![]() Actor Tommy Noonan purchased the film rights after nearly starring in the stage show, planning to write, direct, produce, and act in the movie. Promises! Promises! was a translation of Edna Sheklow’s 1960 play The Plant, about two couples on a cruise ship who swap partners in a drunken haze, and then have to figure out who fathered which pregnancy. If she was already a caricature, it made sense for Mansfield to seek out the absurdity of a sexploitation film. “She has become rather a caricature - like Mae West - and alienates the segment which takes sex seriously.” “Jayne Mansfield, whom 20th Century Fox was building as a Love Goddess nominee, suffers from too much publicity and too few roles,” The New York Times wrote. But the newspaper reserved some of its meanest comments for Mansfield. Shortly after Monroe’s 1962 death, The New York Times ran an article explaining why each “successor” to Monroe was an inadequate replacement: Ava Gardner was too reclusive, Kim Novak too serious, Natalie Wood too slight. Mansfield was trying - she wanted those stories and, as one Saturday Evening Post headline put it, she would “do anything for publicity.” But that shameless attention-seeking also earned Mansfield plenty of animosity, particularly in the early 1960s, as she floundered professionally. Those blatant headline grabs had launched Mansfield’s career, landing her a star-making role in the 1956 comedy The Girl Can’t Help It, and they also made her distinct from her blonde-bombshell rival Monroe, who generated tabloid fodder without really trying. At the 1953 premiere for Underwater!, she had posed for endless photos in a tight bikini that eventually popped open in the pool, stealing the spotlight from the film’s star, Jane Russell. Mansfield had always been famous for her crass publicity stunts, which often involved her “accidentally” losing her clothing. It appeared audiences were growing tired of Mansfield’s ditzy blonde shtick, or maybe they were just sick of her. Fox dropped her contract after yet another dud, the 1962 historical riff It Happened in Athens. She hadn’t had a hit since 1957’s Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, and her longtime studio was getting fed up. It was against that backdrop that Mansfield made her topless debut in the 1963 swingers cruise-ship comedy Promises! Promises! The actress was in a bit of a career slump at the time. movies, which is why the Golden Age of Hollywood still enjoys such a squeaky-clean reputation, despite its many scandals. The code forbade nudity - along with abortion, queer relationships, and many other topics - from all mainstream U.S. for decades under the Production Code, a set of guidelines that governed Hollywood films from 1934 through 1968. While onscreen nudity certainly existed before 1962, it had been outlawed in the U.S. Like Monroe, Mansfield was a buxom blonde with a complicated reputation - but unlike Monroe, she craved the industry’s constant spotlight, and frequently used her body to get it. But in Monroe’s absence, it was Jayne Mansfield who shattered the long-standing tradition. The footage of Monroe skinny-dipping in a pool is now available in multiple YouTube clips, but the movie never screened for era audiences, since Monroe was fired and then died before filming wrapped.Įither scene would’ve made Monroe the first American star to go nude in a Hollywood movie in decades. Monroe’s character Ellen is supposed to swim nude, as a means to entice her estranged husband Nick from his hotel room. ![]() ![]() The Something’s Gotta Give scene was a little more intentional. This scene didn’t make it into the final print, but according to a recent Deadline report, the footage was salvaged by producer Frank Taylor, whose son Curtice has kept it in a locked safe since 1999. The actress was shrouded in bedsheets when she dropped the covers, flashing the cameras in front of her. The Misfits moment was unscripted, a spontaneous impulse that arose during a love scene between Monroe and Clark Gable. The first scene was cut and the second was a mere fragment of an unfinished movie, her last before she died. Monroe filmed two nude scenes - one for 1961’s The Misfits and one for 1962’s Something’s Gotta Give - but neither made it into theaters in one piece. But by the early 1960s, a few stars were willing to test the nude taboo. Although movies in the silent era included fully naked bodies, from 1934 to 1968, censors monitored every studio film closely for explicit content, flagging costumes that were too revealing or shots that were too leering. ![]() Jayne Mansfield in Promises! Promises! Photo: Noonan-Taylor Prod./Kobal/REX/Sh/Noonan-Taylor Prod./Kobal/REX/Shįor a very long time in Hollywood, it was impossible to show nudity onscreen. ![]()
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