Jayne Mansfield and the American fifties

by Martha Saxton

Jayne Mansfield and the American fifties

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, Film

223 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Martha Porter Saxton (September 3, 1945 – July 18, 2023) was an American professor of history and women's and gender studies at Amherst College

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 Stars

This book is trash.

But its fun trash.

Jayne Mansfield was in her time known as a trailer park Marilyn Monroe, despite coming from a family with money. Today she is probably best known as the mother of Law & Order: SVU's Mariska Hargitay(Olivia Benson). Jayne Mansfield was a larger than life personality who unfortunately fell into that age old Hollywood trap, alcohol, sex and low self worth.

In Jayne Mansfield and The American Fifties, the author Martha Saxton seems to claim that the Jayne Mansfield type could only find success in the 1950's. Jayne Mansfield was a caricature of sex, not actual sex. Jayne Mansfield was a tease, you could look but not touch. Jayne Mansfield's sexuality was fun and harmless not to be taken seriously. Jayne Mansfield was the ultimate sexy, dumb blonde. She was the male fantasy, which put her out of step with the women's sexual liberation of the 1960's. Jayne's crime was her inability to keep up with the times. Jayne's form of sexiness was considered old fashioned.

I personally think Jayne Mansfield was ahead of her time. I could easily see Jayne Mansfield starring in a reality show (think Anna Nicole Smith but funny). Jayne craved constant media attention and she wasn't afraid to get naked to get it.

Unfortunately this biography was just not that well written. The author relied too heavily on Jayne's mother's biased thoughts and opinions. She also simply reprinted gossip and rumors including saying that Jayne was decapitated (she wasn't).

This biography wasnt great but it wasn't the worst either. It was just meh.

[Karyn Caputo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.

[Gemini · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look at Jayne's life and looks contrasted with the 1960s world she found herself in. Blonde bombshells pretty much died with Marilyn Monroe, in fact Marilyn was moving away from it herself. She had slimmed down, smoothed her now-platinum hair into a sexy Doris Day style, and enjoyed colorful capri slacks with silky tops. Jayne moved out of some 50s styles, but went for the worst of 60s looks, ie, frosty pale lipstick with heavy Cleopatra styles, giant tacky bouffants with bows, etc. This book does an interesting job of discussing Jayne's somewhat bubblehead persona against the coming feminism. Unfortunately she gets one big fact wrong when she writes that Jayne lost her head in the accident. I was shocked to read this, even though the book was written while lawsuits were still pending, that myth should have been cleared up by then. If you're interested in Jayne or the changes in "female types" in just 10 short years, you'll enjoy this classic.

[Super Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite the fact that Martha Saxton didn’t really understand what it meant to have large breasts and she uses a lot of language that would now be considered unacceptable to describe another female, especially by an academic woman’s studies professor, Jayne Mansfield and life in the American 50s is one of my favorite books about the history of Hollywood as well as feminist sociology. While a bit of the language is outdated. I found this to be in many ways of Proto Third wave style biography, and I really liked it. This is not a hagiography and people expecting a companion valentine to Mariska’s excellent documentary are going to be very disappointed. While she does interview the mother. She does expose the mother for being a racist and not a very healthy role model. She doesn’t let any of the interview subjects get away with anything really. This book is not trash. It might be a little bit intellectually sophisticated for the people who have downvoted , it’s still one of the most essential books and she was able to get interviews not that long after the tragedy. Highly recommend.

[BeautifulNerd · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was published in 1975, when perhaps editors were a bit more easygoing. Martha Saxon, the back sleeve proclaims, is a graduate of the University of Chicago, and has worked for the Massachusetts Historical Society. It's not divulged in which capacity she worked, nor what qualifies her to take on the sweeping subject of Jayne Mansfield... and The American Fifties. Each topic is broad, with nuances and layers that can't be squashed together in one book any more than two huge breasts should squeeze into an ill fitting bra (that'll be the last of my chest puns I promise - that one was all I could commit to mammary). Ill fitting is the correct term for this book, and "book" might be overstating whatever this is. The title alone makes me think it was Miss Saxon's dissertation and it reads like an uneasy mix between that, a biography and a downright contemptuous and bitchy scandal rag.

Amidst loose speculation on the moral landscape of the times and how Jayne's all too familiar Hollywood rise and fall narrative fits into it, there is judgement and derision about the book's subject, which I found distracting and off putting. Blithe remarks such as "Jayne's performance isn't terrible. The role demanded that she displayed something other than a pout and her breasts" pepper the pages. Saxon also stops just shy of calling Jayne a publicity whore, and even says she was "not pretty".

Granted, the warts and all aspect of biographies and autobiographies is fascinating, and Saxon did knit together the timeline of Jayne's life through a series of interviews with all of the major players in it (most of whom seemed to be suing each other over Jayne's estate at the time they were interviewed after her death). I am fine with reading about her adultery, her alcoholism and her tumultuous marriages, but the tone of the book is smug and condescending. Saxon would have you believe she knows Jayne better than Jayne knew herself (I'd like to point out the two women never met), and whilst Jayne may think it's okay to cite Christianity and sexuality as coexisting forces in her life, Saxon knows that Jayne struggled with it due to her desperation to be a sex object and an innocent; a provocatrix and a child (for example). Why write a book about a woman you seem so contemptuous of? Particularly one you are indebted to? (Watch it Martha, you wouldn't have this debut book of yours if it wasn't for Jayne). Perhaps I think it's churlish to speak ill of the dead.

The narrative voice was so intrusive, I often stopped to wonder "who is this person?", this person that writes with cod authority on the inner nature of a person they've never met, dressing it up with historical "accuracy". Saxon regularly expresses her doubts and theories over Jayne's motives yet in the same book interjects a "verification" from a clairvoyant regarding supposed supernatural phenomena (Jayne's mother claims to have seen Jayne in a dream the night she died). A clairvoyant can be taken at their word, but apparently not Jayne.

All in all, the subjective spins on Jayne's life alienated me from this book. I am not too familiar with biographies (preferring to hear life stories from the people who lived them) and maybe subjective writing is normal in this genre. If this was anything to go by I'll be steering clear of biographies in future (I will try a few more to see if this is the exception and not the rule).

Even with those grievances aside, this is plainly a bad book, with shonky writing, including the bewildering trope of highly overcomplicating the flow by calling characters alternately by their first and surnames within the same paragraph (thus a fight scene between Jayne and two of her ex husbands appears to be unfolding between six people not three).

A very odd and messy read. I would give it a miss.

[Diane Schneider · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book did have some useful information in it, but in order to find any you had to sift through pages of unsubstantiated statements that are put together rather incoherently. The author appears to be rather disorganized, and seems to be such an expert in the subject matter that she can state Mansfield's motivations without providing any information as to how she came to that conclusion. The purported use of Mansfield's life as an example of American society in the 1950's occurs occasionally as the author inserts rants, seemingly at random, about the status of sexual mores in the period, again without providing source material. She dwells so frequently on the dichotomy of the good girl that doesn't put out with the bad girl who does left me feeling that whichever side she found herself on, she felt the world had dealt with her unfairly. The ultimate transgression, in my opinion, however, was the fact that the author stated the oft repeated, but never correct, rumor that Mansfield was decapitated in the accident that took her life.

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quick read, fun facts and painful ending.

[Barbara Holford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, but not great.