By Tim Jackson

The humanity Mariska Hargitay brings to her quest makes this film about her mother, Jayne Mansfield, much more than a hagiographic profile of a movie star: it is a deeply personal story of reconciliation, love, and family.

Actress Jayne Mansfield and her children. Photo: My Mom Jayne

Mariska Hargitay has portrayed television’s longest-running prime-time live-action character, Olivia Benson, on NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit for over 25 years. The strength, intelligence, and vulnerability of the role have given the show’s writers opportunities to address a number of controversial issues. Hargitay’s character contrasts sharply with the sexpot persona her mother, Jayne Mansfield, embodied in life and on screen. Hargitay was three years old when her mother died in a devastating car crash. As an adult, Hargitay was uncomfortable, and even somewhat resentful, about what she saw as her mother’s shallow, commercially compromised caricature of womanhood. Her documentary, aptly titled My Mom Jayne: A Documentary by Mariska Hargitay, now streaming on HBO, offers a quite different, more mature perspective.

The film goes beyond simply reviewing Mansfield’s career; it delves into the complexities of a woman far more nuanced than the Hollywood-crafted imagen — namely, that of a voluptuous, childlike blonde bombshell. This larger-than-life mask involved significant costs: Mansfield often felt trapped by it and struggled with alcohol and substance abuse. Her film career was constrained in an industry that relegated her to the status of a B-movie Marilyn Monroe. Yet, through it all, family was always the actress’s priority, as reflected in Mansfield’s voice-over: “I feel that if you bear children, your first obligation is to your children, whether you’re a movie star or wash dishes. If anything ever happens to my career, if I’m in an auto accident … or a terrible mishap happens, my children will always be cared for.” In 1967, she died along with her attorney and the car’s driver when the vehicle collided with the rear of a tractor-trailer on a foggy highway. She had just put her children to sleep in the back seat. Fortunately, the kids, including young Mariska, were found alive in the wreckage with only minor injuries.

Hargitay keeps the film engaging with abundant newsreel and film footage, television appearances, home movies, and candid interviews with her siblings: Jayne Marie Mansfield (from Jayne’s first husband), Miklós and Zoltan Hargitay (from her second husband, Mickey), as well as her half-brother, Matt Cimber (from Jayne’s third husband). She allows time on camera for her subjects to think and reflect, which results in genuinely poignant, tearful segments. There are also some startling revelations.

Less well-known is that Mansfield was exceptionally intelligent and an accomplished musician. She was proficient on both the violin and piano. In one scene, after playing violin before performing a classical piano piece, she turns to the camera and, in a self-effacing manner with her baby doll voice, says, “My playing the piano, and then the violin, may remind you of a famous story by Dr. Samuel Johnson. Once, when he saw a little puppy walking on its hind legs, he said, ‘It’s not that you expect him to do it perfectly, it’s just surprising the puppy does it all.’ It just goes to show that I not only play the piano and violin, but that I know who Dr. Samuel Johnson is.” Mansfield spoke French, Italian, Spanish, and Hungarian.

Mansfield understood that her financial success was tied to an image from which she felt she could not escape. When Groucho Marx, who had appeared with her in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, interviews her on his television show You Bet Your Life, she tells him: “You are the cutest man I ever had yet.” The witty and sarcastic Groucho, who seemed to understand the real woman behind the mask, replied: “You’re not the dumb blonde you pretend to be. I think people ought to know you’re really a bright, sentimental, and understanding person and this is a whole façade of yours that is not based on what you actually are. I think you’re aware of that. This is kind of an act you do, isn’t it?” She quickly answers with candor: “That’s sweet of you. Thank you so much. I think that it’s like the public pays money at the box office to see me a certain way and I think it’s all part of the role I’m playing as an actress.”

The documentary offers further moments of discovery. After Jayne’s death, Mariska was raised by Jayne’s second husband and his wife, Ellen Siano Hargitay. At one point, Mariska investigates the rumor — passed along by the president of a Jayne Mansfield fan club — that Mickey Hargitay may not have been her biological father. She confronts Mickey, who passed away in 2006. His response was unexpected. The humanity Hargitay brings to her quest makes this film much more than a hagiographic profile of a movie star: it is a deeply personal story of reconciliation, love, and family.

Tim Jackson was an assistant professor of Digital Film and Video for 20 years. His music career in Boston began in the 1970s and includes some 20 groups, recordings, national and international tours, and contributions to film soundtracks. He studied theater and English as an undergraduate, and has also worked helter-skelter as an actor and member of SAG and AFTRA since the 1980s. He has directed three feature documentaries: Chaos and Order: Making American Theater about the American Repertory Theater; Radical Jesters, which profiles the practices of 11 interventionist artists and agit-prop performance groups; When Things Go Wrong: The Robin Lane Story. And two short films: Joan Walsh Anglund: Life in Story and Poem and The American Gurner. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics. You can read more of his work on his blog.