Jayne Mansfield’s “Pink Palace”: Inside the Fairytale Home She Created With Mickey Hargitay
Long before celebrity mansions became a regular feature of magazines and social media, had already created a home so extravagant and distinctive that it became a piece of Hollywood folklore.
Known as the “Pink Palace,” the Los Angeles mansion was far more than a luxurious residence. It was an expression of Mansfield’s personality: theatrical, romantic, playful and unapologetically glamorous. With pink walls, heart-shaped designs, lavish bathrooms, elaborate furnishings and a spectacular heart-shaped swimming pool, the house looked almost like a movie set.
For Mansfield and her husband , however, it was also a family home. During the years they lived there, the mansion became the setting for photographs of their young family and their unusual Hollywood lifestyle.
Today, the Pink Palace no longer exists. The mansion was demolished in 2002, but photographs preserve an extraordinary glimpse of what was once one of Los Angeles's most recognizable celebrity homes.
A Hollywood romance that inspired a legendary home
Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay met in 1956 while Hargitay was performing in The Mae West Show at New York's Latin Quarter nightclub. Hargitay was a former bodybuilder who had won the Mr. Universe title in 1955, while Mansfield was rapidly becoming one of Hollywood's most recognizable stars.
Their relationship developed quickly. Hargitay proposed in November 1957, and the couple married on January 13, 1958, at the glass-walled Wayfarers Chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.
Around the same period, Mansfield acquired the mansion that would become famous as the Pink Palace. Architectural Digest reports that the Mediterranean-style property stood on roughly three acres at 10100 Sunset Boulevard in Holmby Hills and had previously been associated with entertainer Rudy Vallée. The reported purchase price was approximately $76,000.
Rather than simply moving into an existing luxury house, Mansfield transformed it into something that reflected her own image.
And that transformation was anything but subtle.
The transformation into the “Pink Palace”
The mansion reportedly contained around 25 to 40 rooms depending on how spaces were counted in different accounts, and Mansfield quickly began redesigning it.
The original white stucco exterior was painted a distinctive pink. Quartz was incorporated into the finish, giving the exterior a sparkling appearance when sunlight hit it. A pink wall surrounded the property, adding to the sense that visitors were entering a private fantasy world.
Inside, Mansfield continued the theme.
Pink became the dominant color, while hearts and cupids appeared throughout the house. Even ordinary household features were transformed into theatrical decorations. Architectural Digest describes pink shag carpeting covering the bathroom walls, floor and ceiling, along with a heart-shaped bathtub featuring gold-colored details and swan-shaped fixtures.
The result was not conventional luxury.
It was Hollywood fantasy taken literally.
Mansfield was famous for embracing an exaggerated public image, and the house reflected that same approach. Every room seemed designed to be photographed.
The famous heart-shaped swimming pool
Perhaps the most recognizable feature of the entire property was the swimming pool.
Mickey Hargitay built a large, approximately 40-foot-wide heart-shaped pool in the backyard. The design became one of the defining symbols of the Pink Palace and appeared repeatedly in photographs of the couple and their family.
The pool wasn't simply shaped like a heart.
It was decorated with additional romantic details.
According to Architectural Digest, gold-leaf mosaic lettering on the bottom spelled “I love you Jaynie.” Other photographs show heart-shaped elements and fountains incorporated into the pool area, reinforcing the romantic theme that ran throughout the property.
The pool therefore became more than an amenity. It was effectively a three-dimensional declaration of the couple's relationship.
Photographers loved it.
Mansfield frequently posed beside or in the pool, sometimes surrounded by the products and objects associated with her celebrity image. These photographs helped turn the Pink Palace itself into part of her public persona.
A bathroom unlike almost anything else in Hollywood
If the pool represented the exterior fantasy of the Pink Palace, Mansfield's bathroom may have been its most extravagant interior expression.
The room was famously covered in pink shag carpeting. Architectural Digest describes the carpeting as extending across the walls and ceiling, creating an almost completely pink environment.
At the center was a heart-shaped pink marble bathtub decorated with gold-leaf tiles and gilded swan-shaped fixtures.
It is easy to understand why photographs of the room became so memorable.
For Mansfield, a bathroom wasn't merely a practical room. It could also be part of the spectacle.
The Pink Palace was filled with details intended to create a consistent visual identity. Hearts, pink surfaces, glittering materials and romantic decorations repeatedly appeared throughout the residence.
The house effectively extended Mansfield's Hollywood image into private life.
The “tiger den” and other theatrical rooms
The mansion wasn't entirely pink.
One of its more dramatic rooms was the so-called tiger den, which featured thick white shag carpeting, a tiger-skin rug, a copper ceiling and a petrified-driftwood fireplace. Mansfield worked with set decorator Glenn Holse on the home's interiors.
This room demonstrates that the design wasn't simply about using one color everywhere.
Instead, Mansfield approached the house almost like a stage production.
Different spaces had different personalities, but they were all connected by an unmistakable sense of spectacle.
There were also multiple fireplaces, dramatic furnishings and rooms filled with unusual decorative details. The house was designed for entertaining, photography and celebrity life as much as for ordinary domestic living.
A nursery inside the Hollywood fantasy
Perhaps the most interesting contrast was the nursery.
Behind all the glamorous photographs was a growing family, and Mansfield and Hargitay prepared a special room for their children.
Photographs from 1958 show a nursery decorated with a frilly bassinet, bows, stuffed animals and a painted fairy-tale forest scene.
Their first son together, Miklós Jeffrey Palmer Hargitay, was born on December 21, 1958. Their second son, Zoltán Anthony Hargitay, was born in 1960.
Mansfield's daughter Mariska was born in January 1964, after Mansfield and Hargitay's marriage had ended. She later became an actress herself.
Photographs from the Pink Palace therefore capture an unusual moment in Hollywood history: a famous actress living inside an almost fantastical mansion while raising a young family.
Mansfield wanted the house to be part of her identity
One reason the Pink Palace became so famous was Mansfield's ability to turn publicity into part of her lifestyle.
She reportedly contacted large numbers of furniture and building suppliers seeking products for the house, offering companies publicity through their association with her celebrity residence. Architectural Digest says she received an estimated $150,000 worth of merchandise through promotional arrangements.
Whether visitors saw the mansion as glamorous or excessive, it was undeniably effective as a publicity object.
Photographers could walk through the rooms and immediately find something visually striking.
There was the pink exterior.
The heart-shaped pool.
The pink shag bathroom.
The heart-shaped bathtub.
The unusual fireplaces.
The nursery.
The dramatic furnishings.
Even the smallest details could become part of a photograph.
In an era when celebrity culture was already heavily dependent on magazines, television and publicity photography, Mansfield understood something important: her home could become part of the story.
Family photographs inside the Pink Palace
Some of the most fascinating surviving images aren't the glamorous photographs of Mansfield alone.
They are the family photographs.
Images from the late 1950s show Mansfield and Hargitay with their children inside the mansion. One series from 1959 shows the family outside the house, with the sparkling pink exterior visible behind them.
These photographs reveal another side of the Pink Palace.
For all its extravagant decoration, it was where children played, babies were photographed and a family spent ordinary moments together.
That contrast makes the images particularly memorable.
The mansion could look almost surreal in a staged publicity photograph, but family pictures make it easier to imagine it as a lived-in home.
The marriage eventually ended
The fairy-tale atmosphere didn't last forever.
Mansfield and Hargitay's relationship eventually broke down, and Mansfield obtained a divorce in Mexico on April 30, 1963. The couple later reconciled to some degree, and their daughter Mariska was born in January 1964.
The end of their marriage changed the story of the Pink Palace.
What had been created as a shared home for a young Hollywood couple became part of a much more complicated family history.
Nevertheless, Hargitay remained an important figure in the lives of Mansfield's children.
Years later, his daughter Mariska Hargitay would become internationally known for her acting career, particularly for her role as Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
The tragic end of Jayne Mansfield's life
Jayne Mansfield's life was cut short in 1967, when she died in a car crash at the age of 34.
Her death became one of the tragic episodes of Hollywood history and inevitably changed the way the public remembered her.
The Pink Palace, meanwhile, survived her.
After Mansfield's death, the property passed through other owners. Accounts of its later history associate the house with several celebrities, including Ringo Starr, Cass Elliot and Engelbert Humperdinck.
For decades, the mansion remained a physical reminder of Mansfield's extraordinary taste and public image.
But eventually, even the Pink Palace disappeared.
What happened to the Pink Palace?
The mansion was ultimately demolished in 2002.
That means today's photographs are particularly valuable.
They don't simply document a celebrity home.
They preserve a building that no longer exists.
The Pink Palace is now remembered primarily through archival photographs, magazine features and stories passed down through Hollywood history.
Its destruction also illustrates how quickly Los Angeles can change. A house that had once attracted enormous attention because of its famous owner eventually became part of the city's architectural past.
Yet the heart-shaped pool and pink bathroom remain instantly recognizable decades later.
The legacy of a house that became a Hollywood icon
The Pink Palace was unusual because it blurred the boundary between a home and a stage.
Mansfield was an actress, and her mansion often looked like an extension of a movie set.
But unlike a movie set, this was where she actually lived.
She ate there.
She entertained there.
She raised children there.
She posed for photographs there.
And she built a personal environment that reflected the image she wanted the world to see.
That is what makes the surviving photographs so fascinating.
The mansion wasn't simply expensive. Plenty of Hollywood stars lived in expensive houses.
The Pink Palace was personal.
Mansfield's favorite color, pink, dominated the property. Hearts symbolized romance. The pool carried a message to her husband. The nursery introduced a softer family dimension. The dramatic rooms reflected her taste for theatricality.
Together, these details created something much more distinctive than an ordinary celebrity mansion.
The Pink Palace in photographs
Looking through the surviving images today, several features immediately stand out:
1. The sparkling pink exterior
The exterior was transformed from conventional white stucco into a pink finish incorporating quartz that could catch the California sunlight.
2. The heart-shaped swimming pool
Built by Mickey Hargitay, the pool became the mansion's most recognizable feature.
3. “I love you Jaynie”
Gold mosaic lettering on the bottom of the pool personalized the otherwise extravagant design.
4. The heart-shaped bathtub
Mansfield's bathroom featured a pink heart-shaped tub with gold details and swan-shaped fixtures.
5. Pink shag carpeting
The bathroom's walls, floor and ceiling were covered with pink shag, producing one of the mansion's most surreal interiors.
6. The tiger den
White shag, a tiger-skin rug, a copper ceiling and a dramatic fireplace created a completely different atmosphere.
7. The nursery
The children's room included a fairy-tale forest design, a decorated bassinet and stuffed animals.
8. Family life
Photographs show Mansfield and Hargitay with their children throughout the house and around the property, giving a glimpse of their private family life.
Why the Pink Palace still fascinates people today
More than six decades after Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay moved into their extraordinary home, the Pink Palace continues to attract attention.
Part of the fascination comes from its design.
Modern luxury homes often emphasize minimalism, neutral colors and clean lines. The Pink Palace represented almost the exact opposite philosophy.
It was maximalist.
It was colorful.
It was romantic.
It was theatrical.
And it was unmistakably Jayne Mansfield.
But the deeper appeal comes from the story behind the photographs.
The images show a young Hollywood family at a particular moment in time, surrounded by an environment that seems almost too extravagant to have been real.
The heart-shaped pool wasn't a computer-generated image.
The pink bathtub really existed.
The sparkling walls really existed.
The nursery really existed.
The family really lived there.
And although the mansion itself disappeared in 2002, photographs allow modern audiences to reconstruct the atmosphere of the place.
The Pink Palace therefore survives in a different form—not as a building, but as a visual memory.
A mansion that became a time capsule
The story of Jayne Mansfield's Pink Palace is ultimately about more than luxury.
It is about Hollywood, family, celebrity, romance and memory.
Mansfield and Hargitay created a home that reflected the larger-than-life world surrounding them. Their marriage eventually ended, Mansfield's life was tragically cut short, and the mansion itself was eventually demolished.
Yet the photographs remain.
They show a smiling young mother holding her children.
They show a couple beside a heart-shaped pool.
They show rooms covered in pink.
They show a Hollywood star turning her personal home into something almost completely unique.
Today, the Pink Palace exists only through those photographs and historical accounts. But perhaps that makes the images even more compelling.
The mansion was designed to be unforgettable.
And in that sense, it succeeded.
The Pink Palace may be gone, but Jayne Mansfield's extraordinary Hollywood dream remains preserved in photographs.
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