Mariska Hargitay’s documentary about her mother is filled with stories from her siblings and even her biological father, but there’s one tale from her stepmother that stands out.
In “My Mom Jayne,” Mariska Hargitay interviews her family members to paint a better picture for not just herself, but for the audience about who Jayne Mansfield really was beyond her Hollywood bombshell persona.
Mariska Hargitay was born in 1964, when her mother was in the process of divorcing second husband Mickey Hargitay, the father of Mansfield’s sons Mickey Jr. and Zoltan. In 1967, Mariska Hargitay and her two brothers were in the back seat of a car when it crashed, instantly killing their mother, who was in the front seat. Mickey Hargitay raised the children after the accident and later married a woman named Ellen, whom he had been dating when the accident happened.
“When God took Jayne from us, I had a dream about her,” Ellen Hargitay says in the film.
She recalls Mansfield walking across a football field, where there was also a stage, after arriving by limousine.
“The door opens to the limousine, and she walks completely across the field,” Ellen Hargitay recalls. “And she came up to me, and she said, ‘I’m so glad that you’re taking care of the children. You’re doing a great job.’”
“It’s a dream, but it meant a lot to me,” she says.
She remained married to Mickey Hargitay until his death in 2006.
Mariska Hargitay told the Los Angeles Times in an interview published June 27 she once had a dream about Mansfield.
“I dreamt that she came to my house, and I was like, ‘What? Hi!’ I said, ‘I’m so happy you’re here. I can’t believe I get to meet you,’” she said.
She recalled asking her mother to come downstairs to see the wall of photos of her she had.
“But she never came downstairs. And I just remember going, ‘Please, I really want to show you.’ She’s like, ‘I can’t, I have to go,’” she said. “I just remember how happy I was that she came over and then I got to meet her. But it’s also very telling that she didn’t come downstairs. Maybe I’ll start to dream about her again. I hope.”
What’s Said About Jayne Mansfield’s Fatal Car Accident in ‘My Mom Jayne’
Mansfield, her attorney, Sam Brody, and the vehicle’s driver, a young man named Ronald Harrison, were all killed when their car struck the back of a tractor trailer in Louisiana.
In “My Mom Jayne,” an emotional Zoltan Hargitay recalls hearing Mansfield argue with Brody in the front seat.
“She wanted to get away from Sam,” he tells his sister. “And I remember she went in the back seat, and she went to the gas station. I think she called Dad, because Dad said that she had called him.”
Old interview footage shows Mickey Hargitay recalling what Mansfield told him on the phone. He says she told him she would put the kids in the back seat so they could sleep for the remainder of the ride.
Zoltan Hargitay remembers his mother went to the front seat of the car.
“I often think about why she didn’t just stay in the back seat with us,” he explains through tears. “But I remember her comforting me, telling me I was going to be fine.”
Not long after, he says he heard his mother “scream so loud.”
“And that was it,” he says. “It just was silence.”
While sharing his own gruesome memories of the accident, Mickey Hargitay Jr. says he thought he saw his mom in the front seat, but it was a blond passerby who had stopped to assist.
Mariska Hargitay asks Zoltan Hargitay if he remembers what happened after being taken out of the vehicle.
He says he fell asleep on the way to a hospital, but at some point after he woke up, he realized his sister was not with them.
He ended up being the one to tell the people helping them that his sister was still in the car, essentially saving her life, and the group went back to the scene for her.
“You were lodged underneath the passenger seat with a head injury,” Ellen Hargitay says to Mariska Hargitay. “And thank God. Thank God Zolie woke up.”
After recalling his version of events, Zoltan Hargitay shares a hug on camera with his sister.
Mariska Hargitay Shares Her Story About Her Biological Father in ‘My Mom Jayne’
In addition to her brothers, Mariska Hargitay also has an older sister, Jayne Marie, whom Mansfield had with her first husband, Paul Mansfield, and another brother, Tony, whom Mansfield had with her third husband, director Matt Cimber.
In her 20s, Mariska Hargitay discovered that her biological father was another man, an Italian singer named Nelson Sardelli, after the head of a fan club for Mansfield showed her a photo of Sardelli. Mariska Hargitay says in the film that she “disowned” a part of herself “that was my mother’s daughter” amid this realization about Mansfield’s affair. Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay briefly reconciled when she realized she was pregnant, but she again asked for the divorce to be made final in the summer of 1964 so she could be with Cimber. She married Cimber in September 1964.
Ellen Hargitay says her husband always maintained he was Mariska Hargitay’s father if the subject ever came up.
“Mickey was a great father, and he was so full of love for you,” she tells Mariska Hargitay in the film. “But I think Mickey was quite capable of shutting out pain, which I think he did a lot with Jayne. So, he said, ‘Mariska’s my daughter.’ And he said that until the day he passed.”
Mariska Hargitay says she only brought the topic up once to Mickey Hargitay, who dismissed the idea he was not her father, so she never mentioned it again.
She met Sardelli when she was 30 but remained loyal to Mickey Hargitay and didn’t publicly disclose the news about her biological father until now.
She opened up about the news in an interview with Vanity Fair in May when the documentary premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
“I grew up where I was supposed to, and I do know that everyone made the best choice for me,” she told the magazine. “I’m Mickey Hargitay’s daughter — that is not a lie.”
Hargitay interviews Sardelli and his two daughters in the documentary.
Sardelli recalls the story of meeting Mansfield and her status with Mickey Hargitay when they started seeing each other, saying, “There was some family friction there. So, they were not talking to each other.”
He says he found out Mansfield was pregnant during a trip to Germany.
Sardelli and Mariska Hargitay then read letters Mansfield wrote, including one from Father’s Day in 1963.
She wrote in part, “This special day is even more special to both of us. The seed of our eternal love grows as the sapling that one day must be a strong oak.”
Sardelli says he is “grateful” to Mickey Hargitay and only talked to him one time.
“He said to me, ‘Nelson, nobody has to tell me who’s the father of my child,’” Sardelli recalls. “And I said to him, ‘I will not embarrass you in any way. Never.’”
“My Mom Jayne” is streaming now on Max.
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