LAVEY, MONROE AND MANSFIELD GET "HUSTLED"

One of the countless outré and other outrageous personalities that emerged from the "swingin' sixties" was Anton Szandor LaVey, the self-appointed High Priest of the Church of Satan, who reigned as supreme magus during the days of the decade's Occult Renaissance. For a time, the shaven-headed, pointy-bearded Mephisto look-alike could be seen and heard proselytizing his manifesto everywhere in the media -- from magazines and films, to late-night TV shows, his Crowley-esque philosophy of "indulgence, not abstinence" and other counter-culture mottoes and mantras were shocking, even for those times. The public loved it -- or were at least curious enough to go along for the ride.

With a circus showman's background, LaVey admittedly confessed that much of his initial rise to fame was due to exploiting the expertise that he had learned over the years as a carnival cage boy, roustabout, organist and overall rake.

A typical scene inside the Church of Satan.

After a few years of taking on all would-be witches and warlocks into the fold, LaVey realized that his flock was populated by more crazies, freaks and fringies than serious Satanists. Attracted by the promise of free sex and other uninhibited behavior, Satanism, and LaVey's church became the perfect naughty crash pad for the libertines of the underground. Even the pre-Manson follower, Susan Atkins, lay naked at LaVey's ritual altar for a time.

LaVey professed relationships with two of the most popular blonde bombshells, Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. He lived with Monroe for about a month in Los Angeles. Monroe was a stripper at the time. "There was was something of the exhibitionist about her," he said. "Something almost juvenile, like a child trying to see how far she could go without getting caught."

Monroe was not interested in "the Dark Side", but Jayne Mansfield was. In the fall of 1966, after hearing of LaVey's mastery of the occult, she payed him a visit and asked him a favor -- cast a curse on her ex-husband (Matt Cimber) so she could retain custody of the kids. It appeared to have worked, as custody was granted by the court.

LaVey knew both Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield.

That convinced Mansfield enough to join the Church of Satan. "She was a true witch," LaVey explained. "She was happiest when she was rolling on the floor, fucking up a storm." Soon, she was having trouble with her new lover, attorney Sam Brody. She went to LaVey again for a curse -- this time the darkest curse of all -- death. LaVey did so and told Mansfield to stay away from him. She ignored his warning.

Early in the morning of June 29, 1967, Mansfield and her kids, Brody and their driver were on a foggy New Orleans road. The driver failed to see a truck in front of them and crashed into it, the impact forcing the gray 1966 Buick Electra under the semi's trailer. When help arrived, Mansfield and her dog, Brody, and the driver were dead.

The following article by Fred Harden from the December 1979 issue of HUSTLER, tells of Anton LaVey's rise to fame and power and his involvement with Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. The illustration by Gary Ruddell sensationalizes the legendary crash scene by showing Mansfield's head separated from her body on the road next to the wrecked car. The two accompanying articles tell the truth of the extent of Mansfield's injuries. Either way, the gruesome end was far from befitting such a glamorous life.

Anton La Vey and Jayne Mansfield in 1966.

WAS JAYNE MANSFIELD DECAPITATED?
In the early morning hours of 29 June 1967, on a narrow country road near a Louisiana swamp, a grey 1966 Buick Electra glided through the dark on its way to New Orleans. The road ahead was obscured by a white haze laid down by a distant mosquito fogger which prevented the car’s driver from discerning the presence of a slow-moving tractor-trailer ahead of him. At approximately 2:15 a.m., the Electra slammed into that truck, then slid under it. All three adults sitting in the car’s front seat were killed instantly, but surprisingly, the three children riding in the back seat were cushioned from serious harm. Dead at the scene were the driver, Ronnie Harrison; actress Jayne Mansfield; Mansfield’s boyfriend Sam Brody; and Mansfield’s small dog. Three of Mansfield’s five children (Mariska, 3; Zoltan, 6; and Miklos Jr., 8; all fathered by her second husband, Mickey Hargitay), survived the accident.

The precise nature of the injuries inflicted in this accident would not usually bear thinking about, but rumors about the death of one of the passengers was turned into the stuff of contemporary lore when it became “common knowledge” that Jayne Mansfield had been decapitated. It is because this belief is as widespread as it is that this topic merits study, and it is due to the nature of the rumor that the discussion needs to be as detailed as it does.

Although Mansfield’s actual mode of death was gruesome, she was not beheaded. According to the police report on the accident, “the upper portion of this white female’s head was severed.” Her death certificate notes a “crushed skull with avulsion (forcible separation or detachment) of cranium and brain.” One thinks of a beheading as the neck’s being sliced through, causing the head to be separated from the body, but that is clearly not what happened here. Scalping is perhaps a closer description of Mansfield’s fate, but even that word does not accurately reflect the cranial trauma she suffered, because scalping victims at least retain an intact skull. The Angel of Death did not afford Mansfield this luxury: Her skull was cracked or sliced open, and a sizeable piece of it was carried away.

As gruesome as this mode of death was, it at least had the benefit of being quick. Mansfield probably never felt what happened to her, and because of the sharply reduced visibility conditions on the road that night, she likely had only an instant of “We’re going to crash!” shock to cope with before the impact.

Kenneth Anger’s 1975 Hollywood Babylon contains a controversial photo of the wrecked Electra which shows Mansfield’s dead dog lying beside the car as well as another item that has aroused considerable discussion, something that appears to be a clutch of human hair. Debate continues as to whether what was captured in that photo was the top part of Mansfield’s head, a wig she was wearing (or carrying) at the time of the crash, or something else entirely.

Some have chosen to attribute Mansfield’s early demise (she was only 34) to a curse somehow connected to the International Church of Satan, an institution founded in 1966 by Anton LaVey. Little is known about the rumored curse, but LaVey is on record as saying it was worked upon her by a consort. Another version has LaVey laying it onto Mansfield’s boyfriend Sam Brody, supposedly because Brody was disruptive during Church services and was making Mansfield’s life a hell on earth. That the alleged curse also ended up taking the life of one it was meant to help is deeply ironic.

[SOURCE: Snopes.com.]

The crash site.

ONLY HER UNDERTAKER KNEW FOR SURE...
May 4, 1997

''Her head was attached as much as mine is,'' says Jim Roberts, gently dismissing a longstanding myth about Jayne Mansfield's grisly demise. The accepted version (now playing in the movie ''Crash'') has it that Mansfield was beheaded when she died in a car accident just outside of New Orleans on June 29, 1967. Roberts says the beheading part is hooey, and he should know -- he was her undertaker. ''People always figured wrong about Jayne,'' he laments. ''About the way she lived and the way she died.''

These days Roberts, 77, lives in cozy retirement above the New Orleans funeral home where he worked for 41 years. He's unaware that Mansfield's death has been reduced, by some, to a pop-culture reference point, but he probably wouldn't like it. He was a fan, and for years he kept a scrapbook of clips, pictures and old obituaries. ''She was such a fine-looking person,'' Roberts says. ''And she couldn't stand to be away from her children.'' As he also recalls, Mansfield died in a sedan that slammed into the back of an 18-wheeler that was shrouded in ''fog'' from a mosquito-spray truck. The impact drove the car's engine into the front seat, killing the actress, two adults and a Chihuahua (who rode up front) but sparing Mansfield's children. Mansfield's wig was thrown to the side of the road, where it was mistaken in news stories for her head.

Headless or not, Mansfield did not go gently. Her face and body, Roberts allows, were ''as bad as you get in this business,'' and he worked all night, valiantly trying to reconstruct her face before her relatives arrived. ''She had a lot of makeup with her,'' he remembers, ''and I used it all.''

[SOURCE: nytimes.com.]

Jayne and Mickey Hargitay.

Jayne and her attorney/lover, Sam Brody.

LayVey said that Mansfield was an exhibitionist.

Mansfield in her pink bathroom.

Mansfield's home was a shrine to herself.