Sandra Dee

Sandra Dee (born Alexandra Zuck; April 23, 1942 – February 20, 2005) was an American actress. Dee began her career as a child model, working first in commercials, and then film in her teenage years. Best known for her portrayal of ingénues, Dee earned a Golden Globe Award as one of the year's most promising newcomers for her performance in Robert Wise's Until They Sail (1958). She became a teenage star for her performances in Imitation of Life and Gidget (both 1959), which made her a household name.

By the late 1960s, her career had started to decline, and a highly publicized marriage to Bobby Darin (m. 1960–1967) ended in divorce. The year of her divorce, Dee's contract with Universal Pictures was dropped. She attempted a comeback with the 1970 independent horror film The Dunwich Horror, but rarely acted after this time, appearing only occasionally in television productions throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. The rest of the decade was marred by alcoholism, mental illness, plus near total reclusiveness, particularly after her mother died in 1988. Afterwards she sought medical and psychological help in the early 1990s, and died in 2005 of complications from kidney disease, brought on by a lifelong struggle with anorexia nervosa.

Life and career

1942–1951: Early life

Dee was born Alexandra Zuck on April 23, 1942 in Bayonne, New Jersey, the only child of John Zuck and Mary (née Cymboliak) Zuck, who met as teenagers at a Russian Orthodox church dance. They married shortly afterward, but divorced before Sandra was five years old. She was of Carpatho-Rusyn ancestry, and raised in the Russian Orthodox faith.

Her son Dodd Darin wrote in his biographical book about his parents, titled Dream Lovers, that Dee's mother, Mary, and her aunt Olga "were first generation daughters of a working-class Russian Orthodox couple". Dee recalled, "we belonged to a Russian Orthodox Church, and there was dancing at the social events." Alexandra soon took the name Sandra Dee. She became a professional model by the age of 4 and progressed to television commercials.

There has been some dispute as to Dee's actual birth year, with evidence pointing to both 1942 and 1944. Legal records, including her California divorce record from Bobby Darin, as well as the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) and her own gravestone all give her year of birth as 1942. In a 1967 interview with the Oxnard Press-Courier, she acknowledged being 18 in 1960 when she first met Bobby Darin, and the couple wed three months later. 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. Dee's parents divorced in 1950, and her mother then married a man who had been sexually abusing Sandra and continued to do so after he married her mother.

1952–1956: Modeling career

Producer Ross Hunter claimed to have discovered Dee on Park Avenue in New York City with her mother when she was 12 years old. 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", although 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". In spite of the damaging effects on her health, Dee earned a generous $75,000 in 1956 ($714,000 today) working as a child model in New York, which she used to support herself and her mother after the death of her stepfather in 1956. According to sources, Dee's large modeling salary was more than she later earned as an actress. While modeling in New York she attended the Professional Children's School.

1957–1958: Early films and Universal contract

Ending her modeling career, Dee moved from New York to Hollywood in 1957. She graduated from University High School in Los Angeles in June 1958. Dee's onscreen debut was in the 1957 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) film Until They Sail, directed by Robert Wise. To promote the film, Dee appeared in a December issue of Modern Screen in a column by Louella Parsons, who praised the young girl and compared her looks and talent to those of Shirley Temple. Her performance made her one of that year's winners of the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress.

MGM cast her as the female lead in The Reluctant Debutante (1958), with John Saxon as her romantic co-star. It was the first of several films they made together. She provided the voice of Gerda for the English dub of The Snow Queen (1957). Despite or because of her newfound success, and the effects of sexual abuse, Dee continued to struggle with anorexia nervosa, which led to her kidneys temporarily shutting down.

In 1958, Dee was signed with Universal Pictures, and was one of the company's last contract players prior to the dissolution of the old studio system She had a lead role in The Restless Years (1958) for producer Ross Hunter, opposite Saxon and Teresa Wright. She followed this with another for Hunter, A Stranger in My Arms (1959).

1959–1965: Stardom

Dee's third film for Hunter had the biggest impact: Imitation of Life (1959), opposite Lana Turner. The film was a box-office success, grossing over $50 million. At the time, it was Universal Pictures's highest-grossing film in history, and made Dee a household name. She was loaned to Columbia Pictures to play the titular role in the teenage beach comedy Gidget (1959), which was a solid hit, helping spawn the beach party genre and leading to two sequels, two television series and two television movies (although Dee did not appear in any of these). For a complete change of pace, Universal cast her opposite Audie Murphy in a Western romantic comedy, The Wild and the Innocent (1959), playing a tomboy. Warner Bros. borrowed her for another melodrama in the vein of Imitation of Life, A Summer Place (1959), opposite Troy Donahue as her romantic co-star. The film was a massive hit, and that year U.S. box office exhibitors voted her the 16th most popular star in the country.

Hunter reunited Dee with Lana Turner and John Saxon in Universal's Portrait in Black (1960), a thriller that was a financial success despite receiving harsh reviews. Dee was the nation's seventh biggest star at the end of 1960. Peter Ustinov used her as the lead in the Cold War comedy Romanoff and Juliet (1961). Her romantic co-star was Universal's new heartthrob John Gavin, reuniting them from Imitation of Life.

Dee and Gavin played together again in producer Hunter's Tammy Tell Me True (1961), where Dee took over the Tammy role originated by Debbie Reynolds. It was popular; even more so was Come September (1961), where she worked with Bobby Darin in his film debut (following a cameo in an earlier movie). She and Darin married after filming, on December 1, 1960. On December 16, 1961, she gave birth to their son, Dodd Mitchell Darin (also known as Morgan Mitchell Darin).

In 1961, Dee still had three years on her Universal contract. She signed a new one for seven years. The newlyweds Dee and Darin appeared together in the Hunter romantic comedy If a Man Answers (1962). She appeared in the final "Tammy" film, Tammy and the Doctor (1963). She had another big hit in the comedy Take Her, She's Mine (1963), playing a character loosely based on Nora Ephron. That year, she was voted the 8th biggest star in the country; it was her last appearance in the top 10. I'd Rather Be Rich (1964) was a musical remake of It Started with Eve, once again for producer Ross Hunter. She was reunited with Darin in That Funny Feeling (1965), then appeared in her last film at Universal under her contract with the spy comedy A Man Could Get Killed (1966). Dee was also a singer and recorded some singles in the early 1960s including a cover version of 'When I Fall In Love'.

1966–1983: Career decline and later roles

By the end of the 1960s, Dee's career had slowed significantly, and she was dropped by Universal Pictures. Dee rarely acted following her 1967 divorce from Bobby Darin. In a 1967 interview with Roger Ebert, Dee reflected on her experience in the studio system, and on the ingénue image that had been foisted on her, which she found constricting:

Look at this––[a] cigarette. I like to smoke. I'm 25 years old, and it so happens that I like to smoke. So out in Hollywood the studio press agents are still pulling cigarettes out of my hand and covering my drink with a napkin whenever my picture is taken. Little Sandra Dee isn't supposed to smoke, you know. Or drink. Or breathe.

She made Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding! (1967) which was a mild success. Ross Hunter asked her to come back to Universal in a co-starring role in Rosie! (1967). The film was not a success. Dee was inactive in the film industry for a few years before appearing in the 1970 American International Pictures occult horror film The Dunwich Horror—a loose adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story—as a college student who finds herself in the center of an occult ritual plot. "The reason I decided to do Dunwich was because I couldn't put the script down once I started reading it," Dee commented. "I had read so many that I had to plow through, just because I promised someone. Even if this movie turns out be a complete disaster, I guarantee it will change my image." However, Dee refused to be nude in the film's final sequence, which was written in the screenplay.

Throughout the 1970s, Dee took roles sporadically on episodes of several television series, appearing in Night Gallery, Fantasy Island, and Police Woman. Her final film performance was in the low-budget drama Lost (1983). In her later years, Dee told a newspaper that she "felt like a has-been that never was".

1984–2005: Later life and retirement

Dee's years in the 1980s were marked by poor health, and she became a self-described recluse after retiring from acting. At one point she finally confronted her mother about the incest with her stepfather when she was a child, as well as her mother's obliviousness to it.

One night I couldn't control the pressure any longer. My mother and I were at home with a few of her close friends, and she started eulogizing my stepfather. I was slowly getting more and more irate. Finally I said, "Mom, shut up. A saint he wasn't." My mother started defending him, and I said, "Well, guess what your saint did to me? He had sex with me." My mother was shocked, then angry. I knew I hurt her. I wanted to. I had so much anger toward her for not doing something to help me. But she ignored me, and the subject never came up again. I realize now that my mother erased the abuse from her own mind. It didn't exist, so she didn't have to feel guilty.

She battled anorexia nervosa, depression, and alcoholism for many years, hitting a low point in 1988 when her mother died of lung cancer. Dee stated that for months she was just a recluse living on soup, crackers, and scotch, with her body weight falling to only 80 pounds. After she began to vomit blood, her son compelled her to be hospitalized, and then seek psychiatric treatment. Both her mental and physical condition improved afterwards, and she expressed a desire to be in a TV sitcom, in part to belong to a family. She quit drinking altogether after being diagnosed with kidney failure in 2000, attributed to years of heavy drinking and smoking.

In 1994's Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, Dodd Darin chronicled his mother's anorexia, drug and alcohol problems, stating that she had been sexually abused as a child by her stepfather Eugene Douvan. The same year, Dee had her final acting credit—a voice only appearance—on an episode of Frasier.

Death

After needing kidney dialysis for the last 4 years of her life, complications from kidney disease led to Dee's death on February 20, 2005, at the Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, California at the age of 62. She was interred in a crypt at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood Hills, California.

Filmography

Film

Television

Accolades

Box office rating

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

• 1959—16th
• 1960—7th
• 1961—6th
• 1962—9th
• 1963—8th

In popular culture

• Dee is referenced in the title of "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee", a song from the 1971 musical Grease and its 1978 film adaptation.
• In a April 17, 1980 Garfield comic strip, the main protagonist is watching TV and complains about the state of television programming and plans to do something about it, right after he finishes watching the film, The Beach Creature Annoys Sandra Dee (an obviously direct parody on her Gidget character).

Sources

• Craig, Rob (2019). American International Pictures: A Comprehensive Filmography. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 978-1-476-66631-0.
• Darin, Dodd (1994). Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee. Warner Books. ISBN 978-0-44651-768-3.
• Kashner, Sam; MacNair, Jennifer (2002). The Bad & the Beautiful: Hollywood in the Fifties. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-39332-436-5.
• Lisanti, Thomas (2017). Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959-1969. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 978-1-476-60142-7.
• Monush, Barry, ed. (2003). Screen World Presents the Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film Actors: From the Silent Era to 1965. 1. New York: Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 978-1-557-83551-2.
• Staggs, Sam (2010). "Pretty Baby". Born to Be Hurt: The Untold Story of Imitation of Life. St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 978-0-31260-555-1.
• Wayne, Jane Ellen (2003). The Golden Girls of MGM: Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly and Others. New York: Carroll & Graf. ISBN 0-7867-1303-8.