Mariska Hargitay was accidentally left at the scene of the car crash that killed her mother: doc

New York Post

16-06-2025

At age three, a wounded Mariska Hargitay was nearly abandoned at the scene of the car crash that killed her famous mother Jayne Mansfield, a new documentary reveals.
In 'My Mom Jayne,' Hargitay's personal project that had its US premiere Friday at Carnegie Hall as part of the Tribeca Film Festival, the 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit' star, 61, sheds new light on the tragic night of June 29, 1967.
'I often think about why she didn't just sit in the backseat with us,' Mariska's brother Zoltan Hargitay says of their late mother in the doc.
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4 Mariska Hargitay attends the premiere of her new documentary 'My Mom Jayne.'
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Mansfield, the 34-year-old Hollywood star of the movie 'Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?,' was traveling from Biloxi, Mississippi, where she had been performing at a club, to New Orleans, Louisiana.
Also in the Buick Electra were driver Ronald Harrison, Mansfield's boyfriend and lawyer Samuel Brody and her three children with ex-husband Mickey Hargitay: three-year-old Mariska (then nicknamed Maria), six-year-old Zoltan and eight-year-old Mickey.
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The adults were seated up front, while the children were asleep in the back.
As they were driving on US Route 90, the Buick slammed into the back of a trailer truck, killing Mansfield, Brody and Stevens. The three young siblings were injured and unconscious.
4 The New York Post's late edition front page the day Jayne Mansfield died.
After the survivors were picked up by authorities and driven away to the hospital, Zoltan cracked open his eyes.
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'Where's Maria?,' the boy said of his little sister.
Mariska wasn't in the car with them.
The toddler was so small that officers at first didn't see her in the wreckage, and left the site without her.
'You were lodged underneath the passenger seat with a head injury,' Mariska's stepmother Ellen Hargitay tells her in the film.
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'Thank God Zoli woke up.'
4 Actress Jayne Mansfield with a six-week-old Mariska Hargitay.
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4 Mansfield was the star of the film 'Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?,' among others.
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In 'My Mom Jayne,' Hargitay explores the life of Mansfield, who's often only remembered as a glamorous bombshell. The Emmy Award winner also opens up about her long-held secret: that her biological father is not Mickey Hargitay, but 90-year-old Brazilian-Italian entertainer Nelson Sardelli.
'I just wanted to find out what happened, and sort of what happened is so meaningful,' Mariska said onstage at Carnegie Hall Friday of learning more about her mother's past with Sardelli.
'Was it hard? Yeah. Has it been an incredibly bumpy road? Yes! And guess what? It's f–king glorious now.'
'My Mom Jayne' streams on Max starting June 27.