... was a passenger, asleep in the back of the vehicle, in the road traffic accident in which her mother lost her life. Aged three–and–a–half years at the time, she was left with a zigzag scar on one side of her head. Her two elder brothers, Miklós and Zoltán, escaped with minor injuries.
Jayne Mansfield's husband, and the children's father, was the Hungarian–born former Mr. Universe, Mickey Hargitay. The couple separated shortly before Mariska's birth, and in August 1964, Mansfield successfully petitioned for a divorce that had been granted in Mexico the previous year, but ruled invalid by an American court, to be declared legal.
© Haydn Thompson 2021