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Mansfield had headlined at the club several
times before, and fans flocked from a four-state area to be entertained. Gus
Stevens, owner of the Biloxi club that carried his name, had
pioneered regional entertainment by bringing in such notables as Mel Torme,
Andy Griffith, Rudy Vallee and Jerry Lee Lewis.
The
blonde Hollywood idol was to perform nightly
through the Fourth of July weekend. Stevens, a dogmatic Greek-American who
kept tight reins on his own family, knew the rumors of Jayne's
problems with alcohol, money and men. Her looks were fading from the abuse,
but the public still adored this sex symbol.
Her plans
for use of a personal car fell through --- money rumors again --- and Mansfield had to be in New Orleans on Thursday for a television
interview. She wanted to leave after the last Biloxi performance on Wednesday.
Tony
Picillo, the club's manager, begged off driving her because he wanted to be
in town the next day to arrange an entertain-the-troops tour for her at the
Seabee base in Gulfport.
So Mansfield asked Gus Stevens for the use of
a car and driver. She specifically asked for a Cadillac, which he didn't
have, but his wife's personal car was a comfortable Buick. Irene Stevens
remembers hesitating with her approval, but in the end she relented.
Ronnie Harrison,
a good-looking college student who was working the summer at the restaurant,
was asked to do the driving. He also hesitated at the late hour but, for
personal reasons, he wanted to impress the boss. So he agreed.
Mansfield was in Biloxi with three children, ages 3 to 8, four Chihuahua dogs and her lover-manager,
Samuel S. Brody.
It was
late. They tucked the sleeping children and dogs in the back seat of the car,
and the adults sat in the front. No Interstate 10 existed in those days for
quick travel from the Coast to New Orleans, so they headed down U.S. 90,
which weaved passed pineywoods, fishing camps, small communities and marshes
on its way to the Crescent City.
At a
curve near the Rigolets, the waterway that connects Lake Pontchartrain with the gulf, the Buick slammed
into an 18-wheeler that had slowed down because of a chemical cloud spewed
from a mosquito fogging truck.
The time
was 2:25 a.m. The date was June 29, 1967.
Mansfield, Brody and Harrison were killed
instantly. The children lying in the back seat were spared, though injured.
Two of the dogs died.
The
tabloid press stepped in, and untrue rumors about the driver and everyone
else in the car spread like wildfire. One of those rumors --- that Mansfield was decapitated --- persists to
this day. The rumor started when someone reported seeing a "head"
which was in fact Mansfield's blonde wig placed upon a hat
form.
Years of
lawsuits --- against the driver of the semi, against the city of New Orleans, which owned the mosquito fogger,
and against the Stevenses --- would follow. The estates of the Mansfield children and of Brody wanted
compensation for the losses.
Ronnie
Harrison was branded "the chauffeur," as if he had no other life.
Tabloid rumors claimed he was drunk. He was in fact a promising pre-law
student at the University of Mississippi who'd grown up in Gulfport.
The least
known story of all is that Harrison was in love with the Stevens' oldest daughter, Elaine.
That's why he'd wanted to impress the boss by driving that night. The parents
thought Elaine was too young at 17, and, besides, 20-year-old Harrison wasn't Greek.
The
biggest secret of all was that in three days, Ronnie Harrison and Elaine
Stevens were planning to elope. They were in love. And she was pregnant.
Nine
weeks ago, the wrecking ball destroyed the old building that was the
legendary Gus Stevens Buccaneer Supper Club, one-time provider of good food
and entertainment 24 hours a day.
He had
closed the doors in 1975, claiming changing attitudes in the public's
entertainment demands. Only to friends did the family admit that nothing had
been the same since the horrible accident that they seldom talked about in
their attempts to be normal.
"It
was like someone had walked through Gus Stevens and turned all the lights
out, one by one, that night," Irene Stevens, Gus's wife, recalls.
"And it was like they had turned out the enthusiasm."
Life goes
on
Several
other nightclubs opened at the Biloxi Strip site, but none stayed long and
none reached the popularity of Gus Stevens. The location is too strategic not
to become something in the on-going Coast economic boom, so the wrecking
balls arrived in late April to make way for a clothing-souvenir shop.
That same
week, Elaine Stevens located the secret baby she gave up for adoption.
"The
irony is that the landmark that I learned to hate is gone," says Elaine
Stevens, who is remembered on the Coast as a popular 1980s WLOX anchor but
who now lives in San Diego and owns a media production
company.
"I
felt the restaurant had stripped me. I felt that was the reason Ronnie had
gotten killed and that my daughter was taken away. And now, at the same time
I find her, that landmark is no longer there as a reminder.
"The
restaurant is gone, but she is not." Joy, the kind impossible to capture
in words, punctuates her last sentence.
A new and
much happier chapter to the story that began in 1967 is being written as
Angela Thrower, now 32 and a chemist living in Oklahoma, meets the Mississippi families she never knew.
***Kat
Bergeron can be reached at 896-2309 or at kbergeron@sunherald.com
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