In 1967 the owners of the recently opened Mount Brandon Hotel thought they had found an innovative idea for publicity. Little did they know they were about to rattle the ghosts of the Holy Inquisition.
Early image of Jayne Mansfield (owlapps.net) encapsulating the iconography of the Hollywood Golden Years
Jayne Mansfield became a star towards the latter end of the Hollywood Golden Years. She was an actor and singer with a sultry girl-like voice that sounded suspiciously like Marylyn Munroe. In many ways they were similar: for a time they were both contracted to Twentieth Century-Fox, allegedly had affairs with JFK and Robert Kennedy and featured in adult magazines Playboy and Penthouse. But Mansfield was determined to carve out her own legacy and become a successful actor. Her best known film, The Girl Can’t Help It, went on to become one of the biggest hits of 1956. Shortly afterwards she accepted a starring role in the film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Wayward Bus, which was a strong indication that she wished to be taken seriously.
Mansfield never quite reached the apogee of Munroe, but she won a Golden Globe in 1957 and three years later she was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Even now she remains one of the most famous screen icons of 1950s, albeit with a persistent legacy of publicity generating wardrobe malfunctions. Contemporary culture can raise as many anachronistic eyebrows as it likes, but Mansfield was an intelligent and independent woman with a reputed IQ of 163. Besides having a busy professional life, she was the mother of five children, spoke several languages and played the violin and piano. She was articulate and driven and clearly greater than the sum of her body parts.
By the mid-sixties Hollywood moved on from voluptuous sirens to the wholesome and gamin chic of women such as Hepburn and Hutton, Shrimpton and Twiggy. Mansfield was forced to adapt and she took her act to vaudeville and working men’s clubs. In 1967 those lucrative venues brought her to England for a series of shows that paid £3k per night. It wasn’t elegant, but it was enough money to buy a decent house after every show. Around this time, across the Irish Sea in Tralee Co. Kerry, the owners of the recently opened Mount Brandon Hotel were keen to gain publicity for their luxury hotel. Little did they know they were about to rattle the ghosts of the Holy Inquisition.
Despite Ireland’s War of Independence and eventual transition to a sovereign state, it could be argued that the country effectively swopped one master for another. Four hundred years after the Reformation and its brutal consequences in Ireland, the Catholic Church finally took back control of the population in a grip that would not ease until the advent of the 21st Century. The new order was not forged by the people of Ireland, the principles of its revolution or a committee of its elected representatives, rather it was stitched and sewed by Éamon de Valera under the watchful and influential eye of the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr John Charles McQuaid. While the rest of the world embraced the counterculture of the Swinging Sixties, the Catholic Church in Ireland steered a course that was diametrically opposed to secularism and liberal Christianity.
Archbishop John Charles McQuaid and Éamon de Valera (Photograph: Independent.ie)
John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland, was an influential churchman during the birth of modern Ireland. He played an important and persuasive role in the drafting of the constitution, so much so that a popular adage claims de Valera never made an important decision without first visiting the archbishop’s palace. McQuaid was the de facto head of the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland – the CEO to the Archbishop of Armagh’s chairmanship. He has since become legendary as a crusader who wished to mould the Irish state into a paragon of virtue under the medieval moral eye of the church.
Whatever opinion people hold today of the representatives of the church in this period, McQuaid’s stewardship is regarded by many as more Darth Vader than benevolent and pastoral administrator. Writer and critic Sean Ó Faoláin famously referred to Ireland in this austere period as ‘Dreary Eden’. Whether or not this is fair is largely dependent on those most affected by the stern policies of the church. The level to which the archbishop would go in controlling Irish Catholics was famously evident by his interfering in the lives of young girls. Historian, Dr Margaret Ó hÓgartaigh, writes: “The obsession with female fertility so concerned the archbishop that certain middle-class Catholic girls’ schools were discouraged from playing hockey since the twisting movements were alleged to cause ‘hockey parturition’, that is, infertility. Hence lacrosse was favoured. The latter activity did not necessitate as much midriff movement.” He strongly disapproved of the use of tampons, particularly for unmarried ‘persons’, and under his supervision Mná na hÉireann were encouraged by local priests to observe their reproductive duty.
Thus, while Europe embraced a decade of seismic social change, and the American Dream was in full swing across the Atlantic, Ireland and her institutions were governed beneath a shroud of orthodox conservatism. It’s not hard to imagine the archbishops reaction when, in April 1967, an aide brought news that a famous Hollywood siren was about to visit Kerry. O tempora, o mores!
The Brandon Hotel was a new and luxurious hotel in 1967, and when a Hollywood star began appearing at a venues just a short flight away the opportunity of publicity was too good to miss. Jayne Mansfield was the kind of star who might appear in the glitzy hotels of Las Vegas or California, so why not Tralee? The hotel was almost certain to gain international coverage. They wasted no time in offering £1k for a half-hour, six song appearance. Mansfield’s manager and partner, Sam Brody, immediately set about making arrangements to fly her to Shannon.
If ever there was a moment to be a fly on the wall the archbishop’s palace was the place to be. His immediate reaction can only be imagined, but he quickly contacted the Bishop of Kerry, Dr Denis Moynihan, and ordered him to put a stop to the show. Under no circumstances could she perform in Tralee and everyone involved needed to know that. Press coverage came like an avalanche on Sunday 23rd April, with the media camped out at Tralee and Shannon Airport. The hotel was resolute and Jayne Mansfield was in the air. Little did they know the empire was about to strike.
Sunday was showtime, and that morning the church went on the offensive with a series of blistering pulpit attacks. Monsignor John Lane, the Dean of Kerry, described her a “goddess of lust”. “I appeal,” he said, “to the men and women, to the boys and girls of Tralee, to dissociate themselves from this attempt to besmirch the name of our town for the sake of filthy gain. I ask the people to ignore the presence of this woman and her associates.” Bishop Moynihan described her as “spiritually harmful” and instructed his priests to inform their congregations “If you worship Christ in the morning you can't play with the Devil in the evening." These extraordinary denouncements invoked the medieval spirit of contemptus mundi (or contempt for the world), a sentiment that might protect Christians from carnal desire.
By mid-afternoon the febrile rhetoric had worked and the hotel capitulated with a statement: "Owing to the controversy caused by the visit of Jayne Mansfield, the management of the Mount Brandon Hotel has decided to cancel her appearance."
RTE interview at the Brandon Hotel
Mansfield and her manager were unaware of the developing drama when they touched down in Shannon Airport, but they were soon greeted by hordes of journalists, photographers and well-wishers. Roads in rural Ireland were rough and uneven in 1967, and in the two hour drive they picked up a flat tyre in in the town of Castleisland. Amid three hundred excited townspeople, Mansfield took the opportunity to visit the local church, light some candles and say a few prayers. Reputedly, and rather ironically, she was a practicing Catholic, though as a skilled publicist this act of devotion is open to interpretation.
A large and excited crowd awaited her in Tralee, and when she finally emerged from the car it was only a red carpet away from the Academy Awards. The crowd was just a big, the press just as eager. They hustled her inside, through the kitchen and into a room where a makeshift set had been arranged for the national broadcaster, RTE (see here). What followed was an awkward exchange as reporter, Bill O’Herlihy, concentrated on the church slurs in an effort to elicit a response. One of the hotel directors fumbled a new and very different story that claimed the van carrying the backing band from Dublin had broken down, and the real reason why the show was cancelled. In fact the band was local and at that very moment its members were in the hotel. Despite the clumsy interview, Mansfield remained dignified and bemused while a little dog played on her lap. She responded to questions about being labelled a “corrupting influence” and “goddess of lust” by describing her act as satirical and clean. She also maintained that if the music arrived she would still ‘go on”. But the show didn’t go on and the people of Tralee had to make do with the Jack and the Jackpots Showband. The original statement of ‘owing to the controversy’ was firmly transposed with the ‘missing band’ statement. The church had triumphed.
Ultimately the people of Tralee were spared eternal damnation and diabolical brimstone, with one woman famously remarking “It is much ado about nothing.” Outwardly perhaps, but the whole affair was a litmus test that highlighted the power of the Catholic Church in Ireland. It would later become more nuanced with allegations of duplicity by the church in covering up sexual and physical abuse at St Joseph's Industrial School in the town.
Tralee settled back into the pastoral rhythm of rural life and eventually grew into the modern and vibrant town it is today. It still hosts the internationally famous Rose of Tralee festival and remains a culturally important town in the history of the state. The Brandon Hotel was unscathed by cardinal sin and remains a popular resort for domestic and foreign guests. Archbishop McQuaid died in 1973, but just before he passed away he curiously asked a nurse if he would go to heaven. 2009 saw the publication of the Murphy Report into the sexual abuse scandal in his archdiocese, and this more than anything would finally loosen the grip of the church on Irish society. Jayne Mansfield returned to the United States to continue her cabaret act. The cyclonic anecdote in Ireland’s social history should have ended there, but two months later tragedy struck when the car she was travelling in ploughed under a truck just east of New Orleans. She was killed instantly, alongside her partner, Sam Cody, and their driver. Jayne Mansfield was just 34 years of age. Three of her children (including Mariska Hargitay, the multi-award winning star of Law and Order SVU) were asleep on the back seat. Somehow they managed to survive. Disturbingly, part of her legacy is indelibly linked to the manner of her death: all HGVs in North America and Europe are today fitted with mandatory underrun bars, otherwise known as Mansfield Bars.
© David O’Neill 2021