This Is The Intersection Where Jayne Mansfield Was Decapitated
It’s weird the things that come out of my mouth some times.
Yesterday during the Sunday writing group at Panera bread, one of the group was commenting on the fact that Mariska Hargitay of Law & Order: SVU fame is Jane Mansfield’s daughter. I think someone asked if Jayne Mansfield was still alive and I said she was dead and then I said, “You know how I know? I know because she died not far from my home in Louisiana.”
What I mean is that she was killed going through an intersection of some sleepy town on some backroad either in Louisiana or Mississippi (somewhere between my childhood home in New Orleans and the casinos on the Gulf Coast) when a semi-tractor trailor hit them and she and her then-boyfriend were killed — she was decapitated. And I know this because, every time my family went on a day trip to the Gulf Coast or to Sunday brunch at the casinos, as we were going through that very intersection, my father would announce to the car, “This is the intersection where Jayne Mansfield was decapitated!”
Apparently I was the only one in the writer’s group at Panera bread who even knew she was dead, let alone decapitated. I also was the only one who’d seen the movie they’d made of her life with Loni Anderson playing Jayne.
The thing is that I can’t remember a single movie that Janye was in (though I can remember all sorts of stuff Marilyn was in) but every time someone brings her up, I can clearly picture that intersection in my mind…and I imagine it hasn’t changed much between 1967 and now. Certainly, it always made me hold my breath when we drove through.
tags: Jayne Mansfield
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on May 8, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Tamara said:
Ew, I knew she was dead but not decapitated!
I didn’t know (or forgot, oops) that you were doing a writing group. Yay! I had met some women through NaNo and we’ve been meaning to start a writing group, but have only met once. Now one of the women is moving to Arizona and another is a single mom who recently learned she is a) pregnant and b) soon to be unemployed. Ah well, I guess I’ll have to keep looking!