Jayne Mansfield in Popular Culture - Playboy

She posed nude for the February 1955 issue of Playboy, an event that helped launch Mansfield's career and increased the magazine's circulation; Playboy had begun publishing from publisher–editor Hugh Hefner's kitchen the year before. In 1964, the magazine repeated the pictorial. Photos from that pictorial was reprinted in a number of Playboy issues, including: December 1965 ("The Playboy Portfolio of Sex Stars"), January 1979 ("25 Beautiful Years"), January 1984 ("30 Memorable Years"), January 1989 ("Women Of The Fifties"), January 1994 ("Remember Jayne"), November 1996 ("Playboy Gallery"), August 1999 ("Playboy's Sex Stars of the Century"; Special edition), and January 2000 ("Centerfolds Of The Century"). In the Lee Siegel novel Who Wrote the Book of Love?, the character Lucky Lee turns the issue of Playboy into a bribe to meet a girl.

It was 1963 when, unexpectedly, Hugh Hefner noticed photographs Bill Kobrin took of Jayne Mansfield and asked him to shoot her centerfold for Playboy. In July that year, her naked pictures from the set of the film Promises! Promises! in a series of photographs published in a Playboy pictorial (titled The Nudest Jayne Mansfield). The pictorial was printed with a description that went, "enjoying the luxuries of a bubble bath and a double bed". It included pictures that shows Mansfield staring at her breast, as does T.C. Jones (Babbette, a female impersonator hair stylist), then grasping it in her hand and lifting it high. That issue of the magazine was banned, and Hugh Hefner, the publisher, was arrested by Chicago Police, in June 1963, the only time in his life The trial resulted in a hung jury that voted 7 to 5 for acquittal. Copies of the issue reportedly sold for as much as $10 each. Since that Jayne Mansfield fiasco, Playboy was scrutinized by the Customs Department issue-by-issue until 1967, and they found 51 issues out of 51 objectionable. The heavy publicity of Promises! Promises! in the July 1963 issue of Playboy and advanced blurbs on Playboy put Mansfield's name out as a major box office draw, though reviews of the film were next to disastrous.

Playboy issues featuring Mansfield include February 1955 (Playmate of the Month), February 1956, February 1957, February 1958, December 1958, February 1960 (The best of Jayne Mansfield), July 1963 (the issue that had Hugh Hefner arrested), Annual 1964 (first issue of The best of Playboy), December 1965, Newsstand Special 1989 (100 Beautiful Women), January 1994 and Newsstand Special 1999 (45th Anniversary Special), as well as the Playboy calendar in 1959. In the February 1958 issue of the magazine the pictorial titled "The nude Jayne Mansfield" included pictures of a teen-age, brunette Jayne posing nude for an art class and her pictures with Sophia Loren.