00:00:00
Speaker 1: Happy Monday, everyone out there in Hollywood land. It's the good doctor, Dr. Lundy Esquire, and welcome to The Working Week, which means another peek into our archive of stories at the intersection of Hollywood and true crime. Today, we've got our fully scripted and sound design episode on Jane Mansfield, who tragically died 59 years ago in 1967 at the age of 34. Whether she was filming Hollywood's first major nude scenes or posing against a backdrop of satanic skulls and pentagrams, Jane Mansfield lived for exhibitionism. As a leading sex pot of the 1950s, she was a genius, a bombshell, and a mother in an industry that demanded women be single, dumb, and blonde. When people whispered that Jane lived in Marilyn Monroe's shadow, she fled to the Church of Satan and started dancing in the shadows with its founder, Anton LaVey. Her final headline sensationalized the myth of how she lost her head in a car crash and blamed her death on a satanic curse. But even decades after that fatal road trip, there's still plenty about Jane that still warrants showing off. I hope you dig this episode on Jane Mansfield, and then I hope you join me again here on Wednesday for the wrap party, where I'll respond to your voicemails and messages, and later on Friday for a new installment of The Screening Room, in which I'll do a deep dive into the 2018 Ari Aster film, Hereditary.
00:01:21
Speaker 2: This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Hollywoodland is a production of Double Elvis.
00:01:32
Speaker 3: The stories about Jane Mansfield are insane. She stripped down for the very first nude scene in a major motion picture.
00:01:56
Speaker 2: She wowed the pants off men as Hollywood's leading sexpot. And then she scared the pants off of them when she publicly bonded with Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan. Magazines condemned her and called her Satan's slave. Jane called it a good opportunity for publicity. She was a genius, a bombshell, and a mother in an industry that demanded women be single, dumb, and blonde. She died in an accident so gruesome and so bizarre. that it's easy to suspect supernatural forces were involved. But before that fatal road trip, Jane Mansfield made great films. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't a clip from a great film. That was a fair use sample from the Library of Congress of Viola Brown performing Drive Old Satan Away from 1939. I played you that clip because I can't afford the rights to Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen. And why would I play you that specific slice of proto-suicide squad cheese, could I afford it? Because that was the number one movie in America on June 29th, 1967. And that was the day that 34-year-old Jane Mansfield lost her head. In this episode, nude scenes, supernatural forces, gruesome accidents, and Satan's showgirl, Jane Mansfield. I'm Jake Brennan. And this is Hollywoodland.
00:03:29
Speaker 4: Anton LaVey maneuvered the blades with caution. His scissors moved through the page like a hot knife through devil's food cake.
00:03:57
Speaker 2: Cutting excess paper away from the sacred image in his hands. A photograph of him posing for a German magazine in front of Marilyn Monroe's mausoleum. A damn good photograph, if he said so himself. It was printed in black and white, just like Anton's wardrobe. Just like the inside of Anton's home, where he toiled away now. He called it the Black House, a.k.a. the headquarters for the Church of Satan, Anton's own invention. The church's raven black exterior called to the goth prototypes on the streets of San Francisco. This is the place for you to indulge, to explore, to take a walk on the weird side. The devil wasn't actually present at the Church of Satan. And that wasn't what Anton's new religion was about. People always got that part wrong. Satanism was about worshipping the self. It honored the dark desires lurking at the bottom of your heart. the lustful thoughts that most people were too afraid to acknowledge, let alone share. Jane Mansfield wasn't afraid to share anything with Anton LaVey. That silver screen sexpot was born to walk these black halls. Anton made her a high priestess in his church, even if Jane denied her title to the papers, said she wasn't a member of his black circle, and reminded the tabloids that she was born a Methodist, called herself Catholic, and had ties to Orthodox Judaism through her beau-slash-lawyer. Anton knew better. Jane would never fully divulge just how much Anton taught her between these walls. She learned in the shadows. Anton taught her about the nature of paradise and hell, about casting spells and practicing rituals. Jane certainly believed enough to call Anton every morning for a happy spell that enchanted the day ahead of her. And their worlds collided many times. often with a photographer trailing behind them. Sometimes it was the same German photographer who snapped these very shots of Anton at Marilyn's grave that he was holding tonight. Anton made the final snip across the top of the page. A chill crawled up his spine. Something was wrong. He turned the magazine page over. A photo of Jane was on the opposite side. He had just clipped her head clean off. Another chill seized him. Yes, something was very wrong. The phone rang. Must be Jane. Calling for a belated happy spell. And there was nothing happy about what the voice on the other end had to say. It wasn't Jane. It was a reporter. Jane Mansfield was dead. Cause of death?
00:06:37
Speaker 4: Decapitation.
00:06:42
Speaker 2: Jane Mansfield arched her back over the lip of the bathtub. Suds dribbled past her shoulders and down her chest, but not too many suds. Act natural, the director told her, but put on a show. Jane can do both simultaneously. Easy. She stretched her arms into the air for a few more seconds and let the camera linger on her assets. And then she slipped back under the hot water. Just her torso, not her chest. Jane wasn't being paid to be modest today. Thank God for champagne. Liquid courage carried her through her first nude scene for this movie, and it would get her through this one, too. The movie was called Promises, promises. And the director said it was a sex comedy. He assured Jane it wasn't porn. But he also said he wanted to get as close to porn without crossing the line. Jane had her own line she drew with the camera crew. She'd go topless and they could shoot her stomach, sure, but they weren't to let that camera lens wander an inch below her hips. That's the boundary that Jane was comfortable with. Well, what her husband was comfortable with. Because Jane Mansfield was not ashamed of being naked. If the public wanted to ogle her figure, she wasn't stopping anyone. And they were going to peek whether or not Jane felt comfortable anyway. Strangers eye-fucked her before she even bought her first bra. Before she was even a teenager. And not just men, either. Other girls couldn't keep their eyes and hands off Jane's forbidden fruit. Jane never rejected the attention. She leaned into it, took pride in it. As a teenager, she kept a tally of how many boys she kissed in her diary. Every day had its own tally. Every day. Jane's mother told her that sexual attraction was something to hide. Bullshit. No one was holding their desires from her, that was for sure, and she definitely wasn't about to suppress herself to appease any prudes. Jane had sex appeal, in spades. Kind people paid for, repeatedly. Jane learned that when she was studying at the Dallas Institute of Performing Arts. She stripped down for some photos before her big acting break so she could put food on the table for her daughter. And that gig led to paid work as a nude model in a woman's sculpting class. And by the time Jane broke into Hollywood, she wielded her body like a weapon of mass seduction. So yeah, let them look. And if people wanted to pay Jane for it, even better. Jane was getting two paychecks for today's shoot. One from the movie studio for $ 150, 000, and plus another check for $ 25, 000 from Playboy for the pictorial they were shooting while Jane writhed around topless on set. The money was secondary for Jane. The real payoff would be relevance. After all, Jane Mansfield was making history. She was doing something Marilyn Monroe couldn't do. Marilyn dropped dead before she had the chance. Jane was going to be the first star to bear it all in a major motion picture. Jane could have easily taken Marilyn's place, could have, except suddenly production companies didn't want a Monroe stand-in such as Kim Novak or Mamie Van Doren to be their leading role. By the early 60s, the era of ditzy blondes was done so. Jane Mansfield wasn't a ditz, but she had the act down pat. She boasted a squeal that sounded like steam escaping. She could sing and twirl in frilly outfits better than any vapid airhead. Then take a Barb Jo. at her expense in the next scene like it was nothing. You'd never know that she had an IQ of 163. That's genius level, by the way. And you'd never know she was first chair violin in school when she was only 14, and that she spoke French and German and Italian. That's just good acting. But no one wanted Jane Mansfield to act. They wanted her to exhibit, just like she was doing now, in the bathtub. Because no one showed off like Jane Mansfield. 20th Century Fox disagreed. Jane churned out a few mega-hit movies for them in the 1950s, like The Girl Can't Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? Fox started loaning Jane out to film companies overseas, collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars for the arrangement, while Jane only received her standard salary. That was the first red flag. Fox made the split official shortly thereafter and released Jane from her contract in July of 1962. Their loss. Hadn't they learned? People were always going to look at Jane Mansfield. So let them look and charge them while you're at it. Jane tossed back another flute of champagne and spread out in the tub for another take. All eyes were on her. Just the way it was meant to be.
00:11:19
Speaker 4: Jane Mansfield was a modern Aphrodite. She stacked a 41-inch bust on top of a 22-inch waist, or so she claimed.
00:11:46
Speaker 2: She was a bombshell who could blow away any man to bits. But no one would touch her. They'd look, sure, but they wouldn't reach out. Not anymore. Promises Promises made damn sure of that. The movie vowed to make Jane even more notorious. Jane Mansfield was notorious, all right. Notorious for creating scandals in courtrooms across the country. Now see all of Jane Mansfield, the promotional poster declared. That was a lie. The film crew followed Jane's strict orders about not panning below her waist. The photographers at Playboy had other ideas. Her spread in the June 1963 issue bared it all. Her tits, her ass, hanging over the edge of the tub, the sleek curve of her hips. It was the best-selling issue in the magazine's history at the time, with over two million copies sold. Not even Marilyn did those numbers when she was alive. And when the issue was banned in parts of Europe, the English black market kept a steady supply in circulation. Jane Mansfield was the talk of the industry, and not in a good way, though. Promises Promises was banned in Pittsburgh, nearly banned in Cleveland. Jane was condemned on the floor of various state legislatures for her scenes riding around nude in bed. Hugh Hefner, for his part as Playboy's publisher, was arrested for distributing obscene literature. The same public that snapped up those nude photos condemned Jane for her exhibitionism. They knew that only desperate women took their tops off, and Jane must be pretty desperate because... She was stripping down on screen and in real life. But movies were never Jane's cash cow. It was the nightlife that brought in big bucks for bucks and blondes like herself. Jane earned her coins with club appearances and by flirting with crowds in real time. Her deal with the Dunes Hotel in Los Angeles earned her $ 35, 000 a week, way more than Fox ever paid her, even at the height of her stardom. Jane developed a saucy new act after Promises Promises. A striptease number called Satire on the Strip. But no one was laughing. The number torpedoed her reputation as a movie bombshell and sank her to a lower level of celebrity. Jane Mansfield was overexposed. Not just her body, her whole life. She wrote the blueprint for reality TV stars throughout the 1950s and 60s. Jane saw it as her solemn duty as a celebrity to share every detail of her life with the public. And if there weren't any snappy headlines about Jane in the papers at any given time, well, let's just say she'd get the ball rolling and the typewriters clacking. Jane walked her pet ocelots down Hollywood Boulevard. Yes, I mean ocelots, as in the medium-sized spotted wild cats, and yes, Jane Mansfield kept wild cats as pets. She went shopping in nothing but a leopard print bikini, invited photographers inside her pink palace on Sunset Boulevard like an episode of Cribs. And Jane ushered them through her Mediterranean-style mansion, complete with metallic gold ceilings and walls lined with plush pink carpet. They snapped photos of her pink satin curtains, an office with padded red vinyl for walls, a heart-shaped bathtub with gold faucets, a heart-shaped swimming pool, heart-shaped everything. Newspapers ran roughly 2,500 photographs of Jane between September of 1956 and May of 1957. Journalists dedicated 122,000 lines of text to her glamorous lifestyle in the same time frame. But by the mid-1960s, the princess of publicity was starting to lose her grip on the crown. People knew too much about Jane's knack for inventing her own stories. When Jane went missing in the Bahamas and was found wrecked on an island after a boating accident, people wondered, When Jane mourned one of her chihuahuas, a dog she said was Catholic, and buried her in a bronze casket in a public ceremony, people wondered. They wondered what was real. Yet no one wondered about the state of her film career. It was clear that Jane Mansfield and her pink-clad curves were just a relic of the 1950s. She wasn't even invited to the 1966 San Francisco Film Festival. That didn't stop her from attending. Jane wasn't there for the celebrity's. She was in San Francisco for the characters, the free thinkers who were shocking the world from the Bay Area. She heard about one particular man who wore the pants in counterculture. The man who wore the horns, rather. Anton LaVey. 1966 wasn't 1966. Not to Anton LaVey, it wasn't. It was year one. The first year of the Church of Satan. A time for new beginnings. Anton shaved his head to honor the moment. He wanted to look like an executioner. He was here to strike down everything that had been holding you back, to unleash the desires you'd kept hidden. The Church of Satan stood for greed, selfishness, freedom, sexual freedom. He set up his church on California Street in San Francisco. The Church of Satan was shiny, black, and new. It needed followers. Anton LaVey needed more eyes on it, and so did Jane Mansfield. Jane's publicist approved of her meeting Anton. He thought the local columnist could have a field day with their introduction. Jane and Anton linked up at the 1966 San Francisco Film Festival somehow. The details of their meeting are shrouded in mystery, but the details of the curse that Anton put on her family, well, that's just public record. Jane's chauffeur rolled up to the address that Anton gave her, 6114 California Street, San Francisco. The driver didn't need to check the street number. The Church of Satan's macabre aura lured him right to the front door. Barbie was about to enter the Black House. But Barbie wasn't alone. Jane's road manager was fascinated by Satanism too and decided to tag along. The third guest wasn't so rapt. He was borderline furious. Sam Brody was Jane's lawyer first and then her boyfriend, never her husband. Jane already had three husbands and she divorced them all. She met Sam when he helped her split from the last one. Sam didn't have to worry about that guy anymore. He had a new problem. And this one looked like Bela Lugosi 2.0. Jane wandered through Anton's labyrinth of occult curiosities. Candles molded in the shape of skulls. A human skeleton trapped behind a glass case. A tool for hypnosis likely for Anton's course on ESP and telecommunication. No item was off limits. Anton walked Jane to the stone altar at the heart of his satanic chapel. Anton married couples here. He would baptize his own daughter here. Women lay naked here on this very altar for rituals and ceremonies while other naked women gathered nearby. Anton would stand in the middle of his flock, fully clothed in a satin shirt and flowing cape, with a satanic pendant dangling from his neck, plus the fake horns. He always wore the horns. He would stand over a naked vixen on the altar and run a sword down the length of her body. And that kind of objectification might have turned some women off. Not Jane Mansfield. The church's motto of indulgence instead of abstinence called out to her. Her career was built on indulgence. Indulging audiences in their desires. Indulging the public with the details of her life. These days, she liked to indulge in diet pills and alcohol, too. Jane listened to Anton intently. She was amazed at how much of his teachings lined up with her own philosophies. Sam was amazed as well. Amazed that anyone could ever believe this crock of bullshit. Amazed that so many books could fill so many shelves and still be all totally bogus. Looky here, it's Vampire Ken with Malibu Barbie, what a pair. The sight made Sam sick. He examined the so-called sacred items lining the altar, picked them up and waved them around in a mock ceremony like the Pope blessing a congregation in Rome. And they were made-up relics for a made-up religion. Sam let out a witch cackle and lit one of the skull-shaped candles. You shouldn't have done that, Anton appeared behind Sam instantly to say. And he spoke with a growl and blew out the candle. You don't know what you've done. Sam laughed in Anton's face. He knew exactly what he had done. He lit a mound of wax in the shape of a skull. Big fucking deal. The mound of wax, though, To Anton, it had a special purpose. Destruction rituals. Curses. All gnarly shit. And Sam just thrust himself in the middle of it. I don't know what's going to happen to you now, Anton said. I only hope I've put it out in time. But Anton did know what was going to happen. He pulled Jane aside to break the news. Sam's foolish actions set in motion an unstoppable curse. The curse was coming for him. Maybe not today. And maybe not tomorrow, but within a year, Sam Brody will be dead. Anton said that Jane better keep her distance from him. She wanted to make it out alive. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. Jane Mansfield was ready to unleash the beast. She purred and balled her fists in the claws. The backdrop of today's photo shoot was exotic. Jane was on display at a private zoo called Jungleland in Thousand Oaks. Jane devoured the wild theme and grew animalistic with her poses. And never mind that her children were nearby or that she was in public, Jane made love to the camera anytime, anywhere, especially when publicity opportunities popped up. Her six-year-old son, Zoltan, dawdled in the background. Zoltan just wanted to see one lousy lion, like the one that Anton LaVey kept as a pet. Anton's lion was so well-trained that he even let it sleep with him. Zoltan begged his mother to meet the lion. But Sam Brody wasn't having it. Anton LaVey wasn't the only guy in California with a jungle cat. The well-trained animals at Jungleland would do just fine to appease a six-year-old. So Sam brought Jane and Zoltan to the lion's den on November 26, 1966. Jane seized the opportunity to snag some headlines and post for a handful of photographs on site. But Zoltan was about to steal the spotlight. He inched towards the zoo's roaming lion. There was no cage or metal fence protecting him. All that separated Zoltan from the lion's jaws was the seven-foot chain it was tied to. Even that didn't work for long. The lion lurched at Zoltan and scooped his head into its mouth. Its jaws clamped down on Zoltan like a vice, and his skull splintered into pieces. Teeth slashed his cheeks and neck and punctured his internal organs. Blood coated his neck, and by the time the zoo staff pried Zoltan free, he was chewed up like a ragdoll. Medics rushed into the operating room at Conejo Valley Hospital. Surgeons did their best to stitch Zoltan back together and decompress the skull fracture, but nothing was guaranteed. When doctors administered a breathing tube, Jay knew it was time. The time to make a deal with the devil. Anton LaVey could feel Mount Temapias growing in front of him. He sensed it spouting forth from hell, through the crust of San Francisco, and reaching up toward the storm above him. He could barely see through the downpour behind the wheel of his coroner's van. He let the mountain's energy guide him toward its peak instead. Anton composed a spell as the van scaled the mountain, His incantation had to be precise, powerful, demanding. Otherwise, his brother Satan might not spare young Zoltan's life. Jane called Anton in tears earlier that afternoon. She begged him to throw some magical muscle behind her son's fragile condition. Anton could even sense the impending disaster when he gazed into his mental crystal ball. Zoltan, outlook not so good. Anton heard the earth speak to him. Stop now. He could drive no farther. Anton would have to hoof it for the rest of his journey. He parked his van at the highest point in the road and let the mountain's energy surge through his footsteps. Lightning struck within Anton when he reached the peak. It was time. Anton held out the sides of his cape like bat wings. He gazed into the storm, challenged it. Icy rain soaked the satin shirt and clung to his skin. And the cold didn't deter him. And the power of Satanism could conquer anything, like tempest or death. The words spilled from Anton like a man speaking in tongues. He hurled his incantation into the fog that surrounded him. Anton did not ask Satan to spare Zoltan's life. He commanded it.
00:24:37
Speaker 4: Now.
00:24:39
Speaker 2: The clouds didn't part, the rain didn't slow, and the winds didn't stop howling. Nothing happened on Mount Timopaios. But things changed quickly at Kaneo Valley Hospital. Zoltan underwent another emergency surgery that day. Doctors worked for six hours to remove his spleen, which was punctured beyond repair. Zoltan didn't recover overnight, but the doctors finally came to a conclusion. He was going to live. Zoltan's recovery deepened the connection between Jane and Anton, however you wanted to label it. Friends, peers, teacher and student. According to Anton's authorized biography, lovers might even be an accurate description. I won't get into how Jane supposedly asked Anton to send her an incubus in the middle of the night. I won't go there. It's too fucking weird. She was a sensual woman. But there's no way she asked the founder of the Church of Satan to conjure a demon, send it to her room, and command it to crawl into her bed, under her sheets, place its scaly hands on her hips, and... You get the idea. 1967 was the year the darkness of Satanism blended with the blushing pinks of Jane Mansfield's stardom. Jane took Anton to San Francisco restaurants like Ernie's, Trader Vic's, and the Blue Fox. Anton escorted Jane to the dark parts of the Bay, abandoned brickworks near San Quentin Prison, the lavitated mansions, empty of human life but full of tragedy from past generations. Anton described himself as being Jane's sorcerer on call. That's a quote. It was a pop culture crossover straight out of a Tim Burton movie. except even Tim Burton wasn't old enough yet to conjure up a story this strange. Magazines printed photos of Anton and Jane together throughout 1967, the most famous of which come from Anton's visit to the Pink Palace that summer. A well-known German paparazzo followed the pair around Jane's supersized ballhouse. He snapped photos of Anton cradling one of Jane's chihuahuas, of them talking by the heart-shaped pool, of Anton testing out Sam's exercise equipment, of the religious ceremony that took place under Jane's own roof. Jane Mansfield kneeled on the lion skin rug while Anton LaVey stood before her. He slowly lowered a sword onto Jane's head. He let it rest on her blonde beehive. Three disembodied heads watched the scene. The head of a lion still attached to the rug, the skull on the table in front of Jane, and another skull that she held close to her chest. After the ceremony, Jane and Anton knocked back a drink in metallic chalices. No one knows what happened during the ceremony, but they knew it did, in fact, happen. Because there were pictures of it plastered in magazines, easily available to the public. And the spectacle was show business at its best. A sorcerer and a sex goddess practicing Satanism for all to see. This was the level of entertainment the public craved in 1967. Anton LaVey conspiring with Jane Mansfield was shocking and unexpected, maybe even bone-chilling. It was nothing like the striptease that Jane was still performing to keep her pink wallet fat. Her cabaret was in its final act. Sloppiness now overpowered Jane's sex appeal. She pivoted between bottles of bourbon, fistfuls of uppers, and tabs of LSD to keep her loose. The chemicals made her loopy instead. One evening, Jane sang the same song twice in a row before she toppled over the footlights of the stage. She received her first round of booze when she walked through the crowd, plopped herself in a gentleman's lap and thrust one of her breasts into his mouth. Jane Mansfield, bonafide dumb blonde at last. Her reputation was even tanking overseas. Jane's 1967 visit to Ireland invoked the wrath of the Catholic Church when a bishop demanded his congregation boycott her performance. The venue eventually canceled the show. Jane Mansfield wasn't a sex bomb anymore. She was just a bomb, a flop, a flash in the pan. She clung to whoever would still book her, even if it meant heading to towns like Biloxi, Mississippi. A joint there called Gus Stevens' Supper Club booked Jane for repeat performances. Paid her in cash. It wasn't the Sunset Strip, but it would do it. When Jane packed her bags for Biloxi, Sam insisted on tagging along. He didn't care that he was still recovering from a car crash. Two crashes, actually. One totaled his new Maserati. Another wrecked his Mercedes. And the accidents left him with a cracked rib and a broken leg. Both incidents were less than a week apart. The curse was closing in. Anton LaVey faced the congregation in the Black House. A familiar face was missing. one forever wearing a smile and a low-cut pink dress. He reached deep inside of him for the courage to preach. He thought about the devotion of his friend and high priestess, Jane Mansfield. He wondered what she could have been capable of if she only could have learned more from him. He wondered if she felt terror earlier that week, or if she faced her final moments with bravery. He wondered what might have gone through her head right before the tractor-trailer tore it off. The fog was thick. Ronnie Harrison squinted to see the freeway. He had precious cargo in his family's Buick that night. Jane Mansfield, certified sex goddess, dozed in the front seat next to him. Sam Brody slept to her right. Three of her children, and a few of Jane's chihuahuas huddled in the back seat. Ronnie needed to drive Jane from his dad's club in Biloxi to New Orleans by sunrise. Jane had an interview booked with WDSU, a local TV station. The Big Easy was just a quick 90-minute spin down the I-10. It wasn't so quick tonight, though, with fog smeared across the windshield. Only it wasn't fog. The haze coating the highway was mosquito spray. A pesticide truck was making the rounds on June 29, 1967, keeping the mosquito population in check during a sticky Mississippi summer. The fog lowered visibility, lowered Ronnie's guard. He didn't see the tractor trailer in front of the Buick until he was underneath it. The hood of the car fit square between the truck's back tires. The rest of the Buick didn't. The tractor trailer peeled back the Buick's roof like the lid of a can, taking the top off Jane's head with it. The crash ripped everything above Jane's eyebrows clean off, fractured her skull. She died on impact. Sam and Ronnie, too. Ronnie was pinned between the seat and the steering wheel, skull split open. Sam's face was disfigured beyond the point of recognition. A necklace dangled from his corpse. A medallion of St. Christopher, used for protection while traveling. Luckily, all of Jane's children in the back seat survived. The photos from that night are harrowing. Blood and brain matter splattered on mangled metal. Jane's corpse covered by a sheet on the side of the highway. One of her dead chihuahuas not far from her body. These pictures misrepresent Jane's final moments. One particular shot of blonde hair caught in the Buick windshield created the illusion that Jane was decapitated. In reality, she was scalped. But the truth never got in the way of a juicy story. The final headlines about Jane Mansfield, princess of publicity, failed her. The news got it wrong when they memorialized her. They got it wrong when they called Anton for a comment. Anton waited to grieve with the community at the Church of Satan. Fans of Jane Mansfield, the actress and public figure gathered in her home state of Pennsylvania earlier that week to bury her. Fans of Jane Mansfield, Satan's showgirl and the inquisitive and Belgian seductress gathered in the Black House. One member of the congregation dimmed the lights in the chapel. Anton shuffled the words in his head once again, just as he'd done on his way to Mount Tumafias. That's when the lights along the black walls began to flare. They flashed once, twice, over and over again, five times total. Some gathered in the chapel swore they saw pink hearts appear in the light bulbs. And suddenly, Anton found the words. He praised Jane's love of life, her unhinged sensuality, her hedonism. He asked higher powers to bless her by allowing her memory to live on in the hearts of the living. It was just like any other memorial service. Right until the end. Hail Satan, the congregation cried out. Hail Jane. And then, Anton LaVey closed the memorial with five last words. And so it is done. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Hollywoodland.
00:33:58
Speaker 5: Hollywood Land was created by Years Truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Follow, like, rate, and review Hollywood Land wherever you get your podcasts and get in touch with us on social media at Double Elvis. If you like Hollywood Land, check out my other show, the award-winning Disgraceland, which looks at the world of music through the lens of true crime.
00:34:17
Speaker 2: Just search for Disgraceland wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Happy Monday, everyone out there in Hollywood land. It's the good doctor, Dr. Lundy Esquire, and welcome to The Working Week, which means another peek into our archive of stories at the intersection of Hollywood and true crime. Today, we've got our fully scripted and sound design episode on Jane Mansfield, who tragically died 59 years ago in 1967 at the age of 34. Whether she was filming Hollywood's first major nude scenes or posing against a backdrop of satanic skulls and pentagrams, Jane Mansfield lived for exhibitionism. As a leading sex pot of the 1950s, she was a genius, a bombshell, and a mother in an industry that demanded women be single, dumb, and blonde. When people whispered that Jane lived in Marilyn Monroe's shadow, she fled to the Church of Satan and started dancing in the shadows with its founder, Anton LaVey. Her final headline sensationalized the myth of how she lost her head in a car crash and blamed her death on a satanic curse. But even decades after that fatal road trip, there's still plenty about Jane that still warrants showing off. I hope you dig this episode on Jane Mansfield, and then I hope you join me again here on Wednesday for the wrap party, where I'll respond to your voicemails and messages, and later on Friday for a new installment of The Screening Room, in which I'll do a deep dive into the 2018 Ari Aster film, Hereditary.
00:01:21
Speaker 2: This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Hollywoodland is a production of Double Elvis.
00:01:32
Speaker 3: The stories about Jane Mansfield are insane. She stripped down for the very first nude scene in a major motion picture.
00:01:56
Speaker 2: She wowed the pants off men as Hollywood's leading sexpot. And then she scared the pants off of them when she publicly bonded with Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan. Magazines condemned her and called her Satan's slave. Jane called it a good opportunity for publicity. She was a genius, a bombshell, and a mother in an industry that demanded women be single, dumb, and blonde. She died in an accident so gruesome and so bizarre. that it's easy to suspect supernatural forces were involved. But before that fatal road trip, Jane Mansfield made great films. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't a clip from a great film. That was a fair use sample from the Library of Congress of Viola Brown performing Drive Old Satan Away from 1939. I played you that clip because I can't afford the rights to Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen. And why would I play you that specific slice of proto-suicide squad cheese, could I afford it? Because that was the number one movie in America on June 29th, 1967. And that was the day that 34-year-old Jane Mansfield lost her head. In this episode, nude scenes, supernatural forces, gruesome accidents, and Satan's showgirl, Jane Mansfield. I'm Jake Brennan. And this is Hollywoodland.
00:03:29
Speaker 4: Anton LaVey maneuvered the blades with caution. His scissors moved through the page like a hot knife through devil's food cake.
00:03:57
Speaker 2: Cutting excess paper away from the sacred image in his hands. A photograph of him posing for a German magazine in front of Marilyn Monroe's mausoleum. A damn good photograph, if he said so himself. It was printed in black and white, just like Anton's wardrobe. Just like the inside of Anton's home, where he toiled away now. He called it the Black House, a.k.a. the headquarters for the Church of Satan, Anton's own invention. The church's raven black exterior called to the goth prototypes on the streets of San Francisco. This is the place for you to indulge, to explore, to take a walk on the weird side. The devil wasn't actually present at the Church of Satan. And that wasn't what Anton's new religion was about. People always got that part wrong. Satanism was about worshipping the self. It honored the dark desires lurking at the bottom of your heart. the lustful thoughts that most people were too afraid to acknowledge, let alone share. Jane Mansfield wasn't afraid to share anything with Anton LaVey. That silver screen sexpot was born to walk these black halls. Anton made her a high priestess in his church, even if Jane denied her title to the papers, said she wasn't a member of his black circle, and reminded the tabloids that she was born a Methodist, called herself Catholic, and had ties to Orthodox Judaism through her beau-slash-lawyer. Anton knew better. Jane would never fully divulge just how much Anton taught her between these walls. She learned in the shadows. Anton taught her about the nature of paradise and hell, about casting spells and practicing rituals. Jane certainly believed enough to call Anton every morning for a happy spell that enchanted the day ahead of her. And their worlds collided many times. often with a photographer trailing behind them. Sometimes it was the same German photographer who snapped these very shots of Anton at Marilyn's grave that he was holding tonight. Anton made the final snip across the top of the page. A chill crawled up his spine. Something was wrong. He turned the magazine page over. A photo of Jane was on the opposite side. He had just clipped her head clean off. Another chill seized him. Yes, something was very wrong. The phone rang. Must be Jane. Calling for a belated happy spell. And there was nothing happy about what the voice on the other end had to say. It wasn't Jane. It was a reporter. Jane Mansfield was dead. Cause of death?
00:06:37
Speaker 4: Decapitation.
00:06:42
Speaker 2: Jane Mansfield arched her back over the lip of the bathtub. Suds dribbled past her shoulders and down her chest, but not too many suds. Act natural, the director told her, but put on a show. Jane can do both simultaneously. Easy. She stretched her arms into the air for a few more seconds and let the camera linger on her assets. And then she slipped back under the hot water. Just her torso, not her chest. Jane wasn't being paid to be modest today. Thank God for champagne. Liquid courage carried her through her first nude scene for this movie, and it would get her through this one, too. The movie was called Promises, promises. And the director said it was a sex comedy. He assured Jane it wasn't porn. But he also said he wanted to get as close to porn without crossing the line. Jane had her own line she drew with the camera crew. She'd go topless and they could shoot her stomach, sure, but they weren't to let that camera lens wander an inch below her hips. That's the boundary that Jane was comfortable with. Well, what her husband was comfortable with. Because Jane Mansfield was not ashamed of being naked. If the public wanted to ogle her figure, she wasn't stopping anyone. And they were going to peek whether or not Jane felt comfortable anyway. Strangers eye-fucked her before she even bought her first bra. Before she was even a teenager. And not just men, either. Other girls couldn't keep their eyes and hands off Jane's forbidden fruit. Jane never rejected the attention. She leaned into it, took pride in it. As a teenager, she kept a tally of how many boys she kissed in her diary. Every day had its own tally. Every day. Jane's mother told her that sexual attraction was something to hide. Bullshit. No one was holding their desires from her, that was for sure, and she definitely wasn't about to suppress herself to appease any prudes. Jane had sex appeal, in spades. Kind people paid for, repeatedly. Jane learned that when she was studying at the Dallas Institute of Performing Arts. She stripped down for some photos before her big acting break so she could put food on the table for her daughter. And that gig led to paid work as a nude model in a woman's sculpting class. And by the time Jane broke into Hollywood, she wielded her body like a weapon of mass seduction. So yeah, let them look. And if people wanted to pay Jane for it, even better. Jane was getting two paychecks for today's shoot. One from the movie studio for $ 150, 000, and plus another check for $ 25, 000 from Playboy for the pictorial they were shooting while Jane writhed around topless on set. The money was secondary for Jane. The real payoff would be relevance. After all, Jane Mansfield was making history. She was doing something Marilyn Monroe couldn't do. Marilyn dropped dead before she had the chance. Jane was going to be the first star to bear it all in a major motion picture. Jane could have easily taken Marilyn's place, could have, except suddenly production companies didn't want a Monroe stand-in such as Kim Novak or Mamie Van Doren to be their leading role. By the early 60s, the era of ditzy blondes was done so. Jane Mansfield wasn't a ditz, but she had the act down pat. She boasted a squeal that sounded like steam escaping. She could sing and twirl in frilly outfits better than any vapid airhead. Then take a Barb Jo. at her expense in the next scene like it was nothing. You'd never know that she had an IQ of 163. That's genius level, by the way. And you'd never know she was first chair violin in school when she was only 14, and that she spoke French and German and Italian. That's just good acting. But no one wanted Jane Mansfield to act. They wanted her to exhibit, just like she was doing now, in the bathtub. Because no one showed off like Jane Mansfield. 20th Century Fox disagreed. Jane churned out a few mega-hit movies for them in the 1950s, like The Girl Can't Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? Fox started loaning Jane out to film companies overseas, collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars for the arrangement, while Jane only received her standard salary. That was the first red flag. Fox made the split official shortly thereafter and released Jane from her contract in July of 1962. Their loss. Hadn't they learned? People were always going to look at Jane Mansfield. So let them look and charge them while you're at it. Jane tossed back another flute of champagne and spread out in the tub for another take. All eyes were on her. Just the way it was meant to be.
00:11:19
Speaker 4: Jane Mansfield was a modern Aphrodite. She stacked a 41-inch bust on top of a 22-inch waist, or so she claimed.
00:11:46
Speaker 2: She was a bombshell who could blow away any man to bits. But no one would touch her. They'd look, sure, but they wouldn't reach out. Not anymore. Promises Promises made damn sure of that. The movie vowed to make Jane even more notorious. Jane Mansfield was notorious, all right. Notorious for creating scandals in courtrooms across the country. Now see all of Jane Mansfield, the promotional poster declared. That was a lie. The film crew followed Jane's strict orders about not panning below her waist. The photographers at Playboy had other ideas. Her spread in the June 1963 issue bared it all. Her tits, her ass, hanging over the edge of the tub, the sleek curve of her hips. It was the best-selling issue in the magazine's history at the time, with over two million copies sold. Not even Marilyn did those numbers when she was alive. And when the issue was banned in parts of Europe, the English black market kept a steady supply in circulation. Jane Mansfield was the talk of the industry, and not in a good way, though. Promises Promises was banned in Pittsburgh, nearly banned in Cleveland. Jane was condemned on the floor of various state legislatures for her scenes riding around nude in bed. Hugh Hefner, for his part as Playboy's publisher, was arrested for distributing obscene literature. The same public that snapped up those nude photos condemned Jane for her exhibitionism. They knew that only desperate women took their tops off, and Jane must be pretty desperate because... She was stripping down on screen and in real life. But movies were never Jane's cash cow. It was the nightlife that brought in big bucks for bucks and blondes like herself. Jane earned her coins with club appearances and by flirting with crowds in real time. Her deal with the Dunes Hotel in Los Angeles earned her $ 35, 000 a week, way more than Fox ever paid her, even at the height of her stardom. Jane developed a saucy new act after Promises Promises. A striptease number called Satire on the Strip. But no one was laughing. The number torpedoed her reputation as a movie bombshell and sank her to a lower level of celebrity. Jane Mansfield was overexposed. Not just her body, her whole life. She wrote the blueprint for reality TV stars throughout the 1950s and 60s. Jane saw it as her solemn duty as a celebrity to share every detail of her life with the public. And if there weren't any snappy headlines about Jane in the papers at any given time, well, let's just say she'd get the ball rolling and the typewriters clacking. Jane walked her pet ocelots down Hollywood Boulevard. Yes, I mean ocelots, as in the medium-sized spotted wild cats, and yes, Jane Mansfield kept wild cats as pets. She went shopping in nothing but a leopard print bikini, invited photographers inside her pink palace on Sunset Boulevard like an episode of Cribs. And Jane ushered them through her Mediterranean-style mansion, complete with metallic gold ceilings and walls lined with plush pink carpet. They snapped photos of her pink satin curtains, an office with padded red vinyl for walls, a heart-shaped bathtub with gold faucets, a heart-shaped swimming pool, heart-shaped everything. Newspapers ran roughly 2,500 photographs of Jane between September of 1956 and May of 1957. Journalists dedicated 122,000 lines of text to her glamorous lifestyle in the same time frame. But by the mid-1960s, the princess of publicity was starting to lose her grip on the crown. People knew too much about Jane's knack for inventing her own stories. When Jane went missing in the Bahamas and was found wrecked on an island after a boating accident, people wondered, When Jane mourned one of her chihuahuas, a dog she said was Catholic, and buried her in a bronze casket in a public ceremony, people wondered. They wondered what was real. Yet no one wondered about the state of her film career. It was clear that Jane Mansfield and her pink-clad curves were just a relic of the 1950s. She wasn't even invited to the 1966 San Francisco Film Festival. That didn't stop her from attending. Jane wasn't there for the celebrity's. She was in San Francisco for the characters, the free thinkers who were shocking the world from the Bay Area. She heard about one particular man who wore the pants in counterculture. The man who wore the horns, rather. Anton LaVey. 1966 wasn't 1966. Not to Anton LaVey, it wasn't. It was year one. The first year of the Church of Satan. A time for new beginnings. Anton shaved his head to honor the moment. He wanted to look like an executioner. He was here to strike down everything that had been holding you back, to unleash the desires you'd kept hidden. The Church of Satan stood for greed, selfishness, freedom, sexual freedom. He set up his church on California Street in San Francisco. The Church of Satan was shiny, black, and new. It needed followers. Anton LaVey needed more eyes on it, and so did Jane Mansfield. Jane's publicist approved of her meeting Anton. He thought the local columnist could have a field day with their introduction. Jane and Anton linked up at the 1966 San Francisco Film Festival somehow. The details of their meeting are shrouded in mystery, but the details of the curse that Anton put on her family, well, that's just public record. Jane's chauffeur rolled up to the address that Anton gave her, 6114 California Street, San Francisco. The driver didn't need to check the street number. The Church of Satan's macabre aura lured him right to the front door. Barbie was about to enter the Black House. But Barbie wasn't alone. Jane's road manager was fascinated by Satanism too and decided to tag along. The third guest wasn't so rapt. He was borderline furious. Sam Brody was Jane's lawyer first and then her boyfriend, never her husband. Jane already had three husbands and she divorced them all. She met Sam when he helped her split from the last one. Sam didn't have to worry about that guy anymore. He had a new problem. And this one looked like Bela Lugosi 2.0. Jane wandered through Anton's labyrinth of occult curiosities. Candles molded in the shape of skulls. A human skeleton trapped behind a glass case. A tool for hypnosis likely for Anton's course on ESP and telecommunication. No item was off limits. Anton walked Jane to the stone altar at the heart of his satanic chapel. Anton married couples here. He would baptize his own daughter here. Women lay naked here on this very altar for rituals and ceremonies while other naked women gathered nearby. Anton would stand in the middle of his flock, fully clothed in a satin shirt and flowing cape, with a satanic pendant dangling from his neck, plus the fake horns. He always wore the horns. He would stand over a naked vixen on the altar and run a sword down the length of her body. And that kind of objectification might have turned some women off. Not Jane Mansfield. The church's motto of indulgence instead of abstinence called out to her. Her career was built on indulgence. Indulging audiences in their desires. Indulging the public with the details of her life. These days, she liked to indulge in diet pills and alcohol, too. Jane listened to Anton intently. She was amazed at how much of his teachings lined up with her own philosophies. Sam was amazed as well. Amazed that anyone could ever believe this crock of bullshit. Amazed that so many books could fill so many shelves and still be all totally bogus. Looky here, it's Vampire Ken with Malibu Barbie, what a pair. The sight made Sam sick. He examined the so-called sacred items lining the altar, picked them up and waved them around in a mock ceremony like the Pope blessing a congregation in Rome. And they were made-up relics for a made-up religion. Sam let out a witch cackle and lit one of the skull-shaped candles. You shouldn't have done that, Anton appeared behind Sam instantly to say. And he spoke with a growl and blew out the candle. You don't know what you've done. Sam laughed in Anton's face. He knew exactly what he had done. He lit a mound of wax in the shape of a skull. Big fucking deal. The mound of wax, though, To Anton, it had a special purpose. Destruction rituals. Curses. All gnarly shit. And Sam just thrust himself in the middle of it. I don't know what's going to happen to you now, Anton said. I only hope I've put it out in time. But Anton did know what was going to happen. He pulled Jane aside to break the news. Sam's foolish actions set in motion an unstoppable curse. The curse was coming for him. Maybe not today. And maybe not tomorrow, but within a year, Sam Brody will be dead. Anton said that Jane better keep her distance from him. She wanted to make it out alive. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. Jane Mansfield was ready to unleash the beast. She purred and balled her fists in the claws. The backdrop of today's photo shoot was exotic. Jane was on display at a private zoo called Jungleland in Thousand Oaks. Jane devoured the wild theme and grew animalistic with her poses. And never mind that her children were nearby or that she was in public, Jane made love to the camera anytime, anywhere, especially when publicity opportunities popped up. Her six-year-old son, Zoltan, dawdled in the background. Zoltan just wanted to see one lousy lion, like the one that Anton LaVey kept as a pet. Anton's lion was so well-trained that he even let it sleep with him. Zoltan begged his mother to meet the lion. But Sam Brody wasn't having it. Anton LaVey wasn't the only guy in California with a jungle cat. The well-trained animals at Jungleland would do just fine to appease a six-year-old. So Sam brought Jane and Zoltan to the lion's den on November 26, 1966. Jane seized the opportunity to snag some headlines and post for a handful of photographs on site. But Zoltan was about to steal the spotlight. He inched towards the zoo's roaming lion. There was no cage or metal fence protecting him. All that separated Zoltan from the lion's jaws was the seven-foot chain it was tied to. Even that didn't work for long. The lion lurched at Zoltan and scooped his head into its mouth. Its jaws clamped down on Zoltan like a vice, and his skull splintered into pieces. Teeth slashed his cheeks and neck and punctured his internal organs. Blood coated his neck, and by the time the zoo staff pried Zoltan free, he was chewed up like a ragdoll. Medics rushed into the operating room at Conejo Valley Hospital. Surgeons did their best to stitch Zoltan back together and decompress the skull fracture, but nothing was guaranteed. When doctors administered a breathing tube, Jay knew it was time. The time to make a deal with the devil. Anton LaVey could feel Mount Temapias growing in front of him. He sensed it spouting forth from hell, through the crust of San Francisco, and reaching up toward the storm above him. He could barely see through the downpour behind the wheel of his coroner's van. He let the mountain's energy guide him toward its peak instead. Anton composed a spell as the van scaled the mountain, His incantation had to be precise, powerful, demanding. Otherwise, his brother Satan might not spare young Zoltan's life. Jane called Anton in tears earlier that afternoon. She begged him to throw some magical muscle behind her son's fragile condition. Anton could even sense the impending disaster when he gazed into his mental crystal ball. Zoltan, outlook not so good. Anton heard the earth speak to him. Stop now. He could drive no farther. Anton would have to hoof it for the rest of his journey. He parked his van at the highest point in the road and let the mountain's energy surge through his footsteps. Lightning struck within Anton when he reached the peak. It was time. Anton held out the sides of his cape like bat wings. He gazed into the storm, challenged it. Icy rain soaked the satin shirt and clung to his skin. And the cold didn't deter him. And the power of Satanism could conquer anything, like tempest or death. The words spilled from Anton like a man speaking in tongues. He hurled his incantation into the fog that surrounded him. Anton did not ask Satan to spare Zoltan's life. He commanded it.
00:24:37
Speaker 4: Now.
00:24:39
Speaker 2: The clouds didn't part, the rain didn't slow, and the winds didn't stop howling. Nothing happened on Mount Timopaios. But things changed quickly at Kaneo Valley Hospital. Zoltan underwent another emergency surgery that day. Doctors worked for six hours to remove his spleen, which was punctured beyond repair. Zoltan didn't recover overnight, but the doctors finally came to a conclusion. He was going to live. Zoltan's recovery deepened the connection between Jane and Anton, however you wanted to label it. Friends, peers, teacher and student. According to Anton's authorized biography, lovers might even be an accurate description. I won't get into how Jane supposedly asked Anton to send her an incubus in the middle of the night. I won't go there. It's too fucking weird. She was a sensual woman. But there's no way she asked the founder of the Church of Satan to conjure a demon, send it to her room, and command it to crawl into her bed, under her sheets, place its scaly hands on her hips, and... You get the idea. 1967 was the year the darkness of Satanism blended with the blushing pinks of Jane Mansfield's stardom. Jane took Anton to San Francisco restaurants like Ernie's, Trader Vic's, and the Blue Fox. Anton escorted Jane to the dark parts of the Bay, abandoned brickworks near San Quentin Prison, the lavitated mansions, empty of human life but full of tragedy from past generations. Anton described himself as being Jane's sorcerer on call. That's a quote. It was a pop culture crossover straight out of a Tim Burton movie. except even Tim Burton wasn't old enough yet to conjure up a story this strange. Magazines printed photos of Anton and Jane together throughout 1967, the most famous of which come from Anton's visit to the Pink Palace that summer. A well-known German paparazzo followed the pair around Jane's supersized ballhouse. He snapped photos of Anton cradling one of Jane's chihuahuas, of them talking by the heart-shaped pool, of Anton testing out Sam's exercise equipment, of the religious ceremony that took place under Jane's own roof. Jane Mansfield kneeled on the lion skin rug while Anton LaVey stood before her. He slowly lowered a sword onto Jane's head. He let it rest on her blonde beehive. Three disembodied heads watched the scene. The head of a lion still attached to the rug, the skull on the table in front of Jane, and another skull that she held close to her chest. After the ceremony, Jane and Anton knocked back a drink in metallic chalices. No one knows what happened during the ceremony, but they knew it did, in fact, happen. Because there were pictures of it plastered in magazines, easily available to the public. And the spectacle was show business at its best. A sorcerer and a sex goddess practicing Satanism for all to see. This was the level of entertainment the public craved in 1967. Anton LaVey conspiring with Jane Mansfield was shocking and unexpected, maybe even bone-chilling. It was nothing like the striptease that Jane was still performing to keep her pink wallet fat. Her cabaret was in its final act. Sloppiness now overpowered Jane's sex appeal. She pivoted between bottles of bourbon, fistfuls of uppers, and tabs of LSD to keep her loose. The chemicals made her loopy instead. One evening, Jane sang the same song twice in a row before she toppled over the footlights of the stage. She received her first round of booze when she walked through the crowd, plopped herself in a gentleman's lap and thrust one of her breasts into his mouth. Jane Mansfield, bonafide dumb blonde at last. Her reputation was even tanking overseas. Jane's 1967 visit to Ireland invoked the wrath of the Catholic Church when a bishop demanded his congregation boycott her performance. The venue eventually canceled the show. Jane Mansfield wasn't a sex bomb anymore. She was just a bomb, a flop, a flash in the pan. She clung to whoever would still book her, even if it meant heading to towns like Biloxi, Mississippi. A joint there called Gus Stevens' Supper Club booked Jane for repeat performances. Paid her in cash. It wasn't the Sunset Strip, but it would do it. When Jane packed her bags for Biloxi, Sam insisted on tagging along. He didn't care that he was still recovering from a car crash. Two crashes, actually. One totaled his new Maserati. Another wrecked his Mercedes. And the accidents left him with a cracked rib and a broken leg. Both incidents were less than a week apart. The curse was closing in. Anton LaVey faced the congregation in the Black House. A familiar face was missing. one forever wearing a smile and a low-cut pink dress. He reached deep inside of him for the courage to preach. He thought about the devotion of his friend and high priestess, Jane Mansfield. He wondered what she could have been capable of if she only could have learned more from him. He wondered if she felt terror earlier that week, or if she faced her final moments with bravery. He wondered what might have gone through her head right before the tractor-trailer tore it off. The fog was thick. Ronnie Harrison squinted to see the freeway. He had precious cargo in his family's Buick that night. Jane Mansfield, certified sex goddess, dozed in the front seat next to him. Sam Brody slept to her right. Three of her children, and a few of Jane's chihuahuas huddled in the back seat. Ronnie needed to drive Jane from his dad's club in Biloxi to New Orleans by sunrise. Jane had an interview booked with WDSU, a local TV station. The Big Easy was just a quick 90-minute spin down the I-10. It wasn't so quick tonight, though, with fog smeared across the windshield. Only it wasn't fog. The haze coating the highway was mosquito spray. A pesticide truck was making the rounds on June 29, 1967, keeping the mosquito population in check during a sticky Mississippi summer. The fog lowered visibility, lowered Ronnie's guard. He didn't see the tractor trailer in front of the Buick until he was underneath it. The hood of the car fit square between the truck's back tires. The rest of the Buick didn't. The tractor trailer peeled back the Buick's roof like the lid of a can, taking the top off Jane's head with it. The crash ripped everything above Jane's eyebrows clean off, fractured her skull. She died on impact. Sam and Ronnie, too. Ronnie was pinned between the seat and the steering wheel, skull split open. Sam's face was disfigured beyond the point of recognition. A necklace dangled from his corpse. A medallion of St. Christopher, used for protection while traveling. Luckily, all of Jane's children in the back seat survived. The photos from that night are harrowing. Blood and brain matter splattered on mangled metal. Jane's corpse covered by a sheet on the side of the highway. One of her dead chihuahuas not far from her body. These pictures misrepresent Jane's final moments. One particular shot of blonde hair caught in the Buick windshield created the illusion that Jane was decapitated. In reality, she was scalped. But the truth never got in the way of a juicy story. The final headlines about Jane Mansfield, princess of publicity, failed her. The news got it wrong when they memorialized her. They got it wrong when they called Anton for a comment. Anton waited to grieve with the community at the Church of Satan. Fans of Jane Mansfield, the actress and public figure gathered in her home state of Pennsylvania earlier that week to bury her. Fans of Jane Mansfield, Satan's showgirl and the inquisitive and Belgian seductress gathered in the Black House. One member of the congregation dimmed the lights in the chapel. Anton shuffled the words in his head once again, just as he'd done on his way to Mount Tumafias. That's when the lights along the black walls began to flare. They flashed once, twice, over and over again, five times total. Some gathered in the chapel swore they saw pink hearts appear in the light bulbs. And suddenly, Anton found the words. He praised Jane's love of life, her unhinged sensuality, her hedonism. He asked higher powers to bless her by allowing her memory to live on in the hearts of the living. It was just like any other memorial service. Right until the end. Hail Satan, the congregation cried out. Hail Jane. And then, Anton LaVey closed the memorial with five last words. And so it is done. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Hollywoodland.
00:33:58
Speaker 5: Hollywood Land was created by Years Truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Follow, like, rate, and review Hollywood Land wherever you get your podcasts and get in touch with us on social media at Double Elvis. If you like Hollywood Land, check out my other show, the award-winning Disgraceland, which looks at the world of music through the lens of true crime.
00:34:17
Speaker 2: Just search for Disgraceland wherever you get your podcasts.
