Skip to main content

'Jayne knew exactly what she was doing': The forgotten story behind the most famous side-eye in Hollywood history

 

  From:- BBC World News

   By :- Gregory Wakeman

  Edited by :- Amal Udawatta

Alamy A black and white image of Sophia Loren side-eyeing Jayne Mansfield as they sit next to each other at a table. Jayne is smiling at the camera (Credit: Alamy)Alamy

One of show business's most glamorous – and notorious – images, there's more to this 1957 snapshot of Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield than might first appear.

On the night of Sophia Loren's "Welcome to Hollywood" dinner party in April 1957, Jayne Mansfield walked into the exclusive Romanoff's restaurant in Beverly Hills with a plan. The swanky soirée being thrown by Paramount Studios was packed with some of the biggest Hollywood stars of the era, from Barbara Stanwyck and Montgomery Clift to Gary Cooper and Shelley Winters. But it would be a candid photograph of Mansfield and Loren that would earn the evening an indelible place in Hollywood history.

According to Eve Golden, the author of Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn't Help It, Mansfield wanted to make sure all eyes were on her. Signed to a seven-year contract by Warner Bros. in February 1955, the then 24-year-old blonde former Playboy Playmate was seen as a rival to Marilyn Monroe, who had been "causing problems" for 20th Century Fox, Golden tells the BBC. Released just eight months apart, the huge success of The Girl Can't Help It (1956) and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) quickly established Mansfield as a star.

Sophia Loren was just 22 when she arrived in Hollywood. Born and raised in Italy under Mussolini's fascist regime, Loren's mother had her "own theatrical ambitions", says Mary Ann McDonald Carolan, author of The Transatlantic Gaze: Italian Cinema, American Film. Loren entered beauty competitions as a teenager, where she met her future husband, the film producer Carlo Ponti, before she enrolled at the national film school of Italy. Ponti produced many of her early films. Post-World War Two Italy was swamped with Hollywood productions, too, as studios took advantage of the country's lower production costs. "There was an extraordinary amount of artistic, economic, business, and cinematic exchange between Italy and America at that time," Carolan tells the BBC.

After the success of 1953's Aida and 1954's The Gold of Naples, which screened at that year's Cannes Film Festival, Paramount signed Loren, betting she could follow in the footsteps of her European counterparts Leslie Caron, Ingrid Bergman, and Marlene Dietrich.

Alamy The 1957 photo of Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield is one of the most iconic in Hollywood history (Credit: Alamy)Alamy
The 1957 photo of Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield is one of the most iconic in Hollywood history (Credit: Alamy)

By April 1957, it was time for Loren to make her debut amongst the Hollywood elite at Romanoff's, where Mansfield was the last guest to enter. She walked in covered by a "great big fur coat," says Golden. When she took it off she was wearing a backless, extremely low-cut satin dress, which she knew would draw the attention of everyone in the room, particularly the photographers. "She sauntered over and plumped herself right down next to Sophia Loren," says Golden. "It was definitely planned. Jane knew exactly what she was doing." Photographers Delmar Watson and Joe Shere shot Loren and Mansfield next to each other. But while Mansfield stared directly down the lens, Loren was captured giving the most famous side-eye in Hollywood history, glaring at her tablemate's cleavage. 

Sixty-eight years later, it's still one of the most iconic photographs in Hollywood history. Heidi Klum, Anna Nicole SmithSydney Sweeney and Maude ApatowSophia Vergara and Julie Bowen have all replicated it. The picture has endured because it presents Loren and Mansfield as polar opposites, the image symbolising elegance against bombast. Europe against America. Brunette against blonde. "It's almost as if they got dressed purposely as a contrast," says Carolan.

The photograph's long legacy

There are troubling implications linked to the prolonged prevalence of the image, however. It highlights the media's tendency to exaggerate female rivalry, pushing the harmful stereotype that women are always in competition. In reality, this was the only time they ever met, and Loren was perhaps worried that Mansfield was about to have a wardrobe failure in front of the press. In a 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Loren recalled, "Look at the picture. Where are my eyes? I'm staring at her nipples because I am afraid they are about to come onto my plate. In my face you can see the fear. I'm so frightened that everything in her dress is going to blow – boom! – and spill all over the table." 

In her new documentary My Mom Jayne, Mansfield's daughter Mariska Hargitay, who was three years old when she died, explores the actress's career in a bid to discover the mother she barely knew. Speaking to Vanity Fair, Hargitay admits that she struggled with the photograph as a youth. "That was a rough one. To see another woman look at your mom like that was excruciating for me as a little girl." Growing up, she developed a demure style that was the opposite of Mansfield's glamorous public image. In the documentary, Hargitay admits that she decided to become a different kind of actor with a different image to her mother, whose career struggles she was keen to avoid. Now 61, the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit actor is reclaiming Mansfield's story in the documentary – after all, this was a woman who could play violin and piano, spoke three languages, and who Life magazine called "Broadway's smartest dumb blonde".

Getty Images Jayne Mansfield's story is told by her daughter in a new documentary, My Mom Jayne (Credit: Getty Images)Getty Images
Jayne Mansfield's story is told by her daughter in a new documentary, My Mom Jayne (Credit: Getty Images)

This moment was to be the only time where the two women's careers criss-crossed, because while Loren's star was on the rise, Mansfield's was about to decline. In 1960, Loren won the best actress Oscar for Two Women, making her the first performer to win an Academy Award for a foreign-language role. Meanwhile, Mansfield's stunt at Loren's party was met harshly by 20th Century Fox. "This is when they realised they had signed a loose cannon," says Golden. "I think this is the moment Fox really stopped taking an interest in furthering her career."

In 1962, shortly after the death of Monroe, Mansfield was dropped by Fox, following three years of poor box-office performances. Suddenly, Golden says, with a "huge house to pay for and three children", Mansfield started opening supermarkets and petrol stations to "support her family". Golden believes that Mansfield's career ambitions were scuppered because while "she knew where she wanted to go, she didn't have the vaguest idea how to get there. She really needed a strong, smart manager."

Meanwhile, Loren was able to turn to the Oscar-winning producer Ponti for advice. "She has this incredible knowledge from inside the film industry," says Carolan. "She had a good sense of how to behave in the media circus. She couldn't be manipulated by the press or by managers." Loren was so astute at navigating her film career that she managed to combine Hollywood and Italian films while still remaining popular for nearly 70 years.

Getty Images Mansfield's career faltered in the 1960s, and she took other jobs to support her family (Credit: Getty Images)Getty Images
Mansfield's career faltered in the 1960s, and she took other jobs to support her family (Credit: Getty Images)

Not only did Mansfield's fame fizzle out, but her life ended in tragedy. When she died in a car crash on 29 June, 1967, at the age of 34, she was driving from a night-time appearance at a Mississippi supper club to a midday radio interview in New Orleans. But the journey wasn't unusual for someone who had insisted on appreciating every last drop of her fame since becoming a star. "She loved being in the spotlight. She loved her fans. She became her on-screen persona," says Golden. "You could call her the first reality star because she lived her life in public. No matter what she was doing, she had photographers and reporters along with her."

Carolan acknowledges that Mansfield helped to "pave the way for actresses like Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot, and Claudia Cardinale", as she broke down barriers in the male-dominated industry by proudly owning her beauty and sexuality. And while their paths might have only crossed fleetingly, Loren told Entertainment Weekly that she is still repeatedly asked to sign the famous picture. She always refuses, though. "I don't want to have anything to do with that. And also out of respect for Jayne Mansfield because she's not with us anymore." 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why did Homo sapiens outlast all other human species?

  From - Live Science By  Mindy Weisberger Edited by - Amal Udawatta Reproductions of skulls from a Neanderthal (left), Homo sapiens (middle) and Australopithecus afarensis (right)   (Image credit: WHPics, Paul Campbell, and Attie Gerber via Getty Images; collage by Marilyn Perkins) Modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) are the sole surviving representatives of the  human family tree , but we're the last sentence in an evolutionary story that began approximately 6 million years ago and spawned at least 18 species known collectively as hominins.  There were at least nine  Homo  species — including  H. sapiens  —  distributed around Africa, Europe and Asia by about 300,000 years ago, according to the Smithsonian's  National Museum of Nat ural History  in Washington, D.C. One by one, all except  H. sapiens  disappeared.  Neanderthals  and a  Homo  group known as the  Denisovans  lived alongside...

New Comet SWAN Now Visible in Small Scopes

     From :- Sky & Telescope  By :- Bob King  Edited by :- Amal Udawatta This spectacular image of Comet SWAN (C/2025 F2) was taken on April 6th and shows a bright, condensed coma 5′ across and dual ion tails. The longer one extends for 2° in PA 298° and the other 30′ in PA 303°. Details: 11"/ 2.2 RASA and QHY600 camera. Michael Jaeger Amateur astronomers have done it again — discovered a comet. Not by looking through a telescope but through close study of  publicly released, low-resolution images  taken by the  Solar Wind Anisotropies  (SWAN) camera on the orbiting  Solar and Heliospheric Observatory  (SOHO). On March 29th, Vladimir Bezugly of Ukraine was the first to report a moving object in SWAN photos taken the week prior. Michael Mattiazzo of Victoria, Australia, independently found "a pretty obvious comet" the same day using the same images, noting that the object was about 11th magnitude and appeared to be brightening. R...

The indigenous women saving India's endangered giant yams

  From BBC News   By-  Kamala Thiagarajan   Edited by - Amal Udawatta Sai Krishan, Thirunelly Tribal Special Intervention Programme Lakshmi and Shantha with a species of tuber locally called the Noorang (Credit: Sai Krishan, Thirunelly Tribal Special Intervention Programme) In a tribe in southern India, a group of women are working hard to revive the country's ancient native tubers, and bring them back into everyday culture. Lakshmi spends several hours each day digging out large lumpy and hairy yam tubers, starchy roots that grow below the soil. Some weigh an unwieldy 5kg (11lb) and are 4.5ft-long (1.4m), almost as tall as she is. It's painstaking work, says 58-year-old Lakshmi, who goes by one name. First, she has to cut out the thick shoot above the ground. Then, she uses shovels to dig up the earth around the buried stem and a paddle-like flat chisel to gently pry out the tuber. She uses her hands to dig the tuber out of the ground to avoid damaging its delicate...