Jayne Mansfield - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Jayne Mansfield was born Vera Jayne Palmer on April 19, 1933 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. She was the only child of Herbert William (1904–1936), of German ancestry, and Vera Jeffrey Palmer (1903–2000), of English descent. Vera Jeffrey's father, Elmer E Palmer, was from the largely Cornish area of Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania, where he was involved with the slate industry. She inherited more than $90,000 from her maternal grandfather Elmer ($725,000 in 2012 dollars) and more than $36,000 from her maternal grandmother Alice Jane Palmer in 1958 ($290,000 in 2012 dollars). Jayne spent her early childhood in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, where her father was an attorney who practiced with future New Jersey governor Robert B. Meyner. In 1936, when Jayne was three years old, Herbert William died of a heart attack while driving a car with his wife and daughter. Following his death, Jayne's mother worked as a teacher. In 1939 Vera Palmer married sales engineer Harry Lawrence Peers and the family moved to Dallas, Texas, where Jayne was known as Vera Jayne Peers. As a child she wanted to be a Hollywood star like Shirley Temple like many other young girls of her time.

Jayne graduated from Highland Park High School in 1950. While in high school, Jayne took lessons in violin, piano and viola. She also studied Spanish and German. She consistently received high Bs in school (including in mathematics). At the age of 12, she also took lessons in ballroom dance. She married Paul James Mansfield on May 10, 1950. Their daughter, Jayne Marie Mansfield, was born on November 8, 1950. After marriage, Jayne and Paul enrolled into Southern Methodist University to study acting, where lacking finances to afford day care, carried around her daughter Jayne Marie. In 1951, she moved to Austin, Texas, with Paul, and studied dramatics at the University of Texas at Austin, until her junior year. While attending the University of Texas, she worked as a nude model for art classes, sold books door-to-door, and worked in the evenings as receptionist of a dance studio. While studying and trying to earn a living, she joined the Curtain Club and was active at the Austin Civic Theater. The Curtain Club was a happening campus theatrical society at that time and featured Tom Jones, Harvey Schmidt, Rip Torn, and Pat Hingle among its members.

In 1952, she moved back to Dallas and for several months, became a student of actor Baruch Lumet, who was father of director Sidney Lumet and founder of the newly founded and now defunct Dallas Institute of Performing Arts. Lumet called Jayne and Rip Torn his "kids", and seeing her potential, provided her private lessons. Then she spent a year at Camp Gordon, Georgia (a US Army training facility) while Paul served the United States Army Reserve in the Korean War. They moved to Los Angeles in 1954, where Jayne studied Theater Arts at UCLA during the summer, and returned to Texas to spend the fall quarter at Southern Methodist University. She managed to maintain a B grade average, between a variety of odd jobs, including selling popcorn at the Stanley Warner Theatre, checking hats, teaching dance, vending candy at a movie theater (where she caught the eye of a TV producer), part-time modelling at the Blue Book Model Agency (where Marilyn Monroe was first noticed), and working as a photographer at Esther Williams' nightclub, the Trail. At The Trails she earned $6 plus 10% of her sales ($52 in 2012 dollars) each evening taking pictures of patrons. Frequent references have been made to Mansfield's very high IQ, which she claimed was 163. She spoke five languages, including English, fluent French and Spanish, German learned in high school, and studied Italian in 1963. Reputed to be Hollywood's "smartest dumb blonde", she would later complain that the public did not care about her brains. "They're more interested in 40–21–35", she said.