Single Room Furnished

"Single Room Furnished" was the last film of the once-celebrated Jayne Mansfield. Not surprisingly, given the unfortunate state of her career, she was cast as a bitter, used-up prostitute. The film is ostensibly a dramatization of her sad life and times. Because she died before it was completed,it ended up on the shelf, until the director (and Mansfield's ex-hubby) Matt Cimber, made the decision to finish the film. In order to release it to capitalize on the lurid headlines generated by her untimely death, he added an additional story involving a singularly unappealing middle-aged couple that stops the film cold, and totally negates any interest it might otherwise have had. Mansfield, looking blowzy and tired, may be the main interest here, but she's done in by the pathetic script and the surrounding cast of no name, no talent performers, all of who seem to want to get off-camera as soon as possible. All except Charley and Flo, the characters played by the actors hired to complete the picture, who sigh, grunt, moan and whimper about the sad state of their lives. Not nearly as much as the critics who were forced to endure this film, however, or the audiences who were subjected to it during it's mercifully short release. Jayne gave a valid performance in "A Guide for the Married Man" shortly before her death, and that would have been a more fitting end to her (modest) career. Anyone who makes it all the way through this film (like I did) deserves what they get.

Jayne Mansfield dons three different guises to play one slow-talking, slightly zonked woman (her idea of being sultry is to dawdle over every other word--or maybe she thinks she's being dramatic?). It's a tacky, flashback-framed fiasco that is filled with two-person scenes, and in every sequence the characters keep saying each other's names: "Hey, Flo?" "Yes, Charlie?" "You know what, Flo?" "What, Charlie?" A tired and amateurish farewell to Mansfield, who, contrary to popular belief, was not beheaded before its release. After perishing in an auto crash, a newswire photo flashed across the globe featuring Jayne's blonde wig next to the crushed car's right-front tire. Rumor quickly spread that it was her head, but rest assured Mansfield's head was attached to her body when she died. *1/2 from ****

The answer is yes. The question: Could Jayne act? She did in this one, and was surprisingly good at it too. I saw this movie more out of morbid curiosity than anything else, not really expecting much. I'd read lots of reviews of it, most of them on the negative side. I admit to being a big Mansfield fan so I did have a bit of a bias. And surprise, surprise I did enjoy it. For the most part! I liked her a lot more than the movie tho. I can understand why this wouldn't have been a box-office hit. It's a bit slow at times, and strays off course. The secondary plot involving Charley and Flo confused me. While the actors did a fine job, after a few minutes I felt like I was watching another movie altogether. Their first scene together was WAY too long, and I began to wonder who they were and why were they there in the first place. But after reading that Jayne died before the film completed it made sense. The producers didn't have enough completed film at that point, so it made sense to beef up the secondary roles the characters play, and pad the length of the film to a reasonable length. Not that the actors were bad, they weren't, but I felt that they were out of place here, and that they should have had a whole film of their own. Jayne does a good job here, though admittedly she's no Bette Davis. She was compelling enough to carry the movie. For a while I actually forgot I was watching Jayne Mansfield, and got caught up in the characters she was playing. She was talented. She could act. And while this isn't a great movie it does show a really good actress in the making. It's tempting to speculate where her career might have led if she'd lived. All in all, this is a good if not great movie. You be the judge.

NYC apartment super Pop tells rebellious girl Maria about the dangers the city presents to young women. Johnie (Jayne Mansfield) and her husband Frankie used to live in the apartment but they grow apart. She gets pregnant and he leaves her. She has a miscarriage and changes her name to Mae. There is another couple Flo and Charley. Charley took pity on Mae who's pregnant again and proposed to her. He changes his mind and married Flo instead. Mae puts the baby for adoption, changes her name to Eileen and becomes a prostitute.

Jayne Mansfield tries to do some dramatic acting. This is notable for her death before she finished filming. Her acting is functional. She won't get any awards but she's not the problem with this movie. The directions are horrendous. Director Matt Cimber does little more than point the camera at a stage play. The settings are amateurish. His eye for visuals is lacking. The editing style is boring. Much of the problem is the disjointed nature of the movie. Some of that disconnected feel may be due to Mansfield's death. However it's not covered well at all. The dialog is clunky. It is slow. This is a bad movie.

Simple minded persons such as moonspinner55 do not try to distinguish the 3 different accents from 3 different cultures that Jayne Mansfield uses in Single Room Furnished. In my helping Jayne Mansfield master the 3 different accents it took the two of us 2 hours on how her saying the word "monkey" alone. Each of her 3 accents of Single Room Furnished were very different from her normal way of speaking. Add on that she used a different way of speaking in every movie and stage play that she was in shows, to at least me, that she had an brightness in her mind to even attempt Single Room Furnished. Another friend of mind said of Jayne Mansfield "genius"- John F Kennedy, President Of The United States.