sandra

Sandra Dee (April 23, 1942 - February 20, 2005) was an American film actress best known for her role as "Gidget".

Birth and Background

Born Alexandra Zuck to John and Mary Zuck, of Rusyn ancestry, in Bayonne, New Jersey, Dee was a professional model by the age of four. She progressed to television commercials and then made her first film, Until They Sail, in 1957.

Career

In 1958 she won a Golden Globe Award for "Most Promising Newcomer" (along with Carolyn Jones and Diane Varsi). Her film career flourished, and she became known for her wholesome ingenue roles in such films as Imitation of Life, Gidget and A Summer Place (all in 1959).

During the 1970s she took very few acting roles, but made occasional television appearances. Her 1950s persona was the inspiration for the song "Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee," featured in the 1972 Broadway musical Grease. The song later reappeared in the 1978 film version of the play, which starred John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Stockard Channing, Eve Arden, and Sid Caesar.

Personal life

Her marriage in 1960 to singer/actor Bobby Darin kept her in the public eye for much of the decade. She was contracted to Universal Studios, who tried to develop Dee as a mature actress, and the films she made as an adult--including a few with Darin--were moderately successful. They had one son together, who took the name Dodd Mitchell Darin, but in 1967 she and Darin were divorced.

Reportedly sexually abused as a child by her stepfather, Dee's adult years were marked by ill health. She admitted that for most of her life she battled anorexia nervosa, depression and alcoholism. In 2000, she reported that she had been diagnosed with throat cancer and renal disease, but it seems that the throat scare was unfounded. Complications from the kidney failure (aka End Stage Renal Disease-ESRD), combined with a bout of pneumonia, led to her death on February 20, 2005, in Thousand Oaks, California. She is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood Hills.

At the time of her death, she was survived by Dodd, her son with Bobby Darin, and two granddaughters, Alexa and Olivia Darin.

Her life with Bobby Darin has been dramatized in the 2004 film Beyond the Sea, in which she was played by Kate Bosworth.

It is noteworthy that at the peak of Sandra's fame, while mainstream Hollywood turned its focus, lensing and marketing mature female roles and their inherent sexiness, Dee's demure role as "Gidget" became arguably (even though there were other child stars in the studio stables at the time), the epitome of the Teen Screen Queen, which then went a long way to solidify the '50's - '60's American teen male ideal of falling in love with the "girl next door".

Filmography

• The Snow Queen (1957) (voice in 1958 English-dubbed version)
• Until They Sail (1957)
• The Reluctant Debutante (1958)
• The Restless Years (1958)
• A Stranger in My Arms (1959)
• Gidget (1959)
• Imitation of Life (1959)
• The Wild and the Innocent (1959)
• A Summer Place (1959)
• Portrait in Black (1960)
• Romanoff and Juliet (1961)
• Tammy Tell Me True (1961)
• Come September (1961)
• If a Man Answers (1962)
• Tammy and the Doctor (1963)
• Take Her, She's Mine (1963)
• I'd Rather Be Rich (1964)
• That Funny Feeling (1965)
• A Man Could Get Killed (1966)
• Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding (1967)
• Rosie! (1967)
• The Dunwich Horror (1970)
• East of Marsa Matruh (1971)
• Lost (1983)

TV Work

• The Manhunter (1972)
• The Daughters of Joshua Cabe (1972)
• Houston, We Have a Problem (1974)
• Fantasy Island (1977) (pilot for series)
• Frasier (1994) The Botched Language of Cranes TV Episode (voice) .... Connie

External links

• Sandra Dee at the Internet Movie Database

• [1] Biography.com biography of Sandra Dee

• "Sandra Dee, 'Gidget' Star and Teenage Idol, Dies at 62", The New York Times, February 20, 2005.

• "Gidget Doesn't Live Here Anymore", The New York Times, December 25, 2005.