BEFORE: Groucho Marx carries over from "Groucho & Cavett". And here are my links for August: Gloria Steinem, Dan Rather, Mark Cuban, Robert Wagner, Henry Mancini and Ke Huy Quan - but wait, that only gets me through to August 10 or so, after that I've got nothing scheduled. So I guess I'd better get moving on figuring out a plan for late August and September.
THE PLOT: Explores the life and legacy of Mariska Hargitay's mother, Hollywood icon Jayne Mansfield, who tragically died in a car accident at age 34 when Mariska was only three years old.
AFTER: This is the last-second replacement for that other doc that I removed from the chain and re-scheduled for next year's Block - really, the link was very weak and it will be a lot happier in about 12 months when it's surrounded by much closer friends. I didn't come this far to just come this far and break the chain now, almost 200 films in to the year. Once I connect the end of the Doc Block to the start of the Horror chain, I promise, you're gonna see some linking! Sure, anybody can link films with the Beatles in them, or Elvis, that's really basic stuff. But Groucho Marx? in modern docs? I'm working on a whole different level, man. And check out that list of links coming up, you can't even imagine how many times I re-organized this year's docs if I'm using Henry Mancini, Mark Cuban and Ke Huy Quan as links! Yet, somehow I'll look back on it at the end of the year and it will all have made perfect sense, somehow.
That's pretty much what Mariska Hargitay was trying to do, look back on her mother's life (she has no direct memories of her mother, who died in a car accident when she was 3) and try to make some sense of it, and at the same time maybe gain some insight into her own life by looking at where she came from. First she gathered her family members together, her two brothers and older sister, plus her step-mother, and asked them to relive some memories of Jayne Mansfield. Her father, Mickey Hargitay, Jayne's 2nd husband, died in 2006 - it started simply enough, what do you remember about that time we all went on the Merv Griffin show? And then eventually they got to remembering the night of the car accident, and yeah, maybe this ended up being some form of therapy for all of them, this was something they had never really discussed as a family.
But at the same time, she was going through the storage unit that held a lot of her mother's keepsakes, photo albums and press clippings and such, things nobody had even looked at since 1969 or so, and she hoped to learn more about her mother that way, too. Man, she kind of got more than she bargained with, because she ended up learning a lot more about herself, as there were family secrets that nobody even knew, let alone talked about. It turned out there was a time when Jayne and Mickey were separated, she was off making a movie in Italy and Mickey was at home with the kids, but it turned out that their parents weren't just separated by distance, they were emotionally separating as well. But then Jayne came back to Mickey and got pregnant soon after, then Mariska was born, and nobody really checked the timeline on that very closely.
Some things popped up that didn't seem to make sense - sometimes Mariska was called "Maria" by her siblings, or by Jayne on that talk show. Also there were very few photos of Jayne holding Mariska/Maria, as if she was avoiding her or unable to connect with her emotionally. And then 25 years after Jayne's death Mariska was invited to a fan club meeting, and the fan club president accidentally called her father "Nelson" instead of "Mickey". Who the hell was Nelson? If only Mariska, the actress, had the same sort of detective skills as the character she plays on "Law & Order: SVU", maybe she could put all the pieces together...
Eventually, she does, or did. That fan club meeting years ago led her to find a picture of the mysterious Nelson, but she withheld this information for a long time, out of respect for her father. In retrospect maybe everything does make sense, but we really all kind of get there the long way. But this is her personal journey, she started out not really connecting with her mother's sexpot image, and that goofy voice that she had to use in movies that made her sound just like a typical dumb blonde, when in reality she was anything but. Jayne Mansfield could play the violin and piano and speak in four languages, but you know, it was a different time and there really was no market for sexy women who were also brainy, that would spoil the fantasy for a generation of men who just wanted to think of women as beings with hourglass figures and clothes that would barely contain them, leading to the inevitable wardrobe malfunctions. And they would appear in movies that would always depict them in bubble baths or lying down on massage tables in skimpy towels so they didn't have to work that hard to imagine them naked. Sure, sell out your entire gender to gain a few more thousand at the box office, what's the harm?
We all reach a point in our lives where we reject what our parents do or believe in, that's only natural. And many of us go out of our way to go into a different line of business, or find a different religion, or live hundreds of miles away so we can figure out who WE are once we're no longer under their influence. Totally relatable - it's kind of a wonder that Mariska went into acting at all, but she became an entirely different kind of actress. (You have to wonder if she felt herself turning into her mother when starring in the teen T&A comedy "Welcome to 18".) But then we also reach a point in our lives when we realize our parents were not perfect, so in a way this is totally relatable.
But then again, just the other night, Paul Reubens was saying that he couldn't/shouldn't direct the documentary about his own life, because he lacks the proper perspective, or at least that's what everyone was telling him. Mariska's probably too close to the subject matter to have the proper perspective on her mother's life or her own. Also, we normal humans probably can't relate to trying to buy our mother's treasured piano to remember her by, only that darn Englebert Humperdinck won't sell it, not at any price. (Englebert bought the Mansfield/Hargitay mansion after Jayne's death, and Jayne's kids only got a few of her personal items each.)
This is maybe the price of fame, though - and if you're born into it, there's no guarantee of leading a "normal" life, whatever that means. So I guess if you're going to be living under the cultural microscope then you might as well lean into it, and after 25 years on an NBC crime show you can have enough pull to make a movie about your famous mother. No, really, it's OK, if you're born on third base you might as well try to score a home run. It's a more worthy cause than the films most actors direct during their summer breaks. Do I sound bitter?
Directed by Mariska Hargitay
Also starring Mariska Hargitay, Tony Cimber, Ellen Hargitay, Mickey Hargitay Jr., Zoltan Hargitay, Peter Hermann (last seen in "All Is Bright"), Jayne Marie Mansfield, Giovanna Sardelli, Nelson Sardelli, Pietra Sardelli, Raymond Strait,
with archive footage of Jayne Mansfield (last seen in "I Am Divine"), Mickey Hargitay, Richard Belzer (last seen in "Species II"), Sam Brody, Matt Cimber, Joan Collins (last seen in "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed"), Tony Randall (ditto), Ellen Corby (last seen in "Support Your Local Gunfighter"), Joyce Davidson, Tom Ewell (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Sabin Gray, Merv Griffin (also carrying over from "Groucho & Cavett"), Jack Paar (ditto), David Hartman (last seen in "Brats"), Bob Hope (last seen in "A Disturbance in the Force"), Engelbert Humperdinck, Paul Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe (last seen in "Famous Nathan"), Edward R. Murrow (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here"), Herbert Palmer, Vera Peers, Edward Platt (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Mickey Rooney (last seen in "Sid & Judy"), Mae West (last seen in "I'm No Angel"), Henny Youngman (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution")
RATING: 6 out of 10 wild animals in the family petting zoo (must be a California thing)
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