IN MEMORIAM JAYNE MANSFIELD



Author: Stuart Pound,
Fiction, 2 min 14 s, DVCAM.
Orig. title: In memoriam Jayne Mansfield.
Country: England, 2000/2001.

Jayne Mansfield (real name Vera J. Palmer) was a film and TV actress whose career peaked at the end of the fifties. She entered the film business as a successful model, after posing for various magazines and posters. She was renown for her perfect body and therefore it was only natural for screenplay writers to take fool advantage of this fact – she usually played a ‘blonde’ in the films she appeared in. In comparison to Marlin Monroe, who had become famous as a blonde, Jayne Mansfield never overcame the stereotypes about blondes and her interpretations did not evoke deeper or tragic emotions besides lust and laughter. That is why Jayne Mansfield fans today glorify her only because of her perfect body; to say the most, her image could be a symbol or the “blonde” icon. She died in a car accident in 1967, while her star faded even before, when the genre and type of role she played, started loosing on popularity.

In his film, Stuart Pound used old material, a scene from the film “The Girls Can’t Help It!”. In the scene we are witnesses to a conversation between Jayne Mansfield and her agent, who forbid her to say anything else except: ‘Ask my agent’. We can assume - if we do not know the original film - that they are waiting for a producer or director who could offer Jayne the opportunity to act. The scene ends in a stereotype manner: instead of a bad impression, Jayne succeeded to change her rhetoric weakness into politeness and comicalness.

Formally, the image of the re-edited scene is made smaller and is centred in the new film. The image shows only Jayne Mansfield in various repeating shots. Up and down from it, there are two other small images with realistic, however not recognisable moving motifs. At first, the background is black; while at the end it is changed with the image of a bush with buds. If we look at the picture as a whole, we can obtain the impression of a multi panel altar.

All elements of the Stuart Pound film amplify a single message. The title clearly shows the intention of the author; the chosen insert exposes some talents of Jayne Mansfield, i.e. beauty and humour; the form of the film praises the subject of the film while the background song makes a definite comment with its refrain: »oh baby, she's got it all!« The question is, is this enough to convince us? Or, maybe, is it too much? I think this depends upon the fact if we are a fan of Jayne Mansfield or not. If we are not, we are monitoring the shrine merely as tourists. We cannot experience the film in the same way as believers do.

There is one, more latent element in the film, which is of interest regardless to the fact if we are a fan of Jayne Mansfield or not. We can ask ourselves about the destinies of film stars: even if Jayne Mansfield succeeded to charm the producer, even if she fascinated the audience and became famous for a moment in her career, was she satisfied? Ask my agent, the repeating sentence in the film, gives us a hint as to the answer. It is saying that the destiny of Jayne Mansfield was not in her own hands and the same holds true probably also with any other film star until today. They all are in the hands of agents, Hollywood and the media. They are dependent on the mood of the audience and the ever changing trends.

Review: Miha Pece