Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/422151
76 SAG-AFTRA | Fall 2014 | SAGAFTRA.org Film star Jayne Mansfield, recent recipient of a Golden Globe award for 1957's Most Promising Newcomer and Jack Dales, Screen Actors Guild national executive secretary, at Guild headquarters at 7750 Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, California. At far left is envious Screen Actor magazine editor Buck Harris. Snapshot by Valerie Yaros S he was a young "blonde bombshell" of the silver screen. He was the poised and proper national executive secretary of Screen Actors Guild — and then he met her. The AFL-CIO News delightedly described the encounter, captured in the 1957 photograph above: "Jayne Mansfield, an ardent union member who reportedly raises the blood pressure of some of the opposite sex, works as a volunteer nurse at a Red Cross blood bank 'party' held by the AFL-CIO Screen Actors Guild. Here Jayne assists, while a Red Cross nurse takes the blood pressure of John L. Dales, national executive secretary of Screen Actors Guild who donated a pint of blood along with hundreds of other Guild members. Mr. Dales seems to be feeling no pain." Dales, known to all as "Jack," retired from the Guild on Jan. 1, 1973, and soon after, a John L. Dales Scholarship Fund was created, which is today administered by the Screen Actors Guild Foundation. More than 40 years after the photograph with Jayne was taken, one of Jack's two sons mailed him a copy as a reminder of that embarrassing day when dignity failed him. Jack recalled how, soon after they were photographed together, Jayne was a guest at his church, and a friend of his approached to invite him to come over and say hello to her. Jack knew better, declaring "I told him I wouldn't because I knew if I did, I'd have the same silly expression on my face as I have here." Jack passed away in January 2003, a month before his 96th birthday. Unlike Jack, beautiful Jayne Mansfield was not to be blessed with a long life. In June 1967, by which time she was a 34-year- old mother of five children, the youngest boy just a toddler, she died in an car accident. Jayne's youngest daughter, Mariska Hargitay, only 3 years old at the time of her mother's death, went on to blaze her own trail in the acting profession and is today a star of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, for which she has won a primetime Emmy and Golden Globe, and received six Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. Jayne had also received a Golden Globe award in 1957 as a Most Promising Newcomer, along with Natalie Wood and Carroll Baker. Jayne and Mariska each have a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, touching diagonally. Mother and daughter, connected forever. When JACK Met JAYNE Film star Jayne Mansfield, recipient of a Golden Globe award for 1957's Most Promising Newcomer, and Jack Dales, Screen Actors Guild national executive secretary, at Guild headquarters at 7750 Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, California. Snapshot by Valerie Yaros Applications became available Nov. 1 for the John L. Dales Scholarship Fund. For information, visit sagfoundation.org/dales.