Jayne Mansfield (born Vera Jayne Palmer; April 19, 1933—29 June 1967) was an American actress working both on Broadway and in Hollywood.

One of the leading blonde sex symbols of the 1950s,like Marilyn Monroe, Mansfield was a Playmate of the Month in Playboy, Mansfield in February 1955. She appeared in the magazine several more times over the years. She won the Theatre World Award, Golden Globe and Golden Laurel. Mansfield starred in several popular Hollywood films that emphasized her platinum-blonde hair, dramatic hourglass figure and cleavage-revealing costumes.

Despite several box office successes, her status in the industry proved short lived, and she was quickly relegated to low-budget melodramas and comedies. Negative publicity and poor business decisions eventually forced her into regional nightclub appearances before her death in an automobile accident at the age of 34.

Mansfield appeared in about 2,500 newspaper photographs between September 1956 and May 1957, and had about 122,000 lines of newspaper copy written about her during this time. Because of the successful media blitz, Jayne Mansfield was a household name.

Mansfield`s most celebrated physical attributes would alternate in size due to her pregnancies and breast-feeding five children, and indeed many photos show the actress`s bosom appearing smaller than its reputed 40D measurement. The director and producer Russ Meyer said that Mansfield`s reputation for being large-breasted was based on a misconception and due mainly to her visibly large ribcage and the adoption of daring decolletages.

In April 1957, her bosom was the feature of a notorious publicity stunt intended to deflect attention from Sophia Loren during a dinner party in the Italian star`s honor. Photographs of the encounter were published around the world. The most famous image showed Loren raising a contemptuous eyebrow at the American actress who, standing between Loren and her dinner companion, Clifton Webb, had leaned over the table, allowing her breasts to spill over her low neckline and exposing one nipple.

A similar incident, resulting in the full exposure of both breasts, occurred during a film festival in West Berlin, when Mansfield was wearing a low-cut dress and her second husband, Mickey Hargitay, picked her up so she could bite a bunch of grapes hanging overhead at a party; the movement caused her breasts to erupt out of the dress. The photograph of that episode was a UPI sensation, appearing in newspapers and magazines with the word "censored" hiding the actress`s exposed bosom.

The world media was quick to condemn Mansfield`s stunts, and one editorial columnist wrote, "We are amused when Miss Mansfield strains to pull in her stomach to fill out her bikini better. But we get angry when career-seeking women, shady ladies, and certain starlets and actresses ... use every opportunity to display their anatomy unasked."

Throughout her career, Mansfield was compared to the reigning sex symbol of the period, Marilyn Monroe. Of this comparison, she said, "I don`t know why you people [the press] like to compare me to Marilyn or that girl, what`s her name, Kim Novak. Cleavage, of course, helped me a lot to get where I am. I don`t know how they got there."

After the death of Monroe it was said of Mansfield that Jayne "suffers from too much publicity and too few roles. She has become rather a caricature — like Mae West — and alienates the segment