Meet Jayne Mansfield (1957) 🇺🇸
Jayne Mansfield, whom 20th-Fox is so energetically building as a new glamor star, has a personality rather like the girl she portrays in her first starring picture, “The Girl Can’t Help It.”
by Paul Manning
As a sort of obligatto to those startling measurements of hers, is a personality that is direct, friendly, and very feminine and sweet. It is a captivating combination, and my own impression is underscored by the fact that Jayne is a tremendous favorite with her co-workers and with the members of the press, who are in a sense her co-workers, too. They have worked with her to make her the most publicized actress since Marilyn Monroe.
Jayne’s career is founded in publicity. Purely as a guest she went along on a press junket to Florida for the opening of Underwater! in Florida, and as a result of enthusiastic press reports had representatives of six studios waiting at the airport when she returned. Warner Brothers made the fastest and best offer and she signed with that studio, but when she had done only a couple of roles as a cigarette girl in four months, she asked for and received her release.
She quickly latched on to a starring role in an independent production called The Burglar, which is to be released next spring, and while making that film landed a starring role in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? on Broadway.
Jayne became Broadway’s “toast” in this vehicle; received great plaudits for her acting and stage personality. Again, the press flocked to her and built her to a national stature that had Hollywood’s producers drooling. But, partly through that same publicity, the run of the play was extended beyond expectations. Twentieth Century-Fox then took the bull by the horns and bought the play and Jayne.
Jayne was flown to Hollywood immediately and put to work in The Girl Can’t Help It. The Wayward Bus, the film version of Rock Hunter, and at least six other vehicles are being linked up for her to be made as soon as possible.
Jayne was born in Pennsylvania, raised in Dallas, and has wanted to be a movie star since she was three years old and a nurse as a measure of discipline said: “If you’re not a good little girl, I’m going to leave and take care of Shirley Temple.” Jayne’s ambition was to become as desirable as Shirley Temple and nothing in her life has changed it. It is her boast, however, that her ambition has never hurt anyone — “not even,” she says reflectively, “myself.”
It has been just two years since Jayne embarked on that fateful trip to Florida. If she does as much in the next two years and in the years after that, there is no cinematic glory that can elude her grasp, that much is certain. — P. M.
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Good Things to come from Hollywood… 20th-Fox’s “Anastasia”
by Paul Manning
“Anastasia” brings to the screen one of the most remarkable marriages of talent ever to be presented in a film.
Ingrid Bergman, in the title role, makes her return to the American screen after seven years in a part perfectly suited to her wide and entirely undiminished talent. Her scenes with Helen Hayes, as the Dowager Empress, are of classic proportions.
Yul Brynner, as General Bounine, remains the strong and virile actor of The King and I, and imparts a fire and zest to the whole production.
Anastasia deals with the legend of the sole surviving child of the last Czar of Russia and the attempt by plotters to pass Miss Bergman off as this child, the Princess Anastasia, for the $30,000,000 estate held by a London bank.
Producer Buddy Adler and director Anatole Litvak filmed the picture on actual location sites in London, Paris, and Copenhagen with the result that the picture emerges as one of the most beautifully mounted to come along in years. The settings, expertly photographed in color and CinemaScope by Jack Holdyard, serve as a fitting backdrop to the compelling story.
The supporting cast reads like a Who’s Who of the European stage and screen. Outstanding in featured supporting roles are Akim Tamiroff and Martita Hunt.
Everything considered, Anastasia emerges as a top Academy Award contender for Best Picture with three possible Best Acting nominees in the leading roles. That’s entertainment! — P. M.
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Seen above are two scenes from 20th-Fox’s widely acclaimed drama, Anastasia, starring Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner, and Helen Hayes, and bottom row, producer Buddy Adler and director Anatole Litvak.
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Studio Expansion Planned
New York — Because of the success of their films during the past year, Jack Goldberg, director of distribution for Studio Films, Inc., recently announced that plans are being completed for the setting up of additional exchanges which will ultimately cover the entire United States. At present there are 31 depots, through National Film Service, which are handling Studio Films’ physical output.
Collection: Motion Picture Exhibitor Magazine (Studio Survey), January 1957