The staircase of Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay’s home

“I believe in flashy entrances,” said Jayne Mansfield, whose Pink Palace in Bel-Air epitomized the camp icon’s screen and celebrity image in the early 1960s. Her collection of hundreds of magazine covers adorned the staircase—she appeared in Life as well as in Playboy. “Publicity has always come to me. I haven’t gone to it,” the actress once said. “But I’ve been cooperative.”

Mansfield on the balcony overlooking the living room

“I would rather stay at home…and have a dinner before the fireplace,” said Mansfield, who identified with her character in The Girl Can’t Help It: “All she wants is to be a wife and mother, but sex keeps getting in the way.” The lettering in the arabesque above the living room fireplace commemorated her marriage to Hargitay, who did much of the handiwork in the house. Her favored heart motif was quilted into the purple sofas.

Mansfield and Hargitay in their office

“Nobody cares about a figure like 163,” she said of her supposed IQ. “They’re more interested in 40-21-35.” The typewriter carried the house’s predominant color, pink, into the red leather office.

Mansfield in the pink bedroom

The couple shared the Pink Palace with Powderpuff, a Pekingese, several Chihuahuas and an ocelot. One of her Playboy spreads, partially shot in the pink bedroom, was banned in Chicago.

Mansfield in her bath

Mansfield announced her ambition to have a house in Beverly Hills and a million dollars—and to be a star. She traded promotional appearances for an estimated $150,000 worth of merchandise for the house, including the pink shag for the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling treatment in the bath.

Jayne Mansfield patiently awaiting the completion of her heart-shaped swimming pool

Husband Mickey Hargitay, who owned his own construction company before becoming 1955’s Mr. Universe, built the pool for her as a part of her “Pink Palace” with a matching heart-shaped jacuzzi.

As a special surprise, Mickey even inscribed the words “I love you Jaynie” in gold leaf mosaic at the bottom of the pool.

Mansfield in her pool

Mansfield relaxes in the couple’s forty-foot-wide pool surrounded by dozens of Jayne Mansfield Hot Water Bottles, a novelty item introduced in 1957. She demanded “a heart-shaped house with a heart-shaped pool” as a precondition for her marriage to Mickey Hargitay.

source: architectural digest and weheartit

images via adore vintage

“My home?” asked Marilyn Monroe. “It will be a place for any friends of mine who are in some kind of trouble. As for me, I just want to be an artist and an actress with integrity.” Throughout her life, Monroe occupied a series of residences, owned no jewelry and counted books, records and a picture of legendary actress Eleonora Duse among her most cherished possessions. Even after attention-getting roles in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve (both 1950), she still kept a modest, one-room apartment at the Beverly Carlton Hotel in Beverly Hills. “I’m not interested in money,” she once said. “I just want to be wonderful.”

Hollywood romances are known to be fleeting, but it’s true that every rule has an exception. After 50 years of marriage, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward exemplify togetherness, with Newman once famously declaring, “Why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home?” After their 1958 wedding, the couple purchased a house in Hollywood, where the backyard swing set and shaded lawn created an idyllic playground for daughters Elinor, Melissa and Claire. Woodward, a best actress Oscar winner for The Three Faces of Eve (1957), was, in 1960, the first actor to be awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Newman received an honorary Oscar in 1985 and won an Academy Award for best actor in The Color of Money (1986).

“I don’t know whether it was the weather, the people or the music,” actress Ava Gardner wrote about her feelings for Spain, “but I’d fallen head over heels in love with the place from the first moment I’d arrived.” She would go on to develop an interest in bullfighting — as well as in bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguin. In December 1955, following a separation from third husband Frank Sinatra, Gardner moved to Spain and found a ranch-style brick house set on two acres outside Madrid; later, she settled into an apartment in the city. “The only necessities I couldn’t seem to get — Hershey bars, Kleenex and Jack Daniel’s whiskey,” she wrote, “were replenished by visiting friends.”

Carole Lombard wasn’t born a screwball heroine; she and the genre evolved together. The actress liked to say that her feature movie career (which followed an important apprenticeship in a dozen Mack Sennett two-reel shorts) began with “17 flops in a row.” Before he directed her in Twentieth Century (1934), her breakthrough movie, Howard Hawks called her the worst actress in the world. But he is also said to have told her costar John Barrymore that she would be a sensation — if only they could keep her from acting. What the notable director and actor did was encourage Lombard to be herself, and this turned out to be the key to liberating an antic original from the restraining shell of a gifted, if not particularly inspired, contract player.

Doris Day, one of the best-loved and highest-paid female stars of the 1950s and ‘60s, purchased a house in Los Angeles’s Toluca Lake area from comedienne Martha Raye in 1951. Interested in design, Day visited an upholsterer immediately after her wedding to Martin Melcher. “I remember Marty standing there…muttering, ‘I don’t believe this is happening on my wedding day.’ [The day] we returned from our wedding trip to the neat house in Toluca Lake, [my son] Terry excitedly running to the car, Alma in the kitchen preparing a welcome-home dinner,…was the answer to what I had prayed for,” the actress told A. E. Hotchner, who wrote her 1975 memoir, Doris Day: Her Own Story. “From the time I was a little girl, my only true ambition in life was to get married and tend house and have a family.”

Read more at Architectural Digest

If you’re like me, the cabinets under your sink are overflowing with cleaning supplies for each and every possible situation. Reduce your cleaning clutter by using some of these vintage cleaning tips and products!

1.) Vinegar – Plain old white vinegar is an ideal glass and surface cleaner. Just put it in an empty spray bottle and use just like your regular cleaner.

2.) Soap Flakes – These are great for hand washing clothes. Read my post on How to Clean & Care For Vintage Clothing for more tips on taking care of your wardrobe. You can also dissolve the soap flakes in hot water and use it as an all-purpose cleaner.

3.) Baking Soda – it’s not just for baking! Baking soda works wonderfully as an abrasive cleanser. Make a paste by mixing it with water. Also great as a deodorizer for sprinkling on carpets before you vacuum.

4.) Borax – Found in the laundry section at the grocery store you can use it to boost your laundry detergent or as an ingredient to make your own. It’s also great for cleaning toilet bowls, showers, tubs, kitchen sink drains and even arts and crafts! The best part is that it’s all natural and cleans without chemical fumes or scratching. For more ideas click here.

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