Above, the cover and some interior scans from the Dutch cinema magazine Cheerio! #117, featuring an eclectic selection of international stars, 1956. 

We’re back on schedule with Goodtime Weekly and a page for today in 1963 featuring none other than Jayne Mansfield, who's making her third appearance for the calendar. After being lensed twice by Bernard Wagner, here and here, British photographer David Hurn gets a shot. We love the pose because it looks like she’s signaling a touchdown or a field goal—appropriate this first weekend of playoff football in the U.S. (which is something we can watch live thanks to the wonders of the internet). We doubt Hurn was thinking of sports when he suggested the pose. More likely he simply said, “Um, Jayne, I can’t see your breasts with the fabric bunched up like that. Can you raise your arms? Higher? Perfect.” The result was an image that’s quite famous, which is to say, it’s one of only three from the calendar that we’ve seen before. That doesn’t surprise us. Hurn is a significant photographer who shot everything from political events to the Beatles, and is still kicking around today. He also shot this amazing image of Jane Fonda for the film Barbarella. Okay, we're off. Enjoy the games, everyone.

The story probably fueled ten million fantasies. Marilyn Monroe had stripped naked on the set of her last movie Something’s Got To Give. Monroe was eventually fired, the production was scrapped, and the footage was archived, but if it had been released, she would have been the first Hollywood actress to appear unclothed onscreen since the 1920s. It’s interesting, isn’t it, to reflect upon the effect a minority of prudes had on Hollywood? Because of them, Monroe’s unreleased scene, and Jayne Mansfield’s later nude scene in 1963’s Promises, Promises, merely brought American cinema back to where it had already been four decades earlier.

Hush-Hush was not the first magazine to break the story of Monroe’s peel down. Life had done that in June 1962, accompanied by a couple of titillating photos. By the time Hush-Hush told the tale Monroe was two months dead. The blurb MM—Even In The Nude They Didn’t Want Her wasn’t strictly true. The production company Twentieth Century Fox most certainly did want her. A hospital stint prior to production had caused her to shed twenty-five pounds, bringing her to a weight she had never reached in her adult life, despite exercise and dieting. The newly svelte Monroe looked good and Fox was getting her cheap—$100,000.

In Hollywood, nothing seems to last. Jayne Mansfield and Hungarian bodybuilder Miklós “Mickey” Hargitay divorced in 1964, but this great cover of Whisper from this month in 1957 shows them a year before their 1958 marriage. They’re blissful and striking a pose they repeated for the press over and over—i.e., ex-Mr. Universe Hargitay demonstrating his strength by easily lofting the zaftig Mansfield in his arms. The occasion of this photo was Hargitay’s arrival at NYC’s Idlewild Airport. Mansfield had waited on the tarmac for the plane to land, then sprinted to her sweetheart and leapt into his arms.

You may notice Hargitay’s swollen eye and bandage. He was returning from Washington, D.C., where he had been performing in the Mae West Revue, a stage show West—the noted maneater—had stocked with assorted hunks of tasty beef. One of those hunks was an ex-wrestler named Chuck Krauser who adored West and had more than a professional relationship with her. When Hargitay threw some unkind words West’s way, Krauser threw three punches Hargitay’s way and down went Mickey. A witness described the fracas this way: “He planted a tremendous haymaker on Mickey’s head.” Hargitay emerged from the beatdown with a black eye, a cut lip, a limp—and grounds for a lawsuit, which he quickly filed.

The interesting thing about the episode re: Whisper is that it happened in June 1956—exactly a year before the above cover appeared. And Whisper not only digs up an old photo, but takes the liberty of reversing it. Hargitay was actually slugged over the left eye by the right-handed Krauser. In any case, it’s amazing how happy Hargitay looks considering the entire world knew he’d gotten his ass whipped. And consider also that he was definitely feeling some aches and pains. But perhaps having an ecstatic Jayne Mansfield waiting for you raises spirits and dulls hurts. Either that or those bodybuilding competitions had trained Hargitay to keep a smile locked on his face even when he was straining every muscle in his body. We should mention, though, that Mansfield did her share of heavy lifiting too, by being publically supportive concerning the fight. She observed that Mickey could have killed Krauser, but was too much of a gentleman. It might not have been true, but take note girls—that’s how you bolster your hurting guy’s fragile ego.

The Goodtime Weekly Calendar of 1963 brings us Jayne Mansfield in a Bernard Wagner photo that's similar but not identical to another, much more famous poolside shot made around the same time. We’ve posted that one below, and if you look closely you’ll see that while it seems to be the same session, Mansfield’s suit is different, as well as the pool and the hotel in the background (it’s the Dunes in Las Vegas). Of the two, we like the top image better because of the unusual pose. Actually, what we like about it is we can totally see someone tossing her an apple, which she then tries to catch and goes ass over teakettle into the water. Now that would be a shot.

June 9: A good marriage is like a good handshake—there is no upper hand.

Since we shared a magazine cover of Jayne Mansfield yesterday, it seems a good time to also show you this photo of her at the Cannes Film Festival. We aren’t sure on the date—Mansfield went to Cannes more than once, but we’re thinking 1964 on this. In most of her Cannes photos, she’s cavorting on the Croisette in a bikini or hamming it up for the French press by dancing the “monkeybird”, but this shot shows a womanly, glamorous Mansfield with Mickey Hargitay and another escort, against a backdrop of journos and fans. The photo says: movie star. 

This is a prime example of how tabloid journalism works. The idea is to snare an audience by teasing, mystifying, outraging, or confirming deeply held hopes or suspicions. On this cover of Confidential you get three blurbs that hint at celebrity misbehavior—possibly sexual in Mansfield’s case—but the interesting bit is the top banner in which editors confirm that smoking cigarettes does not cause cancer. With a claimed distribution of four million copies, but a secondhand circulation that may have doubled, tripled or even quadrupled that figure, millions of Confidential readers probably hacked up a bit of grey phlegm before wheezing, “I knew it! Those damn scientists are just fascists trying to take away our liberties!” Well, not so much. But in November 1957, Confidential made an assertive case. It was the wrong case, but whaddaya gonna do? Nobody’s perfect. 

Paris Frou Frou #58, with Jayne Mansfield, Sabrina, Mickey Hargitay, and many unknowns. We’re really starting to appreciate this magazine because it always seems to have at least two or three truly striking images, including, in this case, the cabaret dancers Mitzi and Mimi (mmm... twins) and the back cover, just above. You may be pondering what exactly is a frou frou? While it sounds like a small, furry mammal, possibly with razor sharp teeth, it’s actually an onomatopaeic phrase originally created in French to imitate the swishing sound of a woman’s skirts, and to describe unnecessary showiness (kind of like this sentence). File that definition away in the cobwebbed nook of your brain reserved for truly useless info that might one day win you a point in a pub quiz or prompt someone to label you a metrosexual. See our other Paris Frou Frou here. 

Rave, for which you see a cover above, was a low budget U.S.-based magazine that launched in 1953 as a celeb publication, quickly moved into scandal and gossip, but didn’t survive beyond 1956, as far as we can tell. The graphic design was revamped twice, and so we suspect it just never found its niche in a crowded tabloid market. But it wasn’t for lack of providing celebrity rumormongers what they craved. This August 1955 issue discusses Serge Rubinstein’s murder, Anita Ekberg’s bombshell status, Jackie Gleason and more, but of special note are two stories: one about Sonja Henie, and another about Sheree North.

Sheree North, not well known today, was a dancer-turned-actress who in the mid-1950s was groomed (like so many other women) as the next Marilyn Monroe. She even made the cover of Life with the caption: “Sheree North Takes Over from Marilyn Monroe.” But it didn’t happen. Though North had a couple of hit films, her on-deck status was quickly usurped by another bottled blonde named Jayne Mansfield. North had done some burlesque early in her career, and Rave claims she had a few stag reels floating around. We don’t know about that, but there was a 1951 clip called the “Tiger Dance” that certainly pushed the bounds of contemporary sexiness. We found an upload of it, and you can see it here.

The story on Sonja Henie is a bit more interesting. A Norwegian-born world and Olympic champion figure skater, Henie shot to international fame at age fourteen and turned that recognition into a Hollywood career. She became extremely popular as a screen star, and the same drive that sparked that success fueled her personal life. She married three times and had numerous affairs, including with Tyrone Power and allegedlywith champion boxer Joe Louis. But the mystery man Rave hints at on its cover is none other than Liberace, just above. If you know anything about Liberace then we know what you’re thinking. But if Liberace was gay or bi—something he denied until his dying day—then dating women would have been a completely understandable strategy to avoid being outed and losing his career.

Henie, on the other hand, rarely let controversy get in the way of her decisions if she thought the result would ultimately be a net gain. This is possibly why she publicly greeted Adolf Hitler with a Nazi salute at a Berlin exposition in 1936, and why she sought Joseph Goebbels’ help in distributing one of her films in Germany. Yet you have to assume that anyone who would hang out with and possibly sleep with Joe Louis didn’t have rock solid racist views. But as millions died, her behavior can only be seen as shameful. However she returned to Norway with Holiday on Ice in 1953 and again the year Rave published the above cover and was warmly greeted, if not quite totally forgiven. Henie died of cancer in 1969, but as another fascinating product of a complex time, we suspect her name will come up on this website again.