The story behind one of Hollywood's most famous and devastating looks

On the night Sophia Loren was welcomed to Hollywood with a welcome dinner in April 1957, Jayne Mansfield walked into the exclusive Romanoff's restaurant in Beverly Hills with a plan.

The elegant party, hosted by Paramount Studios, was packed with Hollywood's biggest stars of the day, including Barbara Stanwyck, Montgomery Clift, Gary Cooper, and Shelley Winters. But it would be a photograph of Mansfield and Loren that would make the night unforgettable in Hollywood history.

According to Eve Golden, author of Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn't Help It , Mansfield wanted to ensure all eyes were on her. She had signed a seven-year contract with Warner Bros. in February 1955. The then-blonde, 24-year-old former Playboy Playmate was seen as a rival to Marilyn Monroe, who had been "causing trouble" for 20th Century Fox, Golden explained to the BBC.

Just eight months apart, the enormous success of the films You Know What I Want (1956) and Rock Hunter (1957) quickly cemented Mansfield's star status.

Sophia Loren was just 22 when she arrived in Hollywood. Born and raised in Italy under Mussolini's fascist regime, Loren's mother had her own theatrical ambitions, says Mary Ann McDonald Carolan, author of *The Transatlantic Gaze: Italian Cinema, American Film* .

Loren competed in beauty pageants as a teenager, where she met her future husband, film producer Carlo Ponti, before enrolling in Italy's national film school. Ponti produced many of her early films.

After World War II, Italy was also flooded with Hollywood productions, as studios took advantage of the country's low production costs. "At that time, there was an extraordinary artistic, economic, commercial, and cinematographic exchange between Italy and the United States," Carolan explained to the BBC.

After the success of Aida (1953) and The Gold of Naples (1954), shown at the Cannes Film Festival that year, Paramount signed Loren, hoping she would follow in the footsteps of her European peers Leslie Caron, Ingrid Bergman and Marlene Dietrich.

Covered in furs

In April 1957, it was time for Loren to debut among Hollywood's elite at Romanoff's, where Mansfield was the last guest to enter. She entered covered in a "big fur coat," says Golden. When she took it off, she was wearing a satin dress with a plunging neckline and an open back, which she knew would attract the attention of everyone present, especially photographers.

"She walked over and stood right next to Sophia Loren," says Golden. "It was definitely planned. Jane knew exactly what she was doing." Photographers Delmar Watson and Joe Shere photographed Loren and Mansfield side by side.

But while Mansfield stared directly into the lens, Loren was caught with the most famous sidelong glance in Hollywood history, eyeing her tablemate's cleavage.

Sixty-eight years later, it remains one of the most iconic photographs in Hollywood history. Heidi Klum, Anna Nicole Smith, Sydney Sweeney, Maude Apatow, Sofia Vergara, and Julie Bowen have all replicated it.

The photo has endured because it presents Loren and Mansfield as polar opposites. It symbolizes elegance versus ostentation, Europe versus America, brunette versus blonde. "It's almost as if they were deliberately dressed to contrast," says Carolan.

Lasting legacy

However, the continued prevalence of this image has troubling implications. It highlights the media's tendency to exaggerate female rivalry, fostering the harmful stereotype that women are always competing.

In fact, this was the only time the two met, and it may be that Loren was simply concerned about how Mansfield would be portrayed in the press.

In a 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Loren recalled: "Look at the picture. Where are my eyes? I'm looking at her nipples because I'm afraid they're going to fall on my plate. You can see the fear on my face. I'm so afraid everything on her dress is going to explode—boom!—and spill all over the table."

In her new documentary , "My Mama Jayne ," Mansfield's daughter, Mariska Hargitay, who was three when her mother died, explores the actress's career in an attempt to discover the mother she barely knew. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Hargitay admits she struggled with this image as a young girl.

"It was difficult. Seeing another woman look at your mother that way was unbearable for me as a child." As she grew older, she developed a demure style that contrasted with Mansfield's glamorous public image.

In the documentary, Hargitay admits that she decided to become a different kind of actress, with a different image than her mother, whose professional difficulties she wanted to avoid.

At 61, the actress—who stars in the series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit —relives Mansfield's story in the documentary. After all, she was a woman who played the violin and piano, spoke three languages, and was called "the smartest dumb blonde on Broadway" by Life magazine.

This would be the only time their careers would cross, because while Loren's star was rising, Mansfield's was on the verge of decline. In 1960, Loren won the Oscar for Best Actress for Two Women , becoming the first actress to win an Oscar for a foreign-language role.

Meanwhile, Mansfield's appearance at Loren's party was poorly received by 20th Century Fox. "That's when they realized they'd signed a contract with a lost cause," says Golden. "I think that's when Fox really lost interest in advancing her career."

Frustrated ambitions

In 1962, shortly after Monroe's death, 20th Century Fox dropped Mansfield after three years of poor box office performance. Suddenly, says Golden, with a "huge house to pay for and three children," Mansfield began attending supermarket and gas station openings to "support the family."

Golden believes Mansfield's professional ambitions were thwarted because "she knew where she wanted to go, but she had no idea how. She really needed a strong, smart manager."

Meanwhile, Loren was able to seek advice from Oscar-winning producer Ponti. "She has incredible knowledge of the film industry," says Carolan. "She knew exactly how to navigate the media circus. She didn't let herself be manipulated by the press or the executives."

Loren was so astute in her film career that she managed to combine Hollywood and Italian films, remaining popular for almost 70 years.

Mansfield's fame not only faded, but her life ended in tragedy. When she died in a car accident on June 29, 1967, at age 34, she was returning from a nightclub performance in Mississippi to a noon radio interview in New Orleans.

But the trip was not unusual for someone who had insisted on cherishing every inch of his fame since becoming a star.

"She loved the spotlight. She loved her fans. She became her on-screen persona," says Golden. "You could say she was the first reality TV star because she lived her life in public. Everything she did was followed by photographers and reporters."

Carolan credits Mansfield with helping "pave the way for actresses like Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot and Claudia Cardinale" by breaking barriers in a male-dominated industry by proudly embracing her beauty and sexuality.

And although their paths only crossed briefly, Loren told Entertainment Weekly that she still gets asked repeatedly to sign the famous photo. But she always refuses. "I don't want anything to do with it. And also out of respect for Jayne Mansfield, because she's no longer with us."

* This article was published on BBC Future. Click here to read the original version in English.