Old film star catches end of finger in mangle (6)
I believe the answer is:
garble
'mangle' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
I don't understand how the remainder of the clue works.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for garble that I've seen before include "Transmit in distorted version" , "Give confused account, hard to understand" , "Distort text or its meaning" , "Distort (message)" , "jumble" .)