Sandra Dee

Dee was born Alexandra Zuck on April 23, 1942, in Bayonne, New Jersey,[2] 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.[3][4] She was of Carpatho-Rusyn ancestry,[5] and raised in the Russian Orthodox faith.

Her son, Dodd Darin, wrote in his biographical book about his parents, Dream Lovers, that Dee's mother, Mary, and her aunt Olga "were first generation daughters of a working-class Russian Orthodox couple."[5] Dee recalled, "we belonged to a Russian Orthodox Church, and there was dancing at the social events."[5] Alexandra would soon take the name Sandra Dee. She became a professional model by the age of 4 and subsequently 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.[6] 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.[5] 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.[7]

Producer Ross Hunter claimed to have discovered Dee on Park Avenue in New York City with her mother when she was twelve years old.[1] 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".[8]

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".[8] In spite of the damaging effects on her health, Dee earned a generous $75,000 in 1956 ($705,000 today) working as a child model in New York, which she used to support herself and her mother after the death of her stepfather. According to sources, Dee's large modeling salary was more than she would later come to earn as an actress.[7]

Ending her modeling career, Dee moved from New York to Hollywood in 1957. After studying at the Hollywood Professional School, 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.[9] 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.[7] Her performance made her one of that year’s winners of the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress.[10]

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 for 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.[7]

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[11] 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).

Dee in Imitation of Life (1959)

Dee's third film for Hunter had the biggest impact: Imitation of Life (1959), opposite Lana Turner.[1] The film became a wild box office success, grossing over $50 million.[12] At the time, it was Universal Pictures's highest-grossing film in history, and made Dee a household name.[1] She was subsequently loaned to Columbia Pictures to play the titular role in the teenage beach comedy Gidget (1959),[13] 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.[14] 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.[15]

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.[16] Dee was the nation's seventh biggest star at the end of 1960.[15] 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.[17]

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.[17] It was popular; even more so was Come September (1961), where she worked with Bobby Darin in his major film acting debut (following a cameo in an earlier movie). She and Darin married after filming, on December 1, 1960.[18] On December 16, 1961, she gave birth to their son, Dodd Mitchell Darin (also known as Morgan Mitchell Darin).[19]

In 1961, Dee still had three years on her Universal contract. She signed a new one for seven years.[20] 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),[17] playing a character loosely based on Nora Ephron. That year, she was voted the 8th biggest star in the country; it would be her last appearance in the top ten.[15] I'd Rather Be Rich (1964)[17] 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).[17] Dee was also a singer and recorded some singles in the early 1960s including a cover version of 'When I Fall In Love'.

Dee and Dean Stockwell in The Dunwich Horror (1970)

By the end of the 1960s, Dee's career had slowed significantly, and she was dropped by Universal Pictures.[21] Dee rarely acted following her 1967 divorce from Bobby Darin.[22] 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.[23]

She made a comedy at MGM, 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.[24] "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."[25] However, Dee refused to be nude in the film's final sequence, which was written in the screenplay.[25]

Throughout the 1970s, Dee took roles sporadically on episodes of several television series, appearing in Night Gallery, Fantasy Island,[2] and Police Woman. Her final film performance was in the low-budget drama Lost (1983).[26] In her later years, Dee told a Newark, New Jersey newspaper that she "felt like a has-been that never was."[27]

Dee's later years were marked by poor health, and she became a self-described recluse after retiring from acting.[27] She battled anorexia nervosa, depression, and alcoholism for many years. She quit drinking altogether after being diagnosed with kidney failure in 2000, attributed to years of heavy drinking and smoking.[9]

In 1994, 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 that she had been sexually abused as a child by her stepfather, Eugene Douvan.[28] The same year, Dee had her final acting credit—a voice only appearance—on an episode of Frasier.