Jayne Mansfield

I've been working on a book about Jayne Mansfield this week, and it's solved a mystery from the recesses of my memory (though I'd never thought to look for the answer).

I remember seeing pictures in an article in Playboy — yes, it was an article — of a nude scene she had done in a film. (With a man. He wore glasses.) This was ages ago, and I was still young, though wise enough to understand that a nude scene would have been uncommon for an established film actress in the 1960s, and I've always kinda wondered about the circumstances.

I now know that the film was Promises! Promises!, remembered mostly for her nude scenes (and for an obscenity charge against Hugh Hefner as publisher of Playboy, which had featured a pictoral taken on the set of the film). As Roger Ebert wrote, "In 1963, that kind of box office appeal was all she had left."