Sandra Dee Biography, Age, Early life, Family, Husband, Actress, Movies, Awards, Major Works

Sandra Dee Biography

Sandra Dee also known as Alexandra Zuck was an American actress. Sandra Dee began her career as a child model, working first in commercials, and film during her teenage years. She is 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).

Sandra Dee became a teenage star for her subsequent 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.

She rarely acted after this time, and her final years were marred by illness. She died in 2005 at age 62 of complications from kidney disease, brought on by a lifelong struggle with anorexia nervosa.

Sandra Dee Age

Sandra Dee died at 62 years old on February 20, 2005, in Thousand Oaks, California, U.S. Sandra Dee was born on April 23, 1942, in Bayonne, New Jersey, United States. 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.”

 Dee 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 4 and subsequently progressed to television commercials.

Sandra Dee Family

Sandra Dee was born Alexandra Zuck in Bayonne, New Jersey, on April 23, 1942. She was a successful model at the age of 12 years. Sandra was just 14 years when she was signed to her first film, Until They Sail (1957).

In 1959, Dee hit box-office success with the beach movie Gidget. It was also with the young-love movie A Summer Place. The theme song from A Summer Place became a big hit, and the movie became a touchstone for many young people.

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.

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

Sandra Dee was of Carpatho-Rusyn ancestry 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.”

Dee 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 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.

According to her son’s book, Dee was born in 1944, but, having begun modeling and acting at a very young age, she and her mother falsely inflated her age by two years so she could find more work.

Sandra Dee Husband | Sandra Dee Children

She was married to Bobby Darin in 1960. Her husband Bobby Darin was an American songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and actor in film and television. Bobby performed jazz, pop, rock and roll, folk, swing, and country music.

Bobby Darin started his career as a songwriter for Connie Francis. He recorded his first million-selling single, “Splish Splash”, in 1958. Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee were blessed with one child known as Dodd Mitchell Darin.

Sandra Dee was married to Bobby Darin and they had one child together. The child was called Dodd Mitchell Darin. The child later penned a book about his parents, Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee.

She chronicled his mother’s anorexia, her drug and alcohol problems, and the sexual abuse Dee suffered as a child. Six years later in 1973, Bobby Darin died after his parents divorced. She died from complications from kidney disease in February 2005 in Thousand Oaks, California.

Sandra Dee Actress

Modeling

Producer Ross Hunter claimed to have discovered Dee on Park Avenue in New York City with her mother when she was twelve 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 ($691,000 today) working as a 12 or 14-year-old model (see above) 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.

Hollywood films

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.

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 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.

Universal

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).

Stardom

Her third film for Hunter had the biggest impact: Imitation of Life (1959), opposite Lana Turner. The film became a wild box office success. At the time, it was Universal Pictures’s highest-grossing film in history, making Dee a household name.

Columbia Pictures borrowed her 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. It was not particularly popular. 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 US box office exhibitors voted her the 16th most popular star in the country. Hunter reunited her with Lana Turner and John Saxon in Universal’s Portrait in Black (1960), a reasonably popular thriller.

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”.

Her character had a crush on Gavin’s, who played her mother’s love interest. 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 major film acting debut (following a cameo in an earlier movie). She and Darin married after filming, on December 1, 1960.

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).

Sandra Dee 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 would be her last appearance in the top ten.

I’d Rather Be Rich (1964) was a musical remake of It Started with Eve, once again for producer Ross Hunter. Sandra Dee 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).

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.

Sandra Dee 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.

Sandra Dee was inactive in the film industry for several years before appearing in the American International Pictures occult horror film The Dunwich Horror (1970) as a student who finds herself in the center of a Satanic ritual plot.

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 drama Lost (1983). In her later years, Dee told a Newark, New Jersey newspaper that she “felt like a has-been that never was.”

Last years and death

Sandra Dee adult years were marked by poor health, and she became a self-described recluse. 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.

Complications from kidney disease led to her 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.

Sandra Dee Major Works

Her performance in the movie ‘Imitation of Life’ was highly acclaimed. Critics ranked it as the fourth in the list of best films of 1959. It grossed a whopping 6.4 million dollars and was Universal Studio’s most successful film until the release of the 1967 film ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie.

The movie ‘Gidget’ is recollected as her best performance as a teenager. Critics stated that the role of a 16-year-old with teenage problems was portrayed impeccably by Sandra Dee. In fact, the movie led to a “Miss Gidget” beauty contest.

Sandra Dee Awards

Sandra Dee was nominated for several awards during the early years of her career, and she won the ‘Most Promising Newcomer Female’ in 1958 at the prestigious ‘Golden Globe Awards’. In 1959, she won the ‘Top Female New Personality’ at the ‘Golden Laurel Awards’ and was also nominated for the ‘Top Female Star’ and ‘Top Female Comedy Performance’ from 1960 to 1967

Sandra Dee Death

Dee died on Feb. 20, 2005, at Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, Calif., about two weeks after she was admitted for treatment of kidney disease and pneumonia. She died at the age of 62 years old.

Sandra Dee In popular culture

• One of the popular songs of the Broadway musical and film Grease (1978) is “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee”, in which the rebellious Rizzo satirizes new girl Sandra Dumbrowski (Sandra Dee Olson in the film) and her clean-cut image, likened to Sandra Dee’s (“Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee/Lousy with virginity /Won’t go to bed/Till I’m legally wed/I can’t, I’m Sandra Dee!”). According to Stephen Blauner, Dee “always had a big laugh about it.”.
• Dee’s life with Bobby Darin was dramatized in the film Beyond the Sea (2004), in which Kevin Spacey played Darin and Dee was played by Kate Bosworth.
• She is referenced in the Rodney Crowell song “I Ain’t Living Long Like This” (“I live with Angel she’s a roadhouse queen, makes Texas Ruby look like Sandra Dee.”)
• She is also referenced in the Badly Drawn Boy song “One Last Dance” (“To this day I’m lovin’ you, we know what we wanna do. I am your Troy Donahue and you are my Sandra Dee.”)
• In the movie Kissing Jessica Stein (2001), a character mentions her, saying: “I took out an ad for Christ’s sake. And I ended up with the Jewish Sandra Dee.”
• The Mötley Crüe song “Come On And Dance” (1981) references her: “Electric love/Like Sandra Dee.”

Sandra Dee Movies

• Frasier 1983
• Fantasy Island 1983
• Police Woman 1978
• Houston, We’ve Got a Problem 1974
• The Manhunter 1972
• The Daughters of Joshua Cabe 1972
• Love, American Style 1972
• The Sixth Sense 1972
• Doctor, You’ve Got to Be Kidding! 1967
• Rosie! 1967
• A Man Could Get Killed 1966
• That Funny Feeling 1965
• I’d Rather Be Rich 1964
• Tammy and the Doctor 1963
• Take Her, She’s Mine 1963
• If a Man Answers 1962
• Romanoff and Juliet 1961
• Tammy Tell Me True 1961
• Come September 1961
• Portrait in Black 1960