Mariska Hargitay and her mother, Jayne Mansfield, in My Mom Jayne (Sky Documentaries, Saturday)
DESPITE being named in honour of her (at my grandfather’s suggestion — he was a fan), I’ve never known much about the American actress Jayne Mansfield. Her well-known death in a horrific car crash at just 34, while terribly sad, is also the least interesting thing about this fascinating woman.
Three of her five children were in the car on that fateful night. They miraculously survived with only minor injuries, including the then three-year-old Mariska, who is the director of My Mom Jayne (Sky Documentaries, Saturday), an intimate and moving new film about the actress.
Relying on candid interviews with her older siblings and other people who knew her mother, this documentary seeks to uncover the real Jayne Mansfield hidden behind the gloss and glamour. It is a compelling story of family secrets and lies. Having lost her when so young, Mariska Hargitay has no memories of her iconic mother which are hers alone: “Rather than memories, I have an essence,” one that is bound up with Mansfield’s overtly sexualised public persona, crafted cynically by 20th Century Fox and perpetuated by Mansfield herself.
This was a cartoonish distortion of a woman who was fluent in several languages and an accomplished pianist and violinist; but Mansfield found the dumb-blonde caricature impossible to shake off. Since it remains rare for a young woman in the film or music industry not to trade on her sex appeal, I wonder whether women’s choices are so very different today.
I watched Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters (ITV1, 14 July) with extreme scepticism. The premise is to introduce a bunch of celebrities to a variety of sharks, thus rehabilitating these much-maligned creatures in desperate need of conservation (the sharks, that is; will nobody think of the man-eating sharks?). The celebrities include Ross Noble, Sir Lenny Henry, and Helen George, who remains terrified throughout. It is worth watching just for them, although everyone involved is good value.
The show begins with the celebrities being given a pep talk by a shark expert who is missing an arm and a leg, owing to an attack by a bull shark. My suspicions about sharks thus confirmed, I remained sceptical throughout, particularly after Ross Noble received a nip on the leg from a tiger shark after being introduced. It didn’t even buy him dinner first.
It is all good fun, but ITV missed a trick here: this idea was crying out for an I’m a Celebrity-style audience-participation format. Who wouldn’t vote to see their favourite politician thrown to the sharks? We might also adopt it for the next General Synod: Shark! Bishop Infested Waters has a nice ring to it.
