Mariska Hargitay’s new documentary, “My Mom Jayne,” reveals heartbreaking new information about the night her mother Jayne Mansfield died.
While shooting her directorial debut, the “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” star learned how she was accidentally left behind at the scene of the car crash which killed her mother and two other people.
In parts of the documentary detailed by People magazine, Hargitay’s brother, Zoltan Hargitay, recounts the 1967 tragedy.
Looking back to that night, Zoltan first wonders why his mother decided to move up to the front seat of the car as she argued with her boyfriend, Sam Brody, while her children napped in the back.
“I often think about why she didn’t just stay in the backseat with us,” he says in the film.
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Zoltan says he remembers his mother comforting him during the drive, then “twenty minutes later, half an hour, I heard her scream so loud, and that was it.”
In the aftermath of the accident, Mariska and Zoltan’s older brother, Mickey Hargitay Jr., recalls he thought he saw his mother sitting in the front seat of the car he was in, only to realize he was “in a car with a blonde-haired woman who had helped rescue the children.”
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It was Zoltan however, when he woke up and noticed his younger sister Mariska, then only 3 years old, was not in the car with them. He asked the adults where she was, and the group circled back to the accident to find her.
According to the children’s stepmother, Ellen Hargitay, the adults initially missed Mariska because she had been lodged under the passenger seat with a head injury.
“Thank God Zolie woke up,” the Hargitays’ stepmom says in the film.
“My Mom Jayne” premiered last Thursday during the Tribeca Film Festival, and will premiere on HBO and Max on June 27.
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