Mansfield was reduced to rounds of telethon and dinner theater appearances. Her days consisted of fifths and fists as alcohol and an abusive boyfriend, Los Angeles trial lawyer Sam Brody, left their marks on the famous figure. Mansfield's last two years were a sad decline. "An old bag" was how uncharitable mop top Paul McCartney described the then 32-year-old actress to Playboy that June. The "big girl" had become a desperate woman. She appeared in films such as "The Girl Can't Help It," "Promises! Promises!" and "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" Her face became a favorite news wire photo, with "voluptuous" as the usual cutline adjective. "They're more interested in 40-21-35," she said.) Even she admitted her public couldn't care less. as 163, but such intellectual pretensions were a nonstarter. (For the record, Mansfield advertised her I.Q. Shipped stacked and stupid guaranteed or your money back. Her enormous breasts and baby doll voice embodied the '50s American male's fantasy of female sexuality: curvaceous, flirtatious and grateful for a man's - any man's - attention. "The working man's Monroe,"they called her. From 1955 until the early '60s, Mansfield reigned as Hollywood's gaudiest, boldest D-cupped B-grade actress. More than 40 years before consultant guru Tom Peters spoke of the free-agent movement and business magazine Fast Company wrote of the "The Brand Called You," Vera Jane Palmer of Dallas had grasped self-promotion's essential points to fashion herself into the hottest dish in the Cold War. Her reaction, absurd, even pathetic to the post-feminist ear, was pure Mansfield. In 1967, several months before actress Jayne Mansfield drove into a cloud of insecticide to meet her destiny, a London newspaper took the full measure of the movie star and found her breasts to be 2 inches larger than the 44 inches she was then claiming for them.
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