About an hour ago, a big crowd walked in our stage door,
and it was Jayne Mansfield.
Here she is, the lovely Jayne Mansfield.
I feel like Mother Goose I have so many children.
What are their names? Who's that?
This is Miklós.
Hi, Miklós.
- Maria... - Pardon? Who are you?
This little fella, what's his name?
What is your name?
- Zolie! - What?
Get your own show, kid, will ya?
What's your name, darling?
Maria.
I feel that if you bear children,
your first obligation is to your children,
whether you're a movie star or whether you wash dishes.
If anything ever happens to my career,
if I'm in an auto accident,
if my face is scarred, if I lose my legs...
if any terrible mishap happens,
my children will always be cared for.
I was three years old when my mom died.
And I don't really have any memories of her.
I can remember one time eating a bowl of cereal...
and I remember her touching my hair.
But I don't know if that's a real memory
or something that I made up because I wished it happened.
After she passed away,
a moment that's always stayed with me is when
I found my baby book.
All of my siblings had one,
but when I looked through mine
it was practically empty.
So on top of having no memories,
I think it just gave me a sense of more loss.
It was like this little hole in my heart.
As I got older, my dad would say to me,
"Don't read the books about your mother.
Don't read the books.
You don't need to read those books."
He said that they were full of lies,
full of sensational bullshit.
Things that he didn't want me to have to deal with.
So I did everything he said and I never read the books.
At a certain point, I began to carry a lot of shame
about her image as a sex symbol
and all the choices that came with that.
So I pushed the idea of my mom
further and further away from my life.
But as my career grew, I started getting fan mail
from people who knew I was Jayne Mansfield's daughter.
Maybe they knew her or they had an interaction
or they had a photo.
And... it was just a lot.
"Dear Ms. Hargitay, I have a program
from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
in which your mother starred."
"Dear Mariska, I was a close friend of your mom and dad."
"Hello, Mariska. Jayne lived next door
and would practice her violin every afternoon."
"Dear Ms. Hargitay,
you should have this memorabilia of your mom.
They include your birth announcement and other stuff."
I kept everything that was sent to me,
and I think that was sort of the beginning.
My mom became someone that I thought more and more about.
During the pandemic, I even threw her a birthday party.
Happy birthday, dear Jayne
Not a lot of people throw birthday parties
for their dead mothers,
but there was a sort of magic to it.
It was around that time that I began to feel like
I actually wanted to get to know her.
Not as the sex symbol Jayne Mansfield,
but just as Jayne,
my mom Jayne.
My dad, who was my rock, died in 2006.
And there were so many questions that I never asked him.
I've also never really talked to my siblings much
about their experiences.
But I want to understand her now.
Because it's a part of my life,
and a part of me,
that's always felt locked away.
Sorry, let me bring this in for a sec.
I like the wood on top of that. It's nice.
- Custom. - Yeah.
Ready?
So we'll go over here. Careful.
Okay.
Let's kiss like Danmama. Remember?
That's how my grandmother used to kiss.
Ready?
Okay.
Are we good?
I mean...
- As good as we're gonna be. - Good as we--
I don't know how the hell you got me to do this!
Trying to make you a-- Trying to make you a big star
with those baby blues.
That's not gonna happen.
So.
- Here we are. - You ready?
Yes, we are.
We're here.
I've been waiting for this day for a long time.
And first of all,
I just wanna say thank you for doing this,
and I feel like I'm nervous now
because I know that you're not a fan
of, you know, talking about this stuff.
So, we'll see where it goes and see how we feel,
and if you don't want to talk about anything, don't.
Thank you, Marish. Thank you for asking me.
It's an honor, definitely, and anything you ask,
you know I'm there for you.
Thank you.
I first want to talk about our childhood a little bit.
Because you have all these memories, and I'm envious of that.
I don't have memories.
Well, you... your...
Can you cut for a minute?
I guess,
rather than have, like, memories,
it feels more like I remember an essence.
Like a nuance of the person, if that makes sense.
I remember her presence...
and I remember some of the feelings of that time.
I have to kind of dig deep to find them.
But the general feeling was good in those early days.
Back then, we were living in Texas,
and it was just me and her.
I mean, I can just picture her,
'cause she was so young.
My father, his name was Paul Mansfield.
And at the time, they were married.
When I was a kid, I remember,
she used to look at all the movie stars
and go to movies all the time.
I mean, she shared that with me.
She had her idols.
And she wanted to be one of those stars.
Paul Mansfield was a very churchgoing Texan,
and not into that at all.
But she was committed to it.
She pursued it in drama classes.
She just had that desire to be a serious actress.
And she was totally determined to do that.
So, she decided, "Hey, I'm coming to California.
I'm gonna do it."
Paul Mansfield came out with us.
But he realized that she wasn't going to leave.
So he left and she and I stayed.
In the beginning, she'd show up for anything.
She would model.
She taught dance.
She'd sell candy at The Wiltern Theatre.
Anything, to be noticed.
And, you know, she'd take me with her everywhere.
I have a lot of memories of those days,
because I had her to myself.
But then, she got noticed by an agent,
and he got her some auditions.
At the time, we were living in an apartment in Los Angeles,
making ends meet.
And then all of a sudden...
she was getting roles.
You're trouble, Al. You always will be.
But I've come along to give you a taste of your own medicine.
Who made the call?
Ray Borden.
- You sure of that? - Absolutely.
He told me his name.
Besides, he was very insulting.
We got to talking about this and that
and she tells me she's crazy about John Facenda.
- John Facenda? - He's a news reporter.
He's on television. He's on every night.
At 11 o'clock for 15 minutes.
When did you realize what was happening?
I probably started noticing it when I was around five or six.
She was 22 and she was on Broadway.
That play, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?,
that's what put her on the map.
I mean, I remember we lived in The Plaza Hotel.
One time, it was Easter and it was just her and me,
and she said, "I got a surprise for you.
Go into the bathroom."
And I go in there and open the door
and there's hundreds of little baby chicks
and I remember us just sitting down on the floor
and laughing and giggling.
I almost wanna cry because I remember it.
Because I can just feel her holding me
and smiling and laughing.
After my mom died when she was 34,
our family had to deal with a lot of things.
One of those things was that she didn't have a will.
So the state sold off her belongings to pay her debts.
And there were just a handful of items
that my siblings and I were able to keep.
I have her baby shoes.
Oh my God.
Yeah. And they're worn too.
Yeah. I love this.
Look at these shoes.
- They're gorgeous. - Just to share.
- That was beautiful. - Yeah.
For me, a lot of this is about reclaiming what was lost.
Even physical things.
So I decided to finally go through
our family storage unit
because no one has opened the boxes since 1969.
I wish my siblings could be here with me for this.
Oh my gosh.
That's her and Paul Mansfield.
He got cut out.
Wow.
There's a lot of this.
Who did she cut out?
Oh.
I don't remember having this.
There's Dad.
Mickey.
What do you remember about it?
I'm sure he was not over her
when we met.
Because she passed away June 29th, 1967,
and Mickey and I got married in April of 1968.
But you always have them with you.
There's no way that, once you love somebody,
that they ever leave your heart.
I don't care who, I don't care how angry you are,
I don't care anything.
If you really love somebody, they remain in there.
Come on, buds.
Mickey was from Hungary.
When he was 20, he was a championship speed skater.
He was on the national team for soccer.
He was also an adagio dancer.
He came to the United States with seven dollars in his pocket,
and then he became a catcher for the circus.
And I mean, that was before he was working out
to become a bodybuilder.
He became Mr. Indianapolis,
Mr. Indiana,
Mr. Midwest America,
and finally Mr. Universe.
Mickey would say,
"If you can dream it, you can do it."
That's who Mickey was.
So after being crowned Mr. Universe,
he got a job onstage doing a show in New York
for Mae West.
And one night,
Jayne Mansfield was in the audience.
And after the show, they met...
and that was the beginning of...
a lovely time in their lives.
It was love at first sight with Mickey,
I think it really was.
And he was just such a nice man.
You could just see that she was so happy.
It was a really big deal when they got married.
Yeah, I was happy.
Things were already just changing so much, you know.
Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay
have just left this American Airlines plane.
A huge crowd has gathered.
At the moment, she is also
the most photographed woman in show business.
Ms. Mansfield, in 1954, not too many years ago,
you were selling candy in a Hollywood theater.
How do you account for your meteoric rise to fame?
Well, Joyce, what I have done is this.
I use my pinup-type publicity
to get my foot in the door, so to speak,
because it never was really my ambition.
Do you like doing that?
I use it as a means to an end.
I don't know if I should say I liked it.
But I felt that it would do me some good,
being put into a position where I could project myself
to what I really wanted to attain.
This is Rita Marlowe, star of stage, screen,
and now live television.
I think it's very, very bad taste.
What's very bad taste?
Telling your wife you love her in front of me!
Jayne, how do you like it here at Goose Air Base?
Oh, I love it anywhere there are men on the alert.
She's not kidding either.
The radar keeps going ring-a-ding-ding.
I'm in the Beverly Hills home
of Jayne Mansfield and her husband Mickey Hargitay.
- Would you mind a little tour? - Sure. Follow me, will you?
- How about the living room? - I'll show you the living room.
The plaque up there, Jayne, it's a painting of what?
It's our crest. J and M for Jayne and Mickey.
Glenn Holse painted this.
Yes. He did the murals on the piano as well,
the cupids behind you.
Now, you have three children.
- Yes. This is Mickey Jr. - Hi, Mickey Jr.
Excuse me for introducing him first.
- Nice meeting you, sir. - This is Jayne Marie,
- our little daughter. - Hi.
Nice meeting you.
That's our youngest son, Zoltan Anthony.
What do you remember about that time?
I remember her playing with us
in the pool area.
It was a heart-shaped pool.
And it was huge.
And that was normal to you.
That was normal.
We also had a lot of animals.
She loved animals.
Remember the ocelot? There was an ocelot...
- I don't. - ...in the back.
It was in a big cage.
We called it the "jungle" back there.
So you had a zoo growing up.
We had a zoo.
I say, "We had a zoo," but I don't remember anything.
Yeah.
God, I just... I wonder what you felt
seeing them so...
Talk about larger than life.
Did it ever get normalized?
Marish, it's hard because when you're a kid,
you don't know anything else.
There's no norm. There's no... you know.
- Yeah. - You just,
"Okay, this is what it is.
This is life. This is my life,"
and that's all you know.
But I felt loved and I felt safe.
And that's what made the biggest impression.
I remember her coming in one time
and she said good night.
And...
she came back like ten minutes later.
She gave me like...
a beautiful hug.
But I had my eye open to where she--
I pretended like I was asleep
and then I fell asleep.
Yeah.
- Oh, thanks. - Yeah. For sure.
No one believes I'm as old as I am.
I'll be 100 next year.
So, do you go by Rusty or Ray?
- Rusty. - Rusty.
Anything they call me,
so long as they don't call me late for dinner.
And what year again did you meet her?
1957.
She hired me to help with fan mail,
but I eventually became her press secretary.
I'd do all the phone calls and make appointments
and that sort of thing.
Set up publicity.
You know what-- the publicity business.
She was famous for opening stores.
But it was much more than that.
She was always on display.
In front of fans.
She said, "Never turn away somebody that wants an autograph
because without them there wouldn't be me."
May I say, I'm sure were he here tonight...
So everything that you were doing together
was really working.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
And I'll tell you, she counted the paper clips.
She was meticulous.
Oh yes.
"What happened to that one? To this one?"
- "I don't know!" - She kept track of everything?
She kept track of everything.
Hello, Jayne.
I knew this before, when I did that picture with you.
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
Yeah, that was a pretty funny picture.
You were the cutest leading man I ever had yet.
And the oldest too, I think.
You know, you're actually,
and I've told this to other people,
you're not the dumb blonde that you pretend to be.
And I think the people ought to know
that you're really a bright, sentimental,
and understanding person.
- Thank you. - And this is a whole facade of yours
that isn't based on what you actually are.
Well, that's sweet of you. Thank you so much.
I think you're aware of that, Jayne.
This is a kind of an act you do, isn't it?
Oh, it's...
Most people don't know that, though.
I think that it's like this.
The public pays money at the box office
to see me a certain way, and...
And they get their money's worth too.
So I think it's just all part of the role
- I'm playing as an actress. - Uh-huh.
Can you talk to me about the role that she was playing, the persona?
Where do you think that came from?
That's what the studios wanted.
And so she sorta copied Marilyn Monroe.
That's me, right there on the beach.
My hair was a little longer then. Did you notice?
Oh, Rock Huntington!
I know I'm oh-so-kissable,
but why don't you pour the champagne first, lover doll.
So I have had a very complicated relationship
with that voice,
because I didn't understand what that voice was,
and it used to upset me.
I don't think Jayne liked it,
but she... that's what got her where she was,
and so she was not gonna--
You know, you go where it gets you.
What else do we have at home?
Oh, we have an ocelot and a myna bird.
- An ocelot? One of those baby tigers? - Yes.
"I have an ocelot and a myna bird,
and we also have an elephant and..."
That's her.
But she didn't always talk like that.
- That's a character, almost. - Yeah.
It's a character.
- That's the character Jayne. - Mm-hmm.
Did she ever talk to you about what she was doing?
Well, we didn't discuss it.
It was just... we lived it.
But she didn't put on those weird airs at home.
She had her hair up in a scarf and she'd sit in the sun
and no makeup or any of that stuff at home.
And she was, you know, just Jayne.
She had a great sense of humor.
We had intercoms throughout the house,
and whenever I'd have a friend visit,
she would yell through them
and make these weird noises.
But she was also very eloquent.
She spoke French, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian.
And she wanted us to be exposed
to more.
So she took me to Walter Reed hospital
to go visit the soldiers coming back from the war.
She had such compassion for them.
And she wanted to show me the other part of life.
That wasn't a personality pretending to be somebody else.
That was her.
I just wonder how it made you feel
knowing who she was
and how different she sounded in public.
It didn't feel natural. It didn't feel right to me.
So I think I kind of looked the other way
when I heard the, you know, the public voice,
because I knew she was really, really smart.
My playing the violin and now the piano
may remind you of a famous story about Dr. Samuel Johnson.
Once, when he saw a little puppy walking on its hind legs,
he said, "It's not that you expect him to do it perfectly,
it's just that you're surprised the puppy does it at all."
Which just goes to prove that I not only
play the violin and the piano,
but I also know who Dr. Samuel Johnson is.
You gave her singing and dancing lessons,
I believe, Ms. Peers. Right?
Yes, I did, Ralph.
And then as she grew older,
she had piano and violin lessons.
And in fact, Philip Williams from SMU taught Jaynie
and he had hopes of seeing her in Carnegie Hall.
She was that gifted.
Do you know why piano and violin
didn't play more of a role in what she ended up doing?
Oh, I don't know 'cause I can't speak for her.
But I just know that her goal
was that she wanted to be a serious actress.
She did tell me that from the beginning,
and she did try.
None of my business, but mind if I tell you what I did
to a guy I was in love with once?
Broke a chair over his head
after I caught him kissing some dame at a party.
Bet he never tried that again.
Don't know. Never saw him after that.
But he's married. Happily married.
And I make a living.
Believe me, breaking a chair over a guy's head
can sure work miracles.
The kind of miracles that louse up your whole life.
Why didn't she do more of those roles?
Because the parts didn't come in.
So she did what she had to do.
Marilyn Monroe played out her wonderful tragic life
to a dramatic end at 36.
Her famous body is wheeled from her Hollywood home
where she was found beside an empty bottle of sleeping pills.
The sex symbol she enjoyed being,
the dumb blonde she certainly wasn't,
the actress with an underestimated ambition to act.
Mom had great admiration for Marilyn,
but I think she realized
that whole blonde persona was a box.
And around that time, she did tell me
she wanted to reverse that image.
Yes. I... I don't like to be asked too much
about my measurements
because people have asked me about that before
and I don't like to be asked that.
I feel that my figure has been publicized
much more than my intellect,
and I would like to change that.
Jayne, you are another beautiful but dumb blonde.
You are a publicity seeker.
How do you feel about such images?
Well, they're not accurate.
In the very beginning,
I was quite cooperative publicity-wise,
but lately I haven't been able to because of the momentum
in which my career is moving at this time.
Jayne, we just talked informally
without any rehearsal. But I'm concerned.
You know, not seriously concerned.
But what is this new Jayne Mansfield thing?
Well, I mean, why?
- Well... - Are you serious?
Yes, I am quite serious.
I have been very fortunate
in being exposed as a glamor girl for quite a few years.
Yes, I'd say that.
And...
Dear me. I'm sorry.
There goes my new image.
No, but how can you change?
It's like trying to hide a parachute.
You know, I mean...
Well, you did alright.
There's a point at which you don't go beyond...
Well, I think that's the situation.
I think that it has been done
and I'm ready to be myself now.
I've been someone else for a few years
and I'm ready to be myself.
You're serious about this violin?
I'll play a couple of bars for you, okay?
Are you a good player?
I play.
I think it has to be loosened.
My bow is too tight.
- I would say that it is. - What was funny about that?
Well, don't press your luck.
Who cares? Kiss me.
We'll be back soon, but first we have a message
from Mogen David wine.
Maybe even more than her acting,
her music is this symbol to me
of the Jayne that I've been aching to know.
So a few years ago, I tracked down a violin
that I thought was hers.
And it turned out that it probably wasn't.
But I also reached out to the person
who bought my mom's house ten years after she died,
the singer-songwriter Engelbert Humperdinck.
He sold the house in 2002,
and after that it was demolished.
But he kept some things, including my mom's piano,
and I've been hoping for years that he'd be willing to part with it.
Hi, John. It's Mariska.
Are you still friends with Louise?
She had shared with me
that Engelbert wanted to sell the piano,
and then I just haven't heard from her in a month.
Oh, John, that'd be so amazing.
Thank you so much.
I mean, I think the thing that I keep coming back to is,
do you think that she could have done it a different way?
She was a 21-year-old kid when she started,
and she was being molded by everybody around her.
And, unfortunately, she had the wrong people around her.
Except for Mickey.
So I have a question for you.
Mm-hmm.
When I was going through photos that I found in the storage unit...
I found this.
Uh-huh.
I found all these pictures.
It's Mickey.
I remember going in there and seeing her cutting up pictures.
Did she say why?
I don't remember.
If she was in a bad mood, I kept my distance.
I'm so curious about what happened.
I'm wondering when things got difficult for them.
Do you know what was going on?
I know they were having disagreements
about how they were raising the children.
But also, her career wasn't going well.
So she went back to these parts for dumb blondes.
I don't think it was easy for her.
But I don't think it was easy for Mickey either.
She was completely absorbed in negativity.
Because she wasn't doing the kind of work
that she dreamed of doing.
And I believe she became a victim of...
depression.
You're never yourself when you're depressed.
But Mickey said that it just started to get
to be really difficult
because Jayne...
Jayne... Jayne really liked to be out there.
She liked to be out there.
And she met other people.
She met other men, you know, and the marriage fell apart.
I think that Mickey was hurt deeply by Jayne.
I think she...
I think she blew it when she divorced Mickey.
Mickey was the most positive influence in her life.
And even though he might've felt a lot of pain,
he loved her.
He always loved her
even after they were divorced.
And what happened after they got divorced?
She did come back to Mickey many times after that.
And they were together again for a few months
around the time Jayne was pregnant with you.
Jayne and Mickey, welcome to California.
How does it feel to be home?
Well... feels wonderful.
It's just great. It really is.
I haven't been home myself since last March.
I've been in every place in the world, I guess.
I just finished a picture called Dog Eat Dog
in Yugoslavia and Rome.
And now we're back here for Mickey to continue
on his television work
and to have a baby.
That's right.
In January, or the end of December, we're having our fourth child.
I'm baby number four.
And by the time I came along,
I think there was a lot going on.
And so there's a sense to me,
in some of the photos,
it just seemed like she wasn't holding me a lot.
Like she was off doing something else
and I just had to handle it.
So I don't know if I had that attachment time with her.
I don't know if I had that.
Can I ask you a question about my name?
- Yeah. - On my birth certificate
everywhere it says "Mariska Magdolna."
- Yeah. - Right?
But then you guys called me Maria.
That's right.
Your name was Maria in the beginning.
- Always Maria? - Yeah.
- In the beginning. - Uh-huh.
On The Merv Griffin Show, she calls me Maria.
- Yeah. - What's your name, darling?
- See, when I talk to the-- - Maureen?
This is Maria.
She had a real thing about your name.
We were somewhere
and the press was interviewing her
and the reporter said,
"Well, how's little Mariska?"
Jayne says, "Her name is Maria.
I'll spell it for you. M-A-R-I-A. Maria."
You know, you mentioned that my husband
was going to come on.
He just stepped out for a minute.
Maybe he's back now. Think we could beckon him?
Matt!
Might as well bring the gang on.
Matt Cimber!
- Hello, Matt. - Hi.
You know him.
Ms. Jayne Mansfield.
I know you. How are you?
I remember him coming into our life
and mostly it being like, you know, devastating,
that like, "Where's my dad?"
And then all of a sudden we became Italian.
And it was like,
"You call me 'Mama' and you call him 'Papa.'"
And I'm like, what the fuck? It's like...
- Oh, really? - It was weird. Yeah.
And then, the family life
started getting really sketchy.
They fought like wildcats. Always fighting.
Matt had a bad temper,
but Jayne would never admit
if somebody had the better of her.
She'd say, "Oh, everything's alright."
I ask her about it.
"Oh, we have our battles. We're alright."
But, you know, she would have bruises.
Why do you think she married him?
Because he was a director.
But it didn't do anything for her career.
Things were changing for her in the '60s,
and so she had to turn to doing nightclubs.
I sing, do a little dancing,
tell some jokes, have a lot of fun generally.
At that time, alcohol came in.
And so did pills.
And so I would take it upon myself
to hide the bourbon and...
empty the pills out, that kind of thing.
So, I was a caretaker.
I think Matt was the worst thing that ever happened to her.
The only thing good came out of that was Tony.
Now the introduction of a new baby
whose mother is star Jayne Mansfield.
Well, that's something special.
So let's go Hollywood Backstage
and meet this bright new addition.
My father, Matt, never really talked about her.
I guess that's kind of unfortunate
because I never asked, and I don't know why.
But your dad and our mother,
there are things that I've heard that I'm always...
fearful to bring up with you.
I know.
Things that are really ugly.
Yes.
- About their relationship. - And I'm sure.
And I'm sure.
But...
I don't know those ugly things.
I don't know that I want to know.
Because I don't want to carry it
because I don't know what good it does.
"April 11th, 1936.
Herbert W. Palmer, 32, Phillipsburg lawyer
and a native of Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania,
died suddenly in his automobile
while driving up the Morris street hill, Phillipsburg,
on Saturday evening.
While driving up the hill, he collapsed.
His wife stopped the car at once.
The physician pronounced Mr. Palmer dead,
victim of a heart attack.
He's survived by his wife, Mrs. Vera Palmer,
and a daughter, Vera Jayne."
I think that's where I start now,
is looking, that here is our mother,
this little girl whose father died
when she was three years old
and she was in the car with him.
We start there with Jayne.
We start there with loss.
And I go,
- "I know that one." - "I know that one."
So did she talk to you about her childhood at all?
No, she never told me about her childhood.
But I do know losing her dad,
that's something she carried around with her
her whole life.
I mean, I caught her crying looking at his picture
several times.
People don't know the whole story.
They only know what they see.
She didn't always make good choices with men.
But you know something, I think...
her miseries all stem back to when her father died.
She spent the rest of her life looking for her father,
being a young girl looking for her father.
So in 1966,
Jayne finally wanted to get a divorce from Matt Cimber.
And during that time,
she started dating her divorce attorney,
this guy named Sam Brody.
I didn't like him at all.
There was a lot of fighting.
I remember one time going into Mom's room in the morning
and I remember her wearing sunglasses,
and I was like, you know,
taken aback by that, you know, a little boy,
why would your mom be wearing sunglasses?
But then at some point, she took 'em off
and she had black eyes, and I remember that hurt.
I knew he was a bad man.
I knew, you know, right away.
It was...
She felt she don't have much,
but...
she don't realize one thing,
that she had herself.
And when a person loses themselves,
you know, you lose everything.
And I tried to tell her that, "You have you.
That is the most important thing."
Because she always had me. She knew that.
But seems like, at times, it wasn't enough.
There was one night in 1967,
Jayne was in New York with Sam Brody
and she called Mickey to come into the city.
At that time, Mickey and I were already dating.
So, we went together.
And she was all roughed up or something,
but she was not herself.
So she and Mickey went out to dinner,
because he was trying to help her with Sam.
And then two weeks later,
she went to Biloxi, Mississippi, to do a show.
And at midnight
they were scheduled to go to New Orleans.
You, Mickey, and Zolie were in the car with Jayne,
the driver, and Sam Brody.
And that's when it happened.
I wanna say something but I'm not gonna talk about it
'cause it was the last minutes of her life.
Just so deep.
My mother.
Yeah...
So, Mom was arguing
with the person in the front of the car.
It was Sam.
She wanted to get away from Sam.
And I remember she went in the back seat.
And she went to the gas station.
I think she called Dad
'cause Dad said that she had called him.
I talked to her an hour before.
She told me on the phone
that, "We have just another hour,
an hour and a half ride.
It's late.
I'm going to get the kids in the back seat
and let them sleep."
And then she went in the front seat of the car.
And I often think about
why she didn't just stay in the back seat with us.
But I remember her comforting me...
telling me I was going to be fine.
Twenty minutes later, or half an hour, whatever,
I heard her scream so loud.
And that was it. That just-- It was just silence.
My hands, my arms were all crusty...
and it felt like my skin didn't move because it was bloody all over.
And then I looked up and I saw my...
I thought I saw my mom in the front seat.
And it was a blonde lady
and she turned back and looked at us,
and it wasn't my mom, you know,
it was somebody else who had found us on the side of the road.
Do you remember what happened after they came and got you?
I fell asleep.
We were going to a hospital.
But at some point I woke up.
And I'm kind of like looking around and I didn't see you.
And I said, "Where's Maria?"
And they said, "Who's Maria?"
So...
then we doubled back.
You were lodged underneath the passenger's seat.
With a head injury.
And...
Thank God.
Thank God Zolie woke up.
After everything happened,
Mickey called...
and he said for me to come to the hospital.
When God took Jayne from us,
I had a dream about her.
We were on a...
We were on a football field...
and there was a stage and this limousine pulled up.
The door opens to the limousine,
and she walks completely across the field,
and she came up to me and she said...
"I'm so glad that you're taking care of the children.
You're doing a great job."
It's a dream.
But it meant a lot.
It meant a lot to me. It was the silliest thing.
But I do think that Mickey and I
provided a very loving home.
Our family was trying to build a new life,
so Jayne Marie left to go live with her uncle,
Tony went with his dad,
and we moved into a new house.
Those are the first memories that I have.
I remember being around our kitchen table.
I used to play a game with my dad.
If I didn't want to eat something on my plate,
I would sneak it around and my dad would eat it.
We laughed so hard
and those were just the best times.
But in the summertime, my family would go to Europe.
And sometimes they would send me to my grandmother's house by myself.
And I used to get sad because it made me feel like
I was separate from the family.
And then one time when I was 12,
I was there
and I was talking about my dad so reverently,
like I always did...
and she looked at me
with the strangest expression and said...
"I'm all you have."
And I knew it meant something,
but I didn't know what.
So when I was 21,
this guy named Sabin Gray,
who was head of the Jayne Mansfield Fan Club,
kept calling me up and inviting me over.
He kept saying, "Oh, we're gonna have like a Valentine's party."
And Sabin was very persistent. He said, you know,
"It just really would mean the world to us if you came by."
So I was like, "Oh, okay."
When I got there,
they had movie posters of her on the wall
and life-size cutouts
and all kinds of things he'd collected.
It was a little weird for me.
But then, a few years after that, when I was 25,
I was invited to Sabin's house again,
and we were alone.
And then he says to me,
"Do you want to see a picture of Nelson?"
And I said, "Who's Nelson?"
And that's when, like,
I think the blood just drained out of his face
and he sort of went white as a ghost,
and he looked at me panicked, and he said,
"Well, it's probably not true. Probably not true."
And I said, "What's not true?"
And we went around the corner and he pulled out this book...
and he opened the page and he showed it to me,
and I just, like,
couldn't believe what I was seeing...
'cause it looked like the male version of me.
And it was like the...
It was like the floor fell out from underneath me.
It was...
just the bottom dropped out of everything.
It was like my infrastructure dissolved.
And...
life as I knew it was irrevocably changed.
So then I drove up to see my dad.
And I walked in,
I was crying pretty hard, and I said,
"Why didn't you tell me you're not my father?
You lied to me."
And he...
came back at me with, "What are you talking about?
I love you. You are my daughter.
Where did you hear this? It's all bullshit."
And he got more upset than I was.
More convincing than I was.
I was in so much pain,
but I could see his pain was almost worse.
So I decided I wouldn't talk about it again...
and I would never bring it up to him again.
And I never did.
But the fact is,
I had bad years after that.
I didn't tell anyone.
And I would just go to bed every night crying because...
I felt lost.
I had an identity crisis.
Was I Mariska or Maria?
Was I Hungarian or Italian?
I mean, who was I related to? Who did I belong to?
And then on top of it, I was born out of some affair,
like some illegitimate, sinful mistake?
I was so...
angry at my mother
for leaving me in this mess.
And for hurting my father.
And leaving me feeling so alone and untethered.
And so for me to survive,
I excised, disowned
the part of myself that was my mother's daughter.
But then I realized there's this other person.
Who was this other person?
Does he not know about me?
Was he not thinking about me?
He must have known. Why didn't he claim me?
He was an entertainer.
And so, five years later, when I was 30 years old,
my friend and I went to Atlantic City
and we went to his show.
And after the show, he came out and I said,
"Hi, Nelson.
My name is Mariska Hargitay.
I understand you knew my mother."
And he...
looked at me and basically burst into tears,
and he grabbed my ear...
and he said, "I've been waiting
30 years for this moment."
And I think we stayed up until five in the morning
just talking.
He said I had two sisters
and he told me the whole story.
That was 30 years ago.
And I've kept it a secret ever since.
So here we are.
Here we are.
I was up...
all night, pretty much, last night...
- Yeah. - ...thinking about
you and I have been living with this secret
since I was 25.
Yeah.
I waited for a long time to have this.
And I thank you for your patience.
Are you kidding?
When I came to Vegas in '65,
the columnist asked,
"Are you the Nelson Sardelli
that had an affair with Jayne Mansfield?"
I said, "You're going to do me a favor."
He said, "What?"
"See my show.
If I suck, crucify me.
Put an end to my career.
But do not mention our relationship."
Nelson Sardelli. Let's give him a nice welcome.
I was in the beginning of my career
and I did a show in Atlanta,
and this particular night, I decided to go for a walk.
And all of a sudden I see a commotion in front of the club.
And I enter the club.
The waitress came running to me.
She says, "Jayne Mansfield is here."
And I approached Jayne,
and...
Jayne looked at me and she spoke Italian,
you know, she says, "Buona sera."
Then she says, "Come and see my show."
So I went,
and when the show finished,
she says, "We go in your car."
I said, "Whoa-ah."
Whee!
Where was my dad during all of this?
There was some family friction there...
so they were not talking to each other.
So she was separated?
Or what was the deal with my dad? Just so I can--
They were separate-- They were having trouble.
But if you're going in public places together.
Very much so.
We went every place together.
Then we start performing together.
Then I start being introduced to the kids.
And I went to Juárez for her divorce.
I was there with her.
After that, we went to make a movie in Germany.
And then we rented a car,
and we drove all over Europe.
Where are these beautiful photos?
This is in the Alps.
Tell me about this.
This is as we entered Italy.
When did you find out that she was pregnant?
Germany.
Oh...
Wow. I didn't know that. That's...
- Wow. That's... - Oh yes. Oh yes.
"Father's Day, 1963.
To Nelson.
This special day is even more special to each of us.
The seed of our eternal love grows
as the sapling that one day must be a strong oak.
Te amo al di la, Jayne."
"Al di la" means...
"far beyond," you know?
"Dearest Mama,
I am going through perhaps the most trying time of my life now,
indecision regarding Mickey and Nelson.
I have the love of two men,
a very deep love from each of them.
I hope God shows me the way soon,
because I have really been depressed of late."
So at the end of the trip,
we went to the St. Peter cathedral.
And she says, "Let's make some vows."
It was beautiful.
And then she look at me and she says, "Nelson,
suppose if we get married
and I get pregnant by another man...
would you take me back?"
I couldn't believe it. I say, "How dare you to ask me
such a... question?"
You understand?
It just...
It... it was a crash.
And I... That, I couldn't take it.
It was too much.
I said, "Jayne, tomorrow,
you go back to America, I stay,
and then you and I will never see each other again."
You knew that she was pregnant with your child?
Yes.
Mariska, I am not denying it.
And I say this was the biggest shame in my life.
I was wrong.
Did you ever talk to her again?
It eats me up that I assumed that position
of never talking to her
because a lot of people paid the price
for this love affair we had.
Jayne and Mickey, welcome to California.
How does it feel to be home?
It's just great. It really is.
I haven't been home myself since last March.
And now we're back here for Mickey
to continue on his television work
and to have a baby.
That's right.
I can't imagine what your father felt.
But I am grateful to him.
Why didn't you ever reach out after I was born?
When your mother died,
your grandmother Vera wanted me to rock the boat
and claim you or something.
But by that time, Mickey was the father you knew.
And your siblings, they were your siblings.
What would I be accomplishing
that would be beneficial to you?
And as the years went by,
I had a chance to talk to Mickey Hargitay one time.
And he said to me,
"Nelson,
nobody has to tell me
who's the father of my child."
And I said to him,
"I will not embarrass you in any way.
Never."
Jayne Mansfield had three children
by her second husband, Mickey Hargitay.
Miklós, and I hope I'm saying these names properly,
Zoltan, and Mariska Hargitay
were all raised by their father and...
after their mother died.
- Nice to meet you. - Good morning.
- Nice to meet you. - Good to see you.
Good morning, David. Nice to see you.
Thank you.
How much has your dad told you about your mom?
What kind of things has he told you?
Well, I mean, it just kind of comes up in conversation
and we talk about everything,
I mean, I think, just whenever it comes up.
Before I found out,
did you and Dad ever talk about Nelson?
I mean, it must have come up.
If it came up,
he would say, "I'm her father.
I'm her father." Period.
And no matter what question I had about it,
I wanted to give Mickey the respect of being the one
who actually said whatever he knew.
When Mariska was born,
her mother Jayne Mansfield and I went to Hungary
and we announced it to my parents
and my mother wanted to name her, so much, Mariska.
And that's when she become Mariska.
She's a real Hungarian.
Mickey was a great father,
and he was so full of love for you.
But I think Mickey was quite capable of shutting out pain.
Which I think he did a lot with Jayne.
So he said, "Mariska's my daughter."
And he said that until the day he passed.
"She nudged me, 'Get me that Italian.'
I spoke with the owner,
and soon, Irwin approached Jayne's table,
the handsome Italian in tow.
He introduced the Italian as Nelson Sardelli,
a performer who was appearing
at another club down the street.
Although nothing of great consequence was said,
it was a significant first meeting to Jayne.
'That,' she said, as we left the club,
'is going to be the father of my bambino.
My beautiful little Italian baby
I've always wanted.'"
What do you think she would think of your book?
Well, she would've had some questions about it.
"Why did you have to say that? You should've left that out."
Do you think the story of my biological father
was yours to tell?
What I knew of it, yes.
When you wrote it,
did you think about how it would impact my family?
No.
I am sorry if people were hurt by the book,
but it was truthful to the knowledge that I had.
But I never set out to hurt anybody,
and I'm sorry if I did.
Reclaiming my own story,
that is what this is about for me.
I'd spent 35 years trying to hide that story
to honor my dad.
But something that I've also realized
is that sometimes keeping a secret
doesn't honor anyone.
And it's taken me a long time to figure that out.
I've been thinking about...
our journey, our very long journey.
Yeah.
And the ups and downs of it and the complications
and the joys of it
and the sadness and everything.
And...
I would say you've waited a long time for this day.
Yeah.
I remember when I found out that I had a sister.
I think it was junior high school.
We were a super open family,
but there was one locked drawer in his desk.
I mean, the truth is, you kind of always know
when there's a truth,
because anything that's not the truth
is what you're doing around it.
And so even when I was little I just knew... I don't know.
I mean, there was something.
So one day I get the lock open,
and I pull the drawer out
and I see one envelope in the back
and it was from your grandmother
right after your mom had died.
And it said, "Dear Nelson..."
I'm going to tell you what 11-year-old me thinks it said.
Yeah, yeah.
Was basically, "Dear Nelson,
I know you have children.
I'm sure they're fine,
but there's this amazing child who is yours.
She's better than your other children..."
And that's what I mean by I know it doesn't say that
but I was reading and it said, "She is your family."
And so I storm into the kitchen with the letter
and I'm crying and I say, "What is this?"
And he gets really serious and he says,
"I don't know this little girl.
This little girl..." I'm gonna cry now.
He says, "This little girl has a father
who loves her like I love you.
This little girl is safe."
"And if she is okay, she has just lost her mother,
you cannot take the only family she knows."
And that was their decision and that's why they stayed quiet.
And that made sense to me,
and so I kind of tucked that away.
And then, many years later, I met you.
And I remember, it was your birthday party,
Dad and I were there
and Katie Couric was there and she kept going,
"So you're related to Mariska how?"
and we would go, "No, we're family friends."
She'd walk around, come back, "I missed how you're related."
And I remember calling you, going,
- "So..." - "So we need to talk."
"How do we manage our worlds colliding?
And how do we manage that?"
But I... That's something that's so...
That's so hard, like, that I didn't have the...
wisdom, I guess, at the time, to say, "This is not yours to carry."
My need was so big,
my need for this to honor Mickey was so huge.
But the fact is, I was wrong.
Because you guys had to live all these years
with the secret, and you were so generous,
so generous to me.
So... thank you.
I have a question.
How do you feel about the fact
that we're coming clean with the whole story?
Like, this is going to...
Now it's out there. There's no more secrets.
All this that is happening now,
all this, to me, is like as if...
a stronger and higher power
is forgiving me
for whatever mistakes I made.
There's nothing I can change,
but I regret having extricated myself
from your mother's life.
Because I think
certain things would not have happened to her.
Yeah. Yeah.
But, you know, one more thing I have to say.
I would love to have had one more conversation
with your father before he passed away,
because I also would like to apologize to him.
Because I'm sure
I was also part of his suffering.
Thank you for saying that.
Well, it's... I'm...
I'm so happy that I have the chance to...
have been given a chance to say those things.
Well, you're 89, so you'll get to tell him soon enough.
What is my obituary?
You are the greatest!
In person!
- Yep! - Oh, of course!
Of course.
- No, because-- - Oh my God!
Oh my God. Oh my God. You're so much!
Okay. Oh yeah.
Alright, babe.
I'll call you tomorrow.
- Got it. - Okay.
What I keep thinking about is...
we lost our mother,
but...
by making this movie,
we're breathing new life.
And so she feels so alive now to me in such a beautiful way.
Yeah. I was actually asking Alexa,
I was going, saying, "Alexa, does a soul ever die?"
And Alexa-- Want to hear it?
- Watch. - Like Alexa Alexa?
Yeah. Alexa, does a soul ever die?
From reginameredith.com.
The soul does not die.
- It returns to the universe. - Yeah.
It returns to the universe.
The soul never dies.
So I made something for you
from some of the things in the storage unit.
And I wanted to give it to you.
You put this together like this? Aw...
Is that me?
This whole book is you.
Oh my God.
Wow.
I look like the Grey Gardens lady.
Yeah!
- You know who I mean? - Yes.
I also found some cards that you wrote to Mom.
"To the most wonderful mommy in the whole world.
Your loving child, Jayne Marie."
God, who thought this existed all these decades?
Let me read this one to you.
"Dear Mommy, I love you in the daytime
and I love you in the night,
but what am I gonna do when you get out of my sight?
I love you in the a.m. and p.m. too.
And if you're where I think you are...
I hope not out with that old Jack Paar."
You're kidding me! You're kidding me!
"I hope you're not out with that old Jack Paar."
Okay, this is some of your best work.
I'm so happy that you guys are here today
because I hated doing it without you.
- All these boxes? - Oh my goodness.
- Okay. Hold on. - Here.
Oh my God. It's the press books.
"Making like Marilyn."
Wow.
Sliding...
- Oh my goodness. - Look at that.
So sweet. Oh.
Look. Santa Claus is freaking me out over here.
- That is so creepy. - Creepy Santa Claus.
Every kid hates Santa Claus at that age.
What's that on your leg?
- Some blanket. - On your leg?
Oh, you shit...
Mickey wanted me to do that.
He found it in the box.
- We got her. - It's just like old times.
- And he's got it on camera. - You guys...
Back to being my little bros.
Oh, come, come, come.
Oh my God.
- This is a Golden Globe. - It is?
Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Look. Hold it, guys.
"Jayne Mansfield.
International Stardom Award.
- 20th Century Fox." - Significant.
You know what? You could put this with yours.
- Yeah. - If you let me, I'd love to.
- You earned it. - Mm-hmm.
You made it.
Oh my God...
Do we own it?
Yeah. Happy birthday.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I've spent most of my life feeling ashamed of my mother.
A person that I had no memory of.
A person whose voice I didn't want to hear.
A person whose career made me want to do it differently.
A person who made her share of problematic choices
and left me with loss and secrets.
But at 60 years old, I feel different.
I see myself in you for the first time.
The way you smile.
The way you laugh.
I also have such maternal feelings for you now.
You were 16 years old when you got pregnant.
You were a baby when you started this career.
I so get it.
I get how hurt you must have been.
Looking for something that you never found.
You in some sort of trouble?
But you had so much inside of you.
I'll beat it before she shows.
And that's who I see now.
I see you, Jayne.
My mom Jayne.
I love you.
And I miss you.