This feature first appeared in July 2024 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.
I have to confess that I knew very little about Jayne Mansfield. I was vaguely aware of her as some kind of glamorous Marilyn Monroe figure, a film actress of the 1950s and early 60s. A ‘blonde bombshell’, as they used to say.
But I took a lot more interest when I learned that she’d opened the Chiswick flyover.
It seemed so improbable. Like Kim Kardashian unveiling a tunnel-boring machine, or Tom Cruise cutting the ribbon on a new crisp factory. But there she was, 30 September 1959, declaring this elevated relief road open with a pair of golden scissors.
A newsreel of the time captures that magic moment:
The opening line might have been spoken by Alan Partridge: “A spot of bother with the Chiswick flyover perhaps, but surely no quarrel with the architecture of the lady invited to open it.”
Cringe.
The Chiswick Flyover was, and is, an important part of the route between central and west London. It bridges over the roundabout where the North and South Circulars meet.
Mansfield, beaming in her “skintight crimson dress”, seemed smitten with the half mile of uplifted reinforced concrete. She judged it to be a “sweet little flyover”.
I guess it does have a kind of brutal beauty. What do we reckon?
The newsreader concluded the reel with a wish: “More flyovers, please! (And more girls like Jayne to open them).”
We certainly got more flyovers. The Westway, the Hammersmith Flyover, the Bricklayer’s Arms, the stunning anti-wonder that is Brent Cross… The 1960s were a fever dream of aerial bypasses. The Chiswick flyover was something of a pioneer and very much the shape of things to come. Indeed, it would be upgraded only five years later to become the start of the M4 motorway.
As for “more girls like Jayne to open them”? Well, not quite. But another actress was invited down to commemorate Chiswick’s 50th anniversary in 2009. Local thesp Imogen Stubbs unveiled what must surely be London’s only memorial to another unveiling.
No golden scissors or Hollywood glitz this time around. “I think they asked me because, like the flyover, I'm homely and getting on a bit," joked Stubbs. (The Chiswick flyover has another bizarre celebrity connection. According to unsubstantiated legend, the Kray twins buried one or more of their victims beneath its concrete columns.)
Coincidentally, as I was typing up this story (2024), I received some news about another motor-choked beauty. This is the Leaning Woman of Hammersmith, who reclines beside the A4 on the approach to Hammersmith Flyover.
The Leaning Woman is a post-war sculpture by by Dr Karel Vogel, originally commissioned by London County Council as a way of making the busy road a bit more palatable. The Grade II-listed artwork was in a parlous condition, badly weathered with a corroded metal frame. Now, thanks to a grant from the Heritage of London Trust and crowdfunding cash, the sculpture is looking good as new. Which is more than can be said for the Hammersmith flyover.
