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by Suzanne Buchert
Dream Lovers; The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby
Darin and Sandra Dee
In the introduction to this month’s book Dodd Darin, son of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee says: “It’s been said that sometime between the ages of six and puberty, a boy comes up against an urgent and unavoidable conflict. His father is the most powerful being on the earth: bigger, stronger, and smarter than he is in every way. One day the little boy understands that he’s going to have to defeat this giant, bring him down to human size, so that he can have his own life as a man. This battle is a normal passage for fathers and sons, but for sons of men who are larger than life, the battle is harder fought and not always won.” When I was a teenager, in the late 1950's, I had two super idols. I was a huge movie fan so it should come as no surprise that one was James Dean and the other was Sandra Dee. James Dean was an actor who embodied all the restless feelings adolescents coped with in the 1950’s. The world was changing and kids had to change with it. Bobby sox and clean cut good looks were being replaced by long, combed back, pomaded hair, low slung jeans and white tee shirts with a pack of cigarettes folded up in one short sleeve. Dean was almost that kid in “Rebel Without a Cause”, starting out all dressed up by his mother and then picking up the style of the “hood’s” he encountered in his new school. I saw all Dean’s films, “Rebel Without a Cause”, “East of Eden” and “Giant” many times over through the years. They were stunning, he was stunning, they are still stunning when viewed today. His early death in a fast car kept him young forever. He is a constant symbol for wild and reckless youth. Sandra Dee, on the other hand, was a beautiful, seemingly sweet, innocent girl. She was not a child star, like Shirley Temple, but what was known as an ingénue. As the plucky “Gidget” and the teenage sweetheart in “A Summer Place” she was every 14 year old girls dream. She never appeared to grow up, not because she died young, but because her career ended rather abruptly after her marriage to pop singer Bobby Darin. An unlikelier pair I could not have imagined and I was appalled to learn that they had married. Still, I continued to be fascinated by her, as I was by James Dean. There was one thing she and Dean had in common; a vulnerability that was mesmerizing. Over the years, I have read a couple of biographies of Dean. And, when Sandra Dee’s death was announced last year, I began to think of finding out just what happened during those long years after I last saw her on screen. I searched the internet for her and then for Bobby Darin on a couple of websites. Finally, I came up with “Dream Lovers; The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee” by their son, Dodd Darin. I found a used copy at Powell’s, www.powells.com, and ordered it. Obviously, Dodd Darin was working out some demons of his own in writing the story of his father, his mother and their lives together and apart. The book was written before his mother’s death and so that chapter remains unexplored. The news stories spoke of her dying of kidney failure and I know enough about her and about that cause of death to know that her chronic alcoholism was the underlying cause of her death. The book tells Darin’s and Dee’s stories in alternating chapters, following their very different childhood's. Both were significantly scarred by the events within their family life, but their coping mechanisms were totally different. Bobby grew up believing he would die young due to childhood bouts of rheumatic fever. His grandmother, who he believed was his mother, was his primary caregiver and she showered Bobby with attention and love. She taught him to perform and made him believe that he was special. His talent led to an unmanageable ego and a penchant for bad behavior. Sandra Dee was an only child who became a little money maker when she was discovered by a modeling agency. She soon had more work than she could handle and it wasn't long before she was off to Hollywood, under contract to a producer, Ross Hunter, and making movies. Dee's mother, Mary Douvan, was totally controlling of every aspect of Sandra’s behavior. Douvan appeared to others as a loving and devoted mother, but she was truly a monster. Douvan had altered Sandra’s birth date to make her two years older than she really was so that she would be more marketable. She was the quintessential stage mother; always there, always making the decisions, in Sandra’s best interests, of course. Sandra fought back by developing an eating disorder and then later, by drinking to excess. Bobby thought Sandra was a princess, unlike the easy conquests he usually spent time with. Sandra thought Bobby was fun and sweet and spending time with him allowed her to get away from her mother. They married and then found out that neither was at all like the other had thought. And, soon Sandra was expecting a child; a child she could devote herself to completely. Bobby had a nightclub act and liked to go out after the shows with friends. Sandra was not a party, stay out until all hours girl. A recipe for disaster led to breakup, makeup, breakup and finally divorce. Their relationship continued because of their love for their child, but they both saw with pretty devastating clarity the faults of the other. This book was a trip down nostalgia lane for me. It reminded me of those years when the world was on the cusp of huge change. Teenagers were becoming a force to be reckoned with. Control was slipping away and parents didn't know what to do about it. “Juvenile Delinquent” was a term applied to uncontrollable youth. Dean and Dee were on opposite sides of that phenomenon. Looking back, those problems seem pretty tame compared to the ones just down the road a few years. All in all, nostalgia is a great trip, and I thoroughly enjoyed taking it. But, it does look pretty tame from here.
Suzanne Buchert and her husband, Keith, own several restaurants.
sbuchert@hotmail.com
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