Trauma blighted short marriage of Hollywood’s dream lovers Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee

FANS never doubted their love as handsome crooner Bobby Darin and teen beauty Sandra Dee (left) set up house in a Hollywood Hills mansion after a whirlwind romance ended in marriage in December 1960.

The story of Darin and Dee’s romance will be retold in a stage show, Dream Lover: The Bobby Darin Musical, about the couple’s tumultuous seven-year marriage, at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre in September.

FANS never doubted their love for a minute as handsome crooner Bobby Darin and teen beauty Sandra Dee set up house in a Hollywood Hills mansion after a whirlwind romance ended in marriage in December, 1960.

Their love blossomed in Portofino, a picturesque fishing resort on the Italian Riviera, from September 1960 while filming Darin’s movie debut, Come September.

It began with Darin standing on shore, wearing a canary yellow suit and waving to Dee, on a boat pulling in to dock. Seeing him, she was reportedly unimpressed, thinking: “Is that him? Oh my God!”

He called to her: “Hi, I’m Bobby Darin. You’re going to be my wife.”

She retorted, “Not today.”

Undeterred, Darin sent 18 yellow roses to Dee and her ever-present mother, Mary Douvan, every day.

Returning to the US in November, Dee showed off a six-carat emerald-cut diamond ring when they announced their engagement.

Her mother insisted Dee, 18, was too young to marry and refused to attend their midnight wedding in the apartment of Darin’s friend, music publisher Donald Kirshner, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Dee’s home state. Darin’s piano accompanist Richard Behrke was best man. His older sister Nina was matron of honour.

The story of Darin and Dee’s romance is retold in a stage show, Dream Lover: The Bobby Darin Musical, about the couple’s tumultuous seven-year marriage, that opens at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre in September.

 

Singer Bobby Darin in 1964.

 

Darin, who would turn 80 today, was born Walden Robert Cassotto on May 14, 1936, in the Bronx, New York. His father died before his birth and he grew up with mother Polly, a former vaudeville performer, and Nina.

Rheumatic fever as a child weakened his heart and restricted his schooling.

An avid reader, he learned to play the drums, piano and guitar. At about age nine he overheard a doctor predict he was unlikely to live past 16.

Keen on acting, he studied drama at Hunter College but became impatient when instructors gave him few leading roles. At 16 he worked at Catskill resorts, moving from table waiting to filling in for absent singers, and wrote songs for Aldon Music, owned by Hunter College acquaintance Don Kirshner.

Contracted to Decca Records in 1956, he was dropped in 1957, then landed a contract with Atco. After seven flops he had a teeny-bopper hit in 1958 with the catchy Splish Splash, composed by Darin in just 12 minutes. His next release was Queen Of The Hop.

Darin had two hits in 1959 with Dream Lover and Mack The Knife, his first Billboard No. 1 that also won a Grammy for record of the year. That year he told a magazine reporter he wanted to be a pop legend by 25, and told another he wanted to surpass Frank Sinatra.

 

A 14-year-old Sandra Dee sits at a school desk on the set of Until They Sail, in Hollywood, California, in 1957.

 

Dee was born Alexandra Zuck in Bayonne, New Jersey, in April 1942, to teens Mary and John, who met at a Russian Orthodox Church dance, and married shortly after. They divorced before Sandra, their only child, was five.

Mary was a secretary until she remarried in 1950, at 26, to Manhattan property developer Eugene Douvan, 52, who adopted Dee.

“He used to say, I’m not marrying your mother. I’m marrying both of you.’,” Dee recounted. “I loved that man, but he was like two people.”

Spotted at a fashion show at 13, an early modelling contract was with Oleg Cassini. At 14 she earned $78,000 from modelling and television work, made her first film, Until They Sail, in 1957, and became a teen idol after starring in Gidget and A Summer Place in 1959.

 

Sandra Dee, as a nurse’s helper in the motion picture Tammy and the Doctor, in 1962.

 

Darin and Dee’s only child Dodd was born in December 1961, although Dee, a long-time anorexic, suffered six miscarriages. After co-starring in If A Man Answers (1962), the couple separated in 1963. Reunited, they co-starred again in That Funny Feeling (1965). For Dee, the end came in April 1966: “Bobby had a cold streak in him,” she recalled.

“He could turn you off like a light switch. After nearly seven years of marriage, he did that to me.”

The couple divorced in 1967.

Darin died from heart failure aged 37 in 1973 before Dee, who died in 2005, publicly revealed the personal trauma each took into their marriage.

She admitted spending her wedding night sitting on a couch “for 12 hours in my coat”, then explained her stepfather had insisted she sleep between him and her mother.

“My dad got me to have sex with him,” she said. “I didn’t understand what was going on. When I was 11, I knew it wasn’t right. What could I do, tell my mother? I figured she knew.”

Darin apparently cried when she told him about it, after their divorce. And in 1967, Nina told Darin she was in fact his mother and Polly his grandmother, but refused to identify his father.