Mamie Van Doren was promoted as a rival to Marilyn Monroe in the lines of Jayne Mansfield and Diana Dors.   She is the only one of those ladies still around.   She was born in 1931 in South Dakota.  She made her movie debut in 1951 in “His Kind of Woman”.   Other film credits include “Untamed Youth”, “Teacher’s Pet” and “High School Confidential”.

TCM overview:

Full-figured, hard-edged leading lady of the late 1950s and early 60s who, next to Jayne Mansfield, was one of the best known of the Marilyn Monroe imitators to emerge at that time. Van Doren, however, was not cast primarily in comedies like the more successful Mansfield; instead, she primarily appeared in schlocky “B” melodramas like “Guns, Girls, and Gangsters” (1958), “The Beat Generation” (1959), and “The Navy vs. the Night Monsters” (1966) and exploitation films like “High School Confidential” (1958), “Sex Kittens Go the College” (1960). Van Doren’s minor cult status was acknowledged in 1994’s “Pulp Fiction”, in which a character named “Mamie Van Doren” was played by Lorelei Leslie.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.