A Hollywood bombshell at the peak of her career. A fateful drive down a rural road. And an infamous
rumor of a truly horrific death. Keep watching for more about the crash that killed Jayne Mansfield.
After the last of her two performances at a supper club in Mississippi, actress, pinup,
and Hollywood bombshell Jayne Mansfield decided to travel on to New Orleans in a
convertible 1966 Buick Electra. The Playboy model and several other passengers in the car that night
would soon die in a terrible car wreck, one of the most infamous accidents in Hollywood history.
Not only did the wreck kill Mansfield, who was a massive star at the time she died,
but it also spawned many grisly rumors about her fatal injuries. The crash also
brought about a modern-day safety feature on tractor trailers that are still in use today.
It was a clear June night in 1967 when Mansfield and the other passengers in the car embarked on
their journey. Mansfield, who was 34 when she died, was scheduled to make a TV appearance in
New Orleans the following day. Along for the ride were Mansfield's boyfriend and divorce attorney,
Samuel Brody, and three of her children. The plan was for the party to reach their destination,
the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans, later that morning — but they never made it.
On a rural road just before 3 a.m., driver Ronald Harrison, who was driving the Buick
Electra when the accident happened, followed a truck into a cloud of what is now believed to be
mosquito spray. It was common at that time for trucks to drive through certain areas,
spraying DDT in a plume of white smoke as a means of controlling mosquito populations. The
practice endured until 1972 when DDT was banned, though trucks still spray other pesticides today.
It's believed that, on that fateful night in 1967, the smoke that Harrison drove the
convertible into likely obscured his vision; so he did not notice when the truck slowed down.
The Buick crashed into the back of the truck, driving the car under it and shearing off
the top of the convertible. All three adults — along with Mansfield's dog — were believed to be
instantly killed in the wreck. Miraculously, all three children in the back seat
survived. The death of such a massive star was sure to make headlines, of course, and
police photos of the accident scene provoked lurid speculation that fueled urban legends for decades.
Until that point, Mansfield had endured a successful career on both stage and screen.
"And there's no place a woman would rather be than on a pedestal."
However, many today associate Mansfield with the long-disproven story that she was decapitated in
the accident. The police report did indicate that the upper portion of Mansfield's head was severed;
the misunderstanding was likely driven by photographs appearing to show a head and hair
among the wreckage. This was most likely a wig, however. Jim Roberts, the undertaker who prepared
Mansfield's body for burial after her death, later insisted that she had not been decapitated.
Despite the graphic story being disproved, the reality is that the nature of her injuries was
quite severe, including a "crushed skull and a partial separation of her cranium." Speculation
surrounding Mansfield and her shocking death only worsened in the years after
her accident. In her lifetime, she had been allegedly romantically linked to Anton LaVey,
the self-described head of the Church of Satan. And for this reason, some bought into the
outlandish theory that Mansfield's terrible accident happened as the result of a curse.
Grisly gossip aside, the nature of the accident in which Mansfield and the other passengers were
killed changed the way trucks are manufactured. In the aftermath of the wreck in 1967,
federal transportation authorities recommended the industry-wide use of Rear
Underrun Protection Systems in tractor-trailers. In the event of a back-end collision, those bars,
which are now commonly known as "Mansfield bars," prevent a car from sliding under
the much larger vehicle. In 1998, these Rear Underrun Protection Systems became mandatory.
Meanwhile, the stretch of highway where Mansfield died has since become something
of a tourist destination. The car involved in the accident fell into the hands of collectors
shortly afterwards; in 2017, the vehicle was put on display
at the "Dearly Departed Tours and Museum" on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles.
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