Someone, somewhere finally realized in the Seventies that too much attention was being focused on Marilyn Monroe and decided that it was time to finally do a movie-biography on Hollywood's other lost goddess. As I hear it, numerous actresses wanted the title role, but it finally fell to an up and coming tv star named Loni Anderson. Possibly the only one to fill out Jayne's 40-18-36 figure, Loni throws herself into the role becoming kittenishly Monroe-like one minute, and campily Jayne the next. Too much of Jayne's life was condensed to make this movie, and too often it drags on its direction as Jayne jumps moods. The real Jayne was a renaissance woman - a Madonna of the Sixties with a gifted I.Q., but we're not allowed to see the woman who turned down the role of Ginger on "Gilligan's Island." Instead we are forced to see Jayne in her rise to fame and her hard tabloid crash into anonymity. Another former unknown, Arnold Scwarzeneggar, portrays muscle man Mickey Hargitay, the future father of present-day tv star actress Mariska Hargitay . Earnestly but rather ineptly in the role, he provides the male counterpart as well as the common sense to Loni's Jayne. As biography's go, this film is halfway honorable to Jayne's memory and legacy, but if you want the straight story, you'll have to turn into it on A/E's Biography.
Review of The Jayne Mansfield Story
