My brother was a high school senior, and I was a freshman at American Community School (ACS) in Kifissia outside of Athens in 1961-62. Probably the biggest thing that happened during the 2 years we were there was when Jayne Mansfield visited our school. In the Fall of 1961, she was in Athens shooting a movie called of all things ‘It Happened in Athens’, a B-movie that shows up on TCM and other places from time to time.

What made me think of this now is the fact that her daughter, Mariska Hargitay, just released a film she directed titled  ‘My Mom Jayne’. Mariska was only 3 when she survived the car crash that killed her mother. The movie, which appears on HBO (which I don’t subscribe to attempts to get a truer picture of what her mother was really like versus the media version. Woven into the story is how she had hidden the truth she had come to know years ago that Mickey Hargitay, the famous bodybuilder, was not her biological father. Long story there, but she still regards Mickey as her “real” father.

Tony Rees - Class of 1964