Mariska Hargitay’s New Doc Reveals She Almost Died in Car Crash That Killed Mother Jayne Mansfield
It’s a miracle that Mariska Hargitay and her brothers survived the car accident that killed their mother, 1950s film star Jayne Mansfield, and two other adults. But as Hargitay’s new documentary, My Mom Jayne, reveals, she very nearly suffered a worse fate: the future Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star was trapped in the wreckage and inadvertently abandoned by paramedics.
As has been public knowledge for decades, Mansfield, her boyfriend, Sam Brody, and their driver were killed on June 29, 1967, near New Orleans, Louisiana, when their car rear-ended a tractor-trailer that slowed due to a cloud of insecticide, as the Associated Press reported at the time. Mariska, then 3, and brothers Mickey Jr., 8, and Zoltan, 6, were asleep in the back seat and became injured in the accident.
But My Mom Jayne, which just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and will debut on June 27 on HBO and HBO Max, includes Zoltan and Mickey Jr.’s recollections of the tragedy, per People.
When paramedics arrived on the scene, they didn’t realize Mariska was trapped inside the vehicle. She had suffered a head injury, and was lodged under the passenger seat. Only when Zoltan asked where his sister was did the paramedics realize that they had to go back to the scene of the crash.
Zoltan also recalls that, earlier in the drive, Mansfield was sitting with her kids in the back seat — where she might have survived — but moved to the front seat to sit next to her boyfriend before the crash.
For her part, Mariska tells Vanity Fair she doesn’t remember the accident, nor does she remember being told that Mansfield was dead. In fact, she says, she doesn’t remember anything about her life until she was five years old.
Following Mansfield’s death, Mariska and her brothers were raised by their father, bodybuilder and actor Mickey Hargitay, though the doc also reveals Mariska’s realization that her biological father is actually the Las Vegas entertainer Nelson Sardelli.
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