Want to know the best Jayne Mansfield movies? How about the worst Jayne Mansfield movies? Curious about Jayne Mansfield box office grosses or which Jayne Mansfield movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Jayne Mansfield movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which ones got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place…. because we have all of that information and much more.
Jayne Mansfield (1933-1967) was an American actress and singer. She was a major Hollywood sex symbol of the 1950s and early 1960s and one of 20th Century Fox’s main sex symbol actresses Her IMDb page shows 34 acting credits from 1954-1967. This page will rank 19 Jayne Mansfield movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Uncredited roles, bit parts and short were not included in the rankings. This page comes from a request from Brit.
Jayne Mansfield Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Jayne Mansfield movies by co-stars of her movies
- Sort Jayne Mansfield movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Jayne Mansfield movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Jayne Mansfield movies by how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and Oscar® wins each Jayne Mansfield movie received.
- Sort Jayne Mansfield movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score. UMR puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Stats From The Above Jayne Mansfield Table
- Two Jayne Mansfield movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 10.53% of her movies listed. The Girl Can’t Help It (1956) was her biggest box office hit.
- An average Jayne Mansfield movie grosses $58.70 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 8 Jayne Mansfield movies are rated as good movies…or 42.10% of her movies. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) was her highest rated movie while The Fat Spy (1966) was her lowest rated movie.
- One Jayne Mansfield movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 5.26% of her movies.
- Zero Jayne Mansfield movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 0.00% of her movies.
- An “a good movie” Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 60.00. 7 Jayne Mansfield movies scored higher than that….or 36.84% of her movies. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) got the the highest UMR Movie Score while The Fat Spy (1966) got the lowest UMR Movie Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Jane Mansfield
1. Vera Jayne Palmer was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania in 1933. So how did Vera Palmer become Jayne Mansfield? She used her middle name and the last name of her first husband, Paul Mansfield.
2. While attending The University of Texas at Austin, Jayne Mansfield won several beauty contests. Some of her winning titles: Miss Photoflash, Miss Magnesium Lamp, and Miss Fire Prevention Week.
3. Jayne Mansfield posed nude for the February 1955 issue of Playboy. She joined Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page, and Anita Ekberg as one of the first ever Playboy Playmates.
4. Jayne Mansfield many beauty contest victories led her to signing a 7 year movie contract with Warner Brothers.
5. Dissatisfied with the her Warner contract, Jayne Mansfield, was released from her contract after only a few movies. She later was signed by 20th Century Fox in an effort to mold her as a successor to Marilyn Monroe.
6. Jayne Mansfield was married three times and had 5 children.
7. Jayne Mansfield’s daughter, Mariska Hargitay, has played Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victim Unit since 1999. That show has run for an incredible 417 episodes.
8. Jayne Mansfield turned down the role of Ginger Grant on the television show Gilligan’s Island.
9. Though her film career seemed to have fallen from grace in the mid and late 1960s, Jayne Mansfield’s nightclub act was huge, earning her $8,000-$17,000 weekly.
10. Check out Jayne Mansfield’s movie career compared to current and classic stars on our Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time page.
Steve’s Jayne Mansfield You Tube video goes very well with this page.
This might be a first….Steve’s video has more movies listed than our UMR Mansfield page….20 for him….and 19 for us.
I have seen 4 of Mansfield movies. They are:
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
The Girl Can’t Help It
Kiss Them For Me
Guide For the Married Man.
Since it is a film noir, The Burgler is on my list of to-see movies.
Hey Flora….thanks for checking out our Jayne Mansfield page. Your four movies watched actually tops me and Steve. Our combined total of 9 is prettty weak. The trailer for The Burgler looked interesting…thanks for the feedback.
1 HI BRUCE/STEVE. The WH table above perfectly illustrates that Jayne despite all the publicity that her sex appeal attracted never really was a top box office attraction. An overall Cogerson gross around $1.2 billion and an average gross of $58.7 would not have cut it in the Big Time Hollywood of the 1950s/1960s and The Girl Can’t Help It was her only really big personal hit. However here in Belfast at least it was not Jayne that attracted people to that movie but the rock n roll music and the guest star appearances of many of the giants of that genre such as Little Richard and Fats Domino
2 Indeed Cary Grant publicly criticised Jayne for lack of box office appeal when he bitterly blamed her for Kiss Them For Me being the only serious flop in the long run of Grant box office successes from 1955 until his retirement in 1966. I recorded that fact in a post to Steve that I sent to him when he produced his Mansfield video back in August and I have copied to this site the post concerned along with responses from both of you at the time. Certainly anything from ME is always worth repeating!
3 When Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter was shown over here most people stayed away from it as it was perceived as a gimmicky spoof that was attempting to trade on Rock Hudson’s spectacular rise to fame around that time.
4 The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw did though stir some interest in Belfast as it co-starred Kenneth More who was massive in the British cinema at the time – I for one was an avid follower of his – and Jayne was put into the movie to supposedly give More a boost in the States. However as Bruce’s so-so figure of around $78 million domestic shows that was over-optimistic because if Jayne could pull DOWN the movie of a global Legend like Archie Leach how was she going to pull UP a much-lesser and probably largely unknown Brit artist in the US ? Anyway More never became a big worldwide star and in fact within a few years even his British popularity waned
5 I didn’t know about Jayne’s successful nightclub act though and it would appear that with that to fall back on she wasn’t relying on the Big Screen for a living. You two agree on 3 of Jayne’s top 5 flicks for artistic merit. It is once more good to have both pictorial and statistical profiles of someone who because of massive hype in the distant past looms large in my cinematic recollections of those times so well done to both of you.
COPIED FROM COGERSON SITE INDEX PAGE
BOB
August 9, 2017 at 11:34 am
HI STEVE
1 You certainly caught me by [albeit a pleasant] surprise today as I hadn’t thought about Jayne in years and had therefore obviously not expected a video from you about her. I’m in good company though as the Work Horse has not thought of doing a page on her so far.
2 Indeed I’ve been wondering lately if his multi activities are not getting too much for even that magnificent grinder as I felt that he was possibly slipping behind in producing new profiles. For example despite you and I dropping many hints over the weekend no Cthulhu page has materialised and in the Old Days that might not have been the case.
3 Kiss Them for Me your video’s cover movie was blamed by Cary Grant for being the only flop in his fine run of box office successes from To Catch a Thief in 1955 to Father Goose in 1964 and he couldn’t resist a public tirade against Mansfield whom he blamed for its failure.
4 Jayne had a relatively short career having been sadly killed in a car accident in 1967 at the age of 37 but her mainstream Hollywood career was in decline well before that, so you’ve done well to create a profile of her. Few if any of your provocative POSTERS left much to the imagination but from the artistic viewpoint the best in my opinion and worth an overall 96% rating to this video were The Female Jungle, Primitive Love, It Happened in Athens, Panic Button Dog Eat Dog and Playgirl.After Dark.
5 Best STILLS were I thought (1) a happy Jane with the automobile, sadly ironic in view of her cause of death (2) all lovey dovey with her sternest critic sailor Archie Leach (3) with Brit Joan Collins in The Wayward Bus a nostalgic one for me because I recall that at the time we were told that my Richard [Widmark} was going to be in the eventual Dan Daily part (4) and it is hard to resist that final closing one of Jayne wrapped in nothing but fur!
6 I’ll probably be told off again for saying this but I couldn’t immediately identify more than a couple of WH ratings for Jayne’s movies probably because the majority of them were unimportant/non-mainstream and/or contained only minor co-stars. I mean would the Work Horse with even his massive movies knowledge and sources have heard of Trax Colton?
7 However the Work Horse certainly agrees with his idol about the 1957 Kiss Them for Me being a big flop because he gives it just a 51% rating and though you were more generous with a 60% one Bruce’s adjusted gross for the movie is a mere $55.9 million whereas Cary’s average Cogerson adjusted domestic gross for the other 12 movies that he made between 1955 and his 1966 retirement was a massive $187.5 million. No wonder Archie went ballistic over Kiss Them for Me.
THE FOLLOWING 2 POSTS HAVE BEEN COPIED FROM THE COGERSON SITE INDEX PAGE
1. Steve Lensman
August 9, 2017 at 12:29 pm
Hi Bob, thanks for reviewing and rating my Blonde Bombshell video, appreciate the extra info and trivia on this Hollywood sex symbol who I’m sure still has a fan following 50 years after her death in a car crash. Glad you liked the posters and stills.
She was ‘tastefully’ nude in a couple of movie posters and I couldn’t include them on the video in case I incurred the wrath of the youtube moderators.
Even more voluptuous than Marilyn Monroe though not as talented I was only really familiar with a couple of Jayne’s films – The Girl Can’t Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
There are no 10 out of 10 scores in Mansfield’s filmography (from my sources), but there are a couple of 9’s – Rock Hunter and Guide for the Married Man, both ratings from Leonard Maltin who wasn’t impressed with The Girl Can’t Help It (arguably her most famous film though not the chart topper here).
2. Cogerson
August 10, 2017 at 7:38 am
Hey Bob….good breakdown on Steve’s latest video…which can be seen here.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpqoLvkJyug
Kiss Them For Me….is one of my least favorite movies….and easily the worst one he made after briefly retiring in the early 1950s. So the limited box office is not shocking at all.
I do find it interesting that Cary got to work with the biggest blonde bombshells of all-time…Mae West (two times), Marilyn Monroe (two times) and Jayne (one time).
Since school let out….I have been generating a new page every 2.15 days (love stats…can you tell?…lol)…..they just might not be the pages you want….so the grind is not getting to me….but I only have about 3 more weeks of summer bliss….before school starts.
Hey Bob
1. She was like a shooting star….she shined brightly…..but it only lasted briefly.
2. I think her legacy is pretty impressive when she really only has 3 movies that really got noticed and remembered.
3. Blaming the failure of Kiss Them For Me on Mansfield seems off target…maybe the fact that the movie was bad had a lot to do with it. As you know, Grant, is one of my favorites…..but that movie is one of my least favorite Grant movies of all.
4. Good to know that More helped get Fractured Jaw noticed in Belfast.
5. Rock Hunter and Rock Hudson….I wonder how many times those two names have gotten mixed up….I know I have done that more than a few times.
6. As Joel’s comment mentions…she chased publicity pretty hard….so like Paris Hilton…I imagine her nightclub show would draw attention….so maybe she was the first Kardashian.
Goods stuff as always.
BRUCE
Substantive post on Mansfield to follow in due course but for now you may wish to be alerted to your calling her Ann Sheridan in Possibly Interesting Facts.
Hey Bob….first of all thanks for that error headsup….and secondly…it has been fixed.
HI GREAT ONE!
1 Glad to have been of service.
2 I have copied to Jayne’s page posts from Steve and you at the time of Steve’s video but those posts are not being flagged up in your Latest and Greatest Comments box.
3 By the way does that heading not contain a contradiction in that ALL comments are usually flagged up and if only the Greatest were being plugged then it should be largely only MY posts that that are highlighted !!!
HI BRUCE/STEVE
1 My 7.11 am 2 Nov post to Bruce although couched in playful language nevertheless contained points that I thought were salient enough to perhaps warrant a reply from WH.
2 I was also puzzled by a caution originally appearing on the top of past posts from WH and Steve that I had copied to the Mansfield page, which hadn’t been able to flag up and which warned that the pages were being “held for moderation”. What was to be moderated, why and WHO was supposed to moderate them?
3 For my part I was simply copying something that had been in the public domain on this site for a while and of course had not the power to moderate the original posts which as said were not from me anyway. I can’t recall whether the caution was on those posts when they first appeared but it was certainly on the copies that I posted though it now seems to have disappeared. If I was disseminating something that was belatedly considered offensive I had no knowledge of that and it would have been useful to know what the offensive material was for future avoidance of such material
4 Also when I am aware that WH is doing general updates I naturally keep a close eye on the pages of my own idols such as The Duke, Greg, Joan and Doris. On the law of averages I would probably be quicker to spot occasional minor errors on those pages than other regulars not so interested in the same group of stars might be and I would think it disrespectful to Bruce not to try to help by highlighting those errors.
5 It is therefore disappointing that despite my mentioning on a few occasions the SLIGHT conflicting information on the Mumbles page about his number of films that earned 100 million+ in adjusted dollars which the table correctly lists as 16 whilst the summary mentions 17.
Hey Bob
1. Your comment that disappeared was flagged because of the link you attached….I have since approved it.
2. With our constant attack of spammers….we have had to include that feature to block those unwanted comments…..currently my spam blocker is stopping about 300 comments a day.
3. As for the errors….keep noticing them…. with the latest update we have caught and fixed many errors….but we know there are many more out there. So thank you for bringing them to our attention.
4. I agree time has gotten very crunched lately…..so the return comments, reviews at letterboxd, watching movies and creating brand new pages have been challenging.
5. This week has me doing a minor medical procedure on Friday….so knowing that I actually wrote 3 pages on Monday and Tuesday…..Elba and Novak…the third is hiding in plain sight….just not putting it in the post section until Friday. The last time I had a “minor medical procedure” it almost killed me….so needless to say a slight bit nervous about Friday.
Thanks for the video share Bruce.
So how did my video contain one more film than your chart? This is very irregular! 😉
I can’t remember what I added on there, let me check my files… aha… The Loves of Hercules (1960) – an Italian sword and sandal mini-epic starring her then husband Mickey Hargitay, a former Mr. Universe. Arnold Schwarzenegger played Hargitay in the 1980 TV movie – The Jayne Mansfield Story (Loni Anderson played Mansfield).
I’ve seen just two of the 19 films listed on the chart – The Girl Can’t Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
We have the same no.1 – Rock Hunter. The Girl Can’t Help It was her biggest hit.
Nice work Bruce. Vote Up!
Hey Steve
1. Thanks for the visit and the comment.
2. When I went to get your Mansfield video….I was assuming it was going to be a Top 10 chart…when I saw it was a 20 movie video….I was really really surprised….so I tried to find box office on a 20th Mansfield movie….but I failed……some of her 1960s movies barely played in theaters.
3. So Arnold has a connection to Jayne…..very cool trivia.
4. Wow….I top your total of 2…..my whopping total of 3 is 50% more than your total….proud day….lol.
5. Glad to share your video…and glad that we both have the same number 1 movie.
Good feedback as always.
Many glamour girls climb to the top on their curves. Once they do, however, they generally make an effort to learn their craft to insure staying power after their physical charms have faded. Jayne Mansfield, however, was too busy chasing publicity and fame to give this possibility much attention.
My Top 3 Mansfield Movies
1. Illegal…she showed a glimmer of promise as a moll.
2. The Girl Can’t Help It….a fun if brainless farce
3. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?..the only film that brought her good reviews.
In Joel’s book….Rating the Movie Stars…he and his team ranked 410 stars….Jayne Mansfield came in 408th place….only beating Maria Montez (410th) and Annette Funicello (409th). Interesting to me….Elvis finished one spot better than Jayne.