Jayne Mansfield, who died at age 34 in a 1967 car accident, would have been a grandmother today… her daughter, TV star Mariska Hargitay, 47, and actor husband Peter Hermann adopted a baby girl, Armaya Josephine, joining brother named August, 4.
It’s not true that Mansfield was decapitated in the accident, in which her car went under a tractor-trailer, although her skull was crushed. A picture of a blonde wig near the crash site led people to believe that she lost her noggin.
After Jayne’s death, an “underride guard” was required on all tractor-trailers, and is widely known as a Mansfield bar. Jayne would have turned 78 on April 19th.
Two of the biggest stars in films, Jane Russell, died today at her home in Santa Maria, California… she was 89.
She’ll be best remembered as a close friend of Howard Hughes, as a woman who helped orphans through her relentless charity work, and for her work with Marilyn Monroe in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”
A compliance auditor for L.A. County died in her cubicle on Friday, but wasn’t found until Saturday afternoon, when a security guard noticed her slumped over a desk. Accounting work is very taxing… check your stubs.
Rebecca Wells, 51, worked for the County’s Department of Internal Services. Her exact time of death is unclear, but detectives say that she may have been dead a day before her body was discovered in her cubicle. Pity the fool who gets that cube next!
The last time a co-worker saw her alive was Friday morning around 9:00 a.m., but no one reported seeing her “napping.”
Cause of death is unknown, and foul play is not suspected, but accounting is well-known for being deadly dull.
The lovely Karen Carpenter died on this day at age 32 in 1983, of cardiac arrest brought on by anorexia nervosa. She was found in a closet at the Downey, Calif. home of her parents. She weighed about 80 lbs. She’s seen above with her brother, Richard, and Herb Alpert in 1981.
Hellen Mirren appeared at the Golden Globes in this washed-out Shelley Winters Memorial Gown, remembering the chunky star who died January 14, 2006, by wearing a knockoff of her gown from her role as former Olympic swimmer Belle Rosen in “The Poseidon Adventure.”
TV’s first family, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson (Ozzie died of liver cancer in 1975, Harriet succumbed to congestive heart failure in ’94), teen idol Ricky (left, plane crash ’85) and David (colon cancer, yesterday.)
Matthew and Gunnar Nelson of “Nelson” are Ricky’s twins (still living).
Oprah Winfrey, as she appeared in a Scarlet O’Hara-inspired Victorian bustle dress at Sydney Opera House on Tuesday, and below, Scarlett Johannson, who has separated from her husband of two years, Ryan Reynolds.
Both have failed to conceal their giant globes, one down under, the other above.
Sister Leontine, advocate for palliative care, and frozen-haired monarch Queen Fabiola of Belgium at an event last week… and below, pill-popping author Truman Capote with Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham at his infamous Black and White Ball in 1966.
So alike, and yet only one died after a fall in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Before Vanessa Williams quit her Miss America crown because of some licky porno pix, there was the 1957 case of Miss USA Leona Gage, a Texas beauty who pageant officials dethroned when they found out she was not 21, but an 18-year-old mother of two.
The defrocking made her quite the celeb, much like it does today, leading to a number of appearances, until she faded into the lovelorn obscurity reserved for so many former beauty queens.
