Jayne Mansfield - Early Career

Early Career

During her tenure at the University of Texas at Austin, Mansfield won several beauty contests, including: Miss Photoflash, Miss Magnesium Lamp, and Miss Fire Prevention Week. The only title she refused was Miss Roquefort Cheese, because she believed it "just didn't sound right". Mansfield accepted a bit part in a B-grade film titled Prehistoric Women (produced by Alliance Productions, alternatively titled The Virgin Goddess) in 1950. In 1952, while in Dallas, she and Paul participated in small local-theater productions of The Slaves of Demon Rum and Ten Nights in a Barroom, and Anything Goes in Camp Gordon, Georgia. After Paul left for military service, Mansfield first appeared on stage in a production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman on October 22, 1953, with the players of the Knox Street Theater, headed by Lumet.

While at UCLA she entered the Miss California contest (hiding her marital status), and won the local round before withdrawing. She also won many small and local beauty pageants, including Miss Photoflash, Miss Magnesium Lamp, Miss Fire Prevention Week, Gas Station Queen, Miss Analgesin, Cherry Blossom Queen, Miss Third Platoon, Miss Blues Bonnet of Austin, Miss Direct Mail, Miss Electric Switch, Miss Fill-er-up, Miss Negligee, Nylon Sweater Queen, Miss One for the Road, Miss Freeway, Hot Dog Ambassador, Miss Electric Switch, Miss Geiger Counter, Best Dressed Woman of Theater, Miss 100% Pure Maple Syrup, Miss July Fourth, Miss Texas Tomato, Miss Standard Foods, Miss Orchid, Miss Potato Soup, Miss Lobster, Miss United Dairies and Miss Chihuahua Show.

Early in her career the prominence of her breasts was considered problematic and led her to be cut from her first professional assignment, an advertising campaign for General Electric, which depicted several young women in bathing suits relaxing around a pool. Head of head Blue Book Model Agency Emmeline Snively had sent her onto photographer Gene Lester, which led to her short-lived assignment in the commercial for General Electric. In 1954, she auditioned at both Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. for a part in The Seven Year Itch but failed to impress. She also auditioned at paramount for Joan of Arc, a project that eventually remained unrealized, and failed again. That year, she landed her first acting assignment in Lux Video Theatre, a series on CBS ("An Angel Went AWOL", October 21, 1954). In the show she sat at the piano and delivered a few lines of dialogue for $300 ($3,000 in 2012 dollars).

She posed nude for the February 1955 issue of Playboy, modelling in pyjamas raised so that the bottoms of her breasts showed, 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 in 1953, but became popular in the first decade of publication riding on the popularity of its early Playmates like Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Paige and Anita Ekberg. Beginning in February 1955, She formed a long-standing relationship with Playboy. Shortly afterward she posed for the Playboy calendar covering her breasts with her hands. Playboy featured Jayne every February from 1955 to 1958 and again in 1960. In August 1956, Paul claimed custody of their daughter claiming Jayne was an unfit mother because she appeared nude in the Playboy.

In 1964, the magazine repeated the pictorial. Photos from that pictorial were 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 week following her first Playboy appearance, Mansfield caught Hollywood and media attention by dropping her bikini-top at a press junket for the Jane Russell film Underwater! (RKO, 1955).