Sandra Dee Biography

Sandra Dee (April 23, 1942 – February 20, 2005) was an American actress. Dee began her career as a model and progressed to film. Best known for her portrayal of ingenues, Dee won a Golden Globe Award in 1959 as one of the year's most promising newcomers, and over several years her films were popular. By the late 1960s her career had started to decline, and a highly publicized marriage to Bobby Darin (m. 1960"1967) ended in divorce.

She rarely acted after this time, and her final years were marred by illness; she died of complications from kidney disease in 2005.

Birth and background

Dee was born Alexandra Zuck in Bayonne, New Jersey. Her parents, Mary (née Cymboliak) and John Zuck, met as teenagers at a Russian Orthodox church dance. They married shortly afterwards but divorced before Sandra was five. She was of Polish and Carpatho-Rusyn ancestry and was raised in the Russian Orthodox Church. Her son Dodd Darin wrote in his biographical book about his parents, Dream Lovers, that Dee's mother, Mary, and her sister Olga "were first generation daughters of a working class Russian Orthodox couple". Dee herself recalled, "we belonged to a Russian Orthodox Church, and there was dancing at the social events". Alexandra would soon take the name Sandra Dee. She became a professional model by the age of four and subsequently progressed to television commercials.

There has been some confusion as to Dee's actual birth year, with evidence pointing to both 1942 and 1944. According to her son's book, Dee was born in 1944, but, having begun modelling and acting at a very young age, she and her mother falsely inflated her age by two years so she could find more work. Therefore, 1942 was listed as her birth year in official studio press releases, leading to that year's being considered truthful in verifiable sources. After having studied at Hollywood Professional School, she graduated from University High, Los Angeles, in June 1958. In a 1959 interview, Dee recalled that she "grew up fast", surrounded mostly by older people, and was "never held back in anything [she] wanted to do".

During her modeling career, Dee attempted to lose weight to "be as skinny as the high fashion models", though an improper diet "ruined [her] skin, hair, nails - everything". Having slimmed down, her body was unable to digest any food she ate, and it took the help of a doctor to regain her health. According to the actress, she "could have killed [herself]" and "had to learn to eat all over again".

Career

Ending her modelling career, Dee moved from New York to Hollywood in 1957. There, she made her first film, Until They Sail, in 1957. The following year, she won a Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year - Actress, along with Carolyn Jones and Diane Varsi.

She became known for her wholesome ingenue roles in such films as The Reluctant Debutante (as Rex Harrison's daughter), Gidget, Imitation of Life, and A Summer Place. She later played "Tammy" in two Universal sequels to Tammy and the Bachelor, in the role created by Debbie Reynolds. During the 1970s, Dee took very few acting jobs but made occasional television appearances.

Personal life

Dee's marriage to Bobby Darin in 1960 kept her in the public eye for much of the decade. They met while making the film Come September (released in 1961) together. She was under contract to Universal Studios, which tried to develop Dee into a mature actress, and the films she made as an adult—including a few with Darin—were moderately successful. On 16 December 1961, they had one son, Dodd Mitchell Darin (also known as Morgan Mitchell Darin). She and Darin divorced in 1967, and Darin died at age 37 in 1973. Dee never remarried following her divorce from Darin.

In 1994, Dee's son Dodd Darin published a book about his parents, Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, in which he chronicled his mother's anorexia, drug and alcohol problems, and her claim she had been sexually abused as a child by her stepfather, Eugene Douvan.

Illness and death

Dee's adult years were marked by poor health. She battled anorexia nervosa, depression and alcoholism for many years. Complications from kidney disease led to her death on February 20, 2005 at the Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, California. She is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood Hills, not far from her mother, Mary C. Douvan, who died on December 27, 1987. She was survived by her son, her daughter-in-law and two granddaughters.

In popular culture

• One of the popular songs of the Broadway musical and 1978 movie Grease is "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee", in which the rebellious Rizzo satirizes new girl Sandy's clean cut image, likened to Sandra Dee's.
• Dee's life with Bobby Darin was dramatized in the 2004 film Beyond the Sea, in which Kevin Spacey played Darin and Dee was played by Kate Bosworth.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1957	The Snow Queen	Gerda	Voice: English version
1957	Until They Sail	Evelyn Leslie
1958	The Reluctant Debutante	Jane Broadbent
1958	The Restless Years	Melinda Grant	Alternative title: The Wonderful Years
1959	A Stranger in My Arms	Pat Beasley	Alternative title: And Ride a Tiger
1959	Gidget	Gidget (Frances Lawrence)
1959	Imitation of Life	Susie, age 16
1959	The Wild and the Innocent	Rosalie Stocker
1959	A Summer Place	Molly Jorgenson
1960	Portrait in Black	Cathy Cabot
1961	Romanoff and Juliet	Juliet Moulsworth	Alternative title: Dig That Juliet
1961	Tammy Tell Me True	Tambrey "Tammy" Tyree
1961	Come September	Sandy Stevens
1962	If a Man Answers	Chantal Stacy
1963	Tammy and the Doctor	Tambrey "Tammy" Tyree
1963	Take Her, She's Mine	Mollie Michaelson
1964	I'd Rather Be Rich	Cynthia Dulaine
1965	That Funny Feeling	Joan Howell
1966	A Man Could Get Killed	Amy Franklin	Alternative title: Welcome, Mr. Beddoes
1967	Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding	Heather Halloran
1967	Rosie!	Daphne Shaw
1970	The Dunwich Horror	Nancy Wagner
1971	Ad est di Marsa Matruh
1971"1972	Night Gallery	Ann Bolt Millicent/Marion Hardy	2 episodes
1972	The Manhunter	Mara Bocock	Television movie
1972	The Daughters of Joshua Cabe	Ada	Television movie
1972	Love, American Style	Bonnie Galloway	Segment "Love and the Sensuous Twin"
1972	The Sixth Sense	Alice Martin	Episode: "Through a Flame Darkly"
1974	Houston, We've Got a Problem	Angie Cordell	Television movie
1977	Fantasy Island	Francesca Hamilton	Television movie
1978	Police Woman	Marie Quinn	Episode: "Blind Terror"
1983	Lost	Penny
1983	Fantasy Island	Margaret Winslow	Episode: "Eternal Flame/A Date with Burt"
1994	Frasier	Connie (Voice)	Episode: "The Botched Language of Cranes"

Box Office Rating

For a number of years, exhibitors voted Dee one of the most popular box office stars in the US:

• 1960 - 7th
• 1961 - 6th
• 1962 - 9th
• 1963 - 8th