Last night, a friend of mine and I watched My Mom Jayne, a new HBO documentary that's basically Mariska Hargitay taking us all along on her journey to find out stuff about a mother she never really knew. We both enjoyed it a lot more than we expected. I must admit to not knowing a lot about Jayne Mansfield, a bonafide movie star who I think some have dismissed (unfairly) as the person producers hired when they couldn't get Marilyn. Ms. Mansfield did not have an easy life and it can't have been easy for her daughter to conduct this inquiry and to keep finding out so much she didn't know either. The story takes some stunning twists and turns…
…and even if it didn't, it's fascinating to look at the life of a Sex Symbol of that era through the prism of today. There are moments when it felt to me like some people who (admittedly) didn't know Jayne well were taking some questionable leaps into knowing what was going on in her heart and mind. Still, if you took all those theories and speculations and mashed them up, they might well have arrived at an accurate portrait. It's hard to say. Certainly, Jayne Mansfield was a lady who did what she had to do to get where she wanted to be. Or at least it was what she had to do in those days…and if it wasn't a spot-on accurate picture of her, it probably was of those days.
It's running on HBO an awful lot in the coming weeks. You might like it as much as we did.