's really hard to know what happened.

And, you never can be sure

what is history and fact versus rumor and hearsay, Iwish I knew.

There's this, sort of,

legacy that will, forever, be fascinating.

We want to know more, we want to know as much as possible.

She will always be an icon

because, she never was a wrinkly old broad.

She will always be this wonderful, glorious woman.

And, maybe the greatest thing she ever pulled off, or the greatest gig she ever had

was keeping us suspended

and wondering what happened to her

and what would have been.

Maybe, that's what she leaves us,

for all of us to keep wondering.

And, the show kind of, goes on.

MAN: The legend ofJayne Mansfield

lives on, partially because, like so many other legends,

you know, her life was cut so short.

She died at 34.

And, she represented such a wonderful beauty

and freedom of sexuality and sassiness

and being larger than life

and living in a Pink Palace,

I mean, it really is the stuff that legends are made of.

MAN: She was a fun lady.

We're lucky that we've had little glimpses of wonderful creatures

like Jayne Mansfield and Anton LaVey.

I don't care if it's true, I like to picture that.

I like to picture it.

At a certain level, you sometimes, have to just print the legend.

So, it is done.

REPORTER: How much longer do you think you can be a sex symbol?

Forever, darling.

("I WALK LIKE JAYNE MANSFIELD" PLAYING)

So, what's the mystery?

I'm just a perfectly normal American girl. (SQUEALS)