Thursday 29th June 1967
Jayne Mansfield, the first major American actress to have a nude starring role in a Hollywood motion picture, died in a car crash at the age of 34. At approximately 2.25 a.m. on US Highway 90, her 1966 Buick crashed into the rear of a tractor-trailer that had slowed for a truck that was spraying mosquito fogger. Mansfield, her lover Sam Brody and their driver Ronnie Harrison were killed instantly; three of her children in the rear survived with minor injuries. Reports that Mansfield was decapitated are untrue, as photographs of the crushed car with what resembled a blonde-haired head tangled in the car’s smashed windshield actually showed her wig.
