Editor’s Note: The numerous reports about these incidents are confusing. One report stated that it was Paul McCartney who requested a meeting with Mansfield, yet he didn’t even turn up at the Whiskey A Gogo. 

Some reports stated that John was alone in the house when Mansfield turned up, while others mentioned that Ringo was there watching television. At the time Paul and George were at Burt Lancaster’s house watching the Peter Sellers film ‘A Shot in The Dark.’ 

There was also the suggestion that John and Jayne were canoodling in the car on their way to the club, yet this would be unlikely if he had thrown her and her husband (or ‘male friend’) out of the house and she turned up at the club after he’d joined George. There was also mention that John got nervous in the club when Mansfield started putting her hand on his leg.

Derek Taylor, the Beatles’ press officer suggested it was Mansfield, not John or Paul, who suggested the meeting. At the time he recalled, “This evening I got a phone call from the actress Jayne Mansfield, who wanted to meet the Beatles and be photographed with them. She hassled me and she very badly wanted to meet them, at her place, then our place, at any place. I told her that we had a ‘no photographs with celebrities’ rule, and that I had already turned down even my own friends. She was most annoyed.”

Mansfield was quoted as saying, “I had a brilliant idea where we spent the evening at the Whiskey A GoGo on Sunset Strip. No one would be there but us and a few friends.”

The Mansfield episode shows how incidents in the Beatles lives are interpreted differently by various people, some witnesses, some not. Did they request to meet her or was she the one who insisted on the meeting? Was John alone when she called or was Ringo there? Did John travel to the Whiskey with her, or was she with her husband or a boy friend? Was it just John and George at the Whiskey or was Ringo there too – and where was Paul?

However, the basic fact remains that she did turn up at the house on that date and she was with them that evening at the club.

George himself was to recall the incident: “Somebody conned us into going to the Whiskey A Go Go. It seemed to take us twenty minutes to get from the door to the table and instantly the whole of Hollywood paparazzi descended. It was a total set up by Jayne Mansfield to have pictures taken with us. John and I were sitting either side of her and she had her hands on our legs, by our groins – at least she did on mine. We’d been sitting there for hours, waiting to get a drink, we had glasses with ice in them, and the ice had all melted. A photographer came and tried to get a picture and I threw the glass of water at him. He took a photo of the water coming out of the glass and soaking the actress Mamie Van Doren, who just happened to be passing. We got out of there, it was hell. We left town and the next day, I remember sitting on the plane, reading the paper and there was the photo of me throwing the water.”

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