Jayne Mansfield was an American actress and sex symbol. Famed for her platinum-blond hair and hourglass figure, she emerged during the 1950s appetite for glamorous sex symbols led by Marilyn Monroe. In her first few starring roles, Mansfield was courted by 20th Century Fox as a replacement for a then-misbehaving Monroe. However, her Hollywood film career proved fleeting; after playing key roles in just a handful of major Hollywood productions she drifted into independently produced low-budget melodramas and comedy films, many of which were filmed in Europe. Mansfield wanted to be a movie star, and was willing to do practically anything for publicity. She was rumored to have gotten her first TV job by slipping a note to the producer that read: "39, 22, 35." Her movie career began with bit parts. She had a small role in Female Jungle (1954). She then appeared in Pete Kelly's Blues, starring Jack Webb. In January 1955, she garnered more attention by pulling a publicity stunt while promoting Howard Hughes' RKO movie Underwater! starring Jane Russell. In February 1955, Mansfield was the Playmate of the Month in Playboy, for which she would pose several more times over the ensuing years. Despite her monumental publicity, good roles dried up for Mansfield after 1958. Mansfield, nevertheless, kept busy in series of low-budget films mostly filmed in the UK and Europe. These were mainly designed to show off as much of her anatomy as possible. One critic summed up her 1960s filmography as "one of the most consistently awful in cinema history". After an engagement at the Supper Club in Biloxi, Mississippi, Mansfield, Brody, and their driver, Ronnie Harrison, along with Mickey Jr., Zoltan, and Mariska, headed in Gus Stevens' 1966 Buick Electra 225 to New Orleans, where she was to appear in a TV interview. On June 29, at approximately 2:25 a.m., on U.S. Highway 90, the car crashed into a tractor trailer truck that had slowed down because of a truck spraying mosquito fogger. The children survived with minor injuries, but the adults were killed instantly. Rumors that Mansfield was decapitated have been proven untrue, though she did suffer severe head trauma. This urban legend was possibly spawned by the appearance of what resembles a blonde wig tangled in the car's smashed windsheild in police photographs of the wreck. It is believed that this was either a wig that Mansfield was wearing at the time, or was her actual hair and scalp and that she was scalped in the crash.