LaVey Also Needed The Limelight
The life of Howard Stanton Levey, who later styled himself Anton LaVey, is that of a somewhat regular man who claimed many terrific feats to make his legacy grander. Those who knew LaVey stated he was born a natural showman. Born in 1930 to an American father from Chicago and a mother who was the daughter of Russian immigrants, LaVey led a normal life in California. He had a keen interest in music, which his parents encouraged and supported. LaVey was particularly drawn to keyboards and became a well-known local musician on the nightclub circuit.
Many of the self-proclaimed details of LaVey’s life cannot be verified, and many have been openly disputed. LaVey claimed to have worked for a carnival as a young man, which he claimed formed his distaste towards religion, but no evidence exists that a carnival ever employed him. He also insisted he had an affair with Marilyn Monroe while working as an organist at a burlesque house, a claim which is disputed by both Monroe’s inner circle and the manager of the theatre he claimed to work at.
While LaVey long had an interest in the occult and paranormal, there is no evidence to suggest he was employed as a psychic medium by the San Francisco Police Department, as he claimed in his biography. Instead, it appears that LaVey was merely a competent local musician who had aspirations for more magnificent showmanship and found them through his “Satanic” Friday night performances at his home. Due to friendships with writers from Weird Tales, including Fritz Leiber and Clark Ashton Smith, his parties gained some renown and drew other illustrious attendees.
LaVey began to parlay his well-attended parties into greater fame with the establishment of his own religion. According to LaVey, in 1966 he ritualistically shaved his head and declared it Year 1, or Anno Satanas, the first year of the Age of Satan. According to friends, LaVey simply had lost a bet that required him to shave his head, but the clever showman managed to turn even losing a bet into a ritualistic part of his budding religion. As interest in his newfound religion slowly grew, LaVey must surely have seized upon the opportunity for publicity afforded him by Jayne Mansfield’s visit to one of his weekly Friday Satanic sermons. The media attention on Mansfield’s latest publicity stunt also helped catapult LaVey and his religion to the forefront of national news. His subsequent Satanic baptism of his own three-year-old daughter helped capture even more headlines.
When Mansfield’s son, Zoltan, was savaged by a lion at a theme park, LaVey took the opportunity to create a media firestorm by going to a remote mountain peak to cast a Satanic spell for his recovery. When the boy recovered, Mansfield publicly credited her friend and public relations conspirator with his good health. Ever the showman, LaVey even capitalized upon his friend Mansfield’s death. He expressed great remorse for the curse he supposedly cast upon her boyfriend, Sam Brody, which he claimed unintentionally led to Mansfield’s death as well. After her funeral, LaVey held a memorial service celebrating her life at his home, by this time known as the Black House, or the home of the Church of Satan. We may never understand the true nature of the relationship between LaVey and Mansfield, as both desperately sought publicity and LaVey, in particular, created his own legend out of fiction when he saw fit.
Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“Jayne Mansfield’s Strange Fascination With Satanism”, Madeline Hiltz, The Vintage News
“The Hollywood blonde and the Satanist”, FORREST HANSON, The Daily Mail
“Jayne Mansfield” Wikipedia contributors. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
“Anton LaVey” Wikipedia contributors. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia