Jayne Mansfield was nobody’s fool. The world’s smartest dumb blonde appeared in 27 films (only a handful of them memorable). But her bid for immortality lives on — not just in the lives of her children, but in a thriving, “famous-for-being-famous” culture she helped to create.

Before stars could reach millions of followers in 140 characters and 60 seconds or less, Twitter’s equivalent had a name: Hedda Hopper. Facebook, too, had one: Louella Parsons. These, along with a dozen other syndicated Hollywood power brokers, formed a mainline to the heart of the American people. And Jayne was their pied piper, adept as any modern-day social media maven at keeping herself in the public eye.

In fact, if it weren’t for Mansfield then, there would likely be no Kardashians today.

Mansfield’s leverage of the press was never more potent than in 1957, when she seemed poised to take over the world.

Borrowing the test-driven public persona of Marilyn Monroe, Mansfield beat out Monroe herself in popularity polls. She had four major features under her belt, and Twentieth Century Fox estimated her worth at $40 million ($350 million today). Mansfield’s name was “magic at the box office,” Parsons wrote.

On tour with Bob Hope, Mansfield brought 100,000 servicemen to their feet (co-star Neile Adams remembers her “in a bikini in Alaska in -20-degree weather”). Mansfield’s impact on men was likened to that of Elvis Presley’s on women, leaving riots in her wake. She had, as columnist Walter Winchell put it, “the world in the palm of her little pink hand.”

So why is Jayne barely remembered today?

The answer may lie in a single item that appeared in Hopper’s column at the turn of 1957: “Jayne Mansfield is pushing ahead too rapidly.”

In fact, she was pushing 60 years ahead of her time.

(Jayne Mansfield: the 1st reality star)