AnimationWorld Magazine — November 9, 2017
Jayne Mansfield Documentary Evokes Classic UPA ‘Toons
Billed as a true story…based on rumor and hearsay, Mansfield 66/67 is a new documentary feature from the Ebersole Hughes Company about the last two years of movie goddess Jayne Mansfield’s life and the speculation swirling around her untimely death being caused by a curse after her alleged romantic dalliance with Anton LaVey, head of the Church of Satan.
The high-camp look at the myths and legends that have swirled around Mansfield since her tragic and untimely death fifty years ago blends archival materials and classic documentary interviews with the likes of filmmaker and writer Kenneth Anger, actress Tippi Hedren, cultural icon John Waters, and others, with experimental dance numbers, performance art and animation.
“In lieu of recreations, we attempted to blur the lines of realness by having over fifty actors and dancers portray Jayne in various fantasized interpretations of her life,” Mansfield 66/67 directors and producers P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes comment. “This approach gave us the freedom to create imagined nights on the Sunset Strip, secret meetings between Jayne and Anton, conflicts between her lovers, and even whimsical period animation to illustrate two key moments that otherwise only live on in memory and retellings of events in her life circa 1966/67.”
The decision to employ animation for Mansfield 66/67 was an obvious choice for the filmmakers. “It has become a fairly common practice in documentary to use animation to illustrate events or situations for which little existing film or photographic evidence exists,” Ebersole and Hughes continue. “The tragic event of Jayne Mansfield’s son being mauled by a lion at a private zoo in 1966 was one such incident. Another was that Anton LaVey laid claim that he performed an incantation atop a mountain on a stormy night to save Jayne’s son’s life. Although the use of animation to bring these moments to life could have been played for laughs, we achieved some of the most dramatic moments in the film.”