Sandra Dee (born Alexandra Zuck; April 23, 1942 – February 20, 2005) was an American actress. Dee began her career as a child model, working first in commercials and then film in her teenage years. 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 (1957). She became a teenage star for her performances in Imitation of Life, Gidget and A Summer Place (all released in 1959), which made her a household name.
Dee's acting career waned in the late 1960s. In 1967, her highly publicized marriage to Bobby Darin ended in divorce and Universal Pictures dropped her contract. Dee appeared in the 1970 independent horror film The Dunwich Horror and occasionally in television productions throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. In later life, Dee sought help for depression, alcoholism, and faced traumas from her childhood, including sexual abuse by her stepfather. She died in 2005 of complications from kidney disease.
Life and career
1942–1951: Early life
Dee was born Alexandra Zuck on April 23, 1942, in Bayonne, New Jersey, the only child of John Zuck and Mary ( Cimboliak) Zuck, who met as teenagers at a Russian Orthodox Church dance. They married shortly afterward, but divorced before Dee was five years old. She was of Carpatho-Rusyn ancestry and raised in the Orthodox faith; her son, Dodd Darin, wrote in his biographical book about his parents titled Dream Lovers that Dee's mother Mary and her aunt Olga [later Olga Duda] "were first generation daughters of a working-class Russian Orthodox couple", and Dee recalled, "we belonged to a Russian Orthodox church, and there was dancing at the social events." She soon adopted the name Sandra Dee, became a professional model by the age of four and progressed to television commercials.
According to her son's book, Dee was born in 1944, but she and her mother falsely inflated her age by two years to find more work modeling and acting, which she began at a very young age. Legal records, including her California divorce record from Bobby Darin, as well as the Social Security Death Index and her own cryptstone all give her year of birth as 1942.<!-- see talk page --> In a 1967 interview with the Oxnard Press-Courier, she acknowledged being 18 in 1960 when she first met Darin, whom she wed three months later.
Dee's parents divorced in 1950 and, a year later, her mother married Russia-born Eugene Victor Douvan (1898–1956), who reportedly sexually abused Dee after he married her mother. He died of heart ailments in 1956, aged 57, after being taken from NYC to Georgetown Hospital in Washington D.C. for treatment. Douvan's application for citizenship reveals his history of emigrating to the USA, using aliases (Eugene George Stewart and Frederick Von Bergner), and that he was living in Roosevelt, Nassau County New York at the time of the application. Various ads which he placed in Bayonne newspapers advertised he was available for construction and real estate work. He had two sons by a previous marriage. He was living in Bayonne with his son Robert in the 1950s. His older son had lived in Chicago and Michigan.
1952–1956: Modeling career
Producer Ross Hunter claimed to have discovered Dee on Park Avenue in New York City with her mother when she was 12 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 lost weight, her body was unable to digest any food that she ate, and it took the help of a doctor to regain her health. According to Dee, she "could have killed [herself]" and "had to learn to eat all over again."
MGM cast Dee as the female lead in The Reluctant Debutante (1958), with John Saxon as her romantic costar. It was the first of several films in which Dee appeared with Saxon. She provided the voice of Gerda for the English dub of The Snow Queen (1957). The stress of her newfound success and the effects of sexual abuse, caused Dee to struggle with chronic anorexia nervosa, and her kidneys temporarily failed.
In 1958, Dee signed with Universal Pictures and was one of the company's last contract players prior to the dissolution of the 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 film for Hunter, A Stranger in My Arms (1959).
1959–1965: Stardom
Dee's third film for Hunter was of greater impact than the first two: Imitation of Life (1959), starring Lana Turner. The film became a box-office success, grossing more than $50 million. It was the highest-grossing film in Universal's history and made Dee a household name. She was lent to Columbia Pictures to play the title 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 those).
Universal next cast Dee as a tomboy opposite Audie Murphy in the Western romantic comedy The Wild and the Innocent (1959). Warner Bros. borrowed her for another melodrama in the vein of Imitation of Life, A Summer Place (1959), opposite Troy Donahue as her romantic costar. The film was a massive hit, and that year American box office exhibitors voted Dee the 16th-most popular star in the country.
In 1961, Dee, with three years remaining on her Universal contract, signed a new one for seven years. Dee and Darin appeared together in the Hunter romantic comedy If a Man Answers (1962). In 1963, she appeared in the final Tammy film, Tammy and the Doctor, and the hit comedy Take Her, She's Mine, playing a character loosely based on Nora Ephron. That year, she was voted the eighth-greatest star in the country, but it was her last appearance in the top 10.
<gallery widths="200px" heights="200px">
File:Sandra Dee - Imitation of Life.jpg|Dee in Imitation of Life (1959)
File:Sandra Dee, Cliff Robertson, and James Darren in 'Gidget', 1959.jpg|The original Gidget (1959)
File:Sandra Dee in Imitation of Life trailer.jpg|Imitation of Life in 1959
File:Sandra Dee 1961.png|Dee in Romanoff and Juliet (1961)
File:That Funny Feeling (1965) trailer 1.jpg|Dee with Bobby Darin in That Funny Feeling (1965)
</gallery>
1966–1983: Career decline and later roles
thumb|right|upright=1|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. She rarely acted following her 1967 divorce from Darin. In a 1967 interview with Roger Ebert, she reflected on her experience in the studio system and on the ingénue image that had been foisted on her, which she found constricting:
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>
Dee appeared in the somewhat successful Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding! in 1967 for MGM. Hunter asked her to return to Universal in a co-starring role in Rosie! (1967); the film was not a success. Dee was inactive in the film industry for several 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. Dee later said, "The reason I decided to do Dunwich was because I couldn't put the script down once I started reading it. 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."
In the 1970s, Dee took sporadic guest-starring roles on episodes of several television series, including Night Gallery, Fantasy Island and Police Woman. Her final film performance was in the low-budget drama Lost (1983).</blockquote>
Dee battled anorexia nervosa, depression, and alcoholism for many years, hitting a low point after her mother died of lung cancer on December 27, 1987, at age 63. Dee stated that for months she became a recluse living on soup, crackers and Scotch, with her body weight falling to only . After she began to vomit blood, her son compelled her to seek medical and psychiatric treatment. Her mental and physical condition improved, and she expressed a desire to appear in a television situation comedy, partly in order to belong to a family. She stopped drinking altogether after being diagnosed with kidney failure in 2000, which was attributed to years of heavy drinking and smoking.
In 1994's Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, Dodd Darin chronicled his mother's anorexia and drug and alcohol problems, stating that she had been sexually abused as a child by her stepfather Eugene Douvan. The same year, Dee's final acting credit occurred with a voice-only appearance on an episode of Frasier.
Death
thumb|upright|Crypt of Sandra Dee at Forest Lawn, [[Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles]]
After requiring kidney dialysis for the last four years of her life, Dee died of complications from kidney disease on February 20, 2005, at the Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, California, at the age of 62. She is interred in a crypt at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in the Hollywood Hills.
Filmography
Film
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"
|-
! Year
! Title
! Role
! class="unsortable" | Notes
! class="unsortable" |
|-
! scope="row"| 1957
| Until They Sail
| Evelyn Leslie
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
! scope="row"| 1957
| The Snow Queen
| Gerda
| Voice: 1959 English version
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
|}
Television
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"
|-
! Year
! Title
! Role
! class="unsortable" | Notes
! class="unsortable" |
|-
! scope="row"| 1971–1972
| Night Gallery
| Ann Bolt / Millicent/Marion Hardy
| 2 episodes
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
!scope="row"| 1972
|Love, American Style
|Bonnie Galloway
|Segment: "Love and the Sensuous Twin"
|
|-
! scope="row"| 1972
| The Sixth Sense
| Alice Martin
| Episode: "Through a Flame Darkly"
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
! scope="row"| 1978
| Police Woman
| Marie Quinn
| Episode: "Blind Terror"
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
! scope="row"| 1983
| Fantasy Island
| Margaret Winslow
| Episode: "Eternal Flame/A Date with Burt"
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
! scope="row"| 1994
| Frasier
| Connie (voice only)
| Episode: "The Botched Language of Cranes"
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
|}
Accolades
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="width:62%;"
|-
! style="width=20%;"| Award
! style="width:34%;"| Category
! style="width:1%;"| Year
! style="width:25%;"| Nominated work
! style="width:12%;"| Result
! style="1%;"|
|-
! scope="row" style="text-align:center;"| Golden Globe Award
| Most Promising Newcomer - Female
| 1958
| Until They Sail
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan="12" style="text-align:center;"| Laurel Award
| Top Female New Personality
| 1959
| style="text-align:center;"|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| Top Female Comedy Performance
| rowspan="2" | 1960
| Gidget
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| rowspan="3"| Top Female Star
| style="text-align:center;"|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| 1961
| style="text-align:center;"|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| 1962
| style="text-align:center;"|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| Top Female Comedy Performance
| rowspan="2"| 1963
| If a Man Answers
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| Top Female Star
| style="text-align:center;"|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| Top Female Comedy Performance
| rowspan="2"| 1964
| Take Her, She's Mine
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| rowspan="4"| Top Female Star
| style="text-align:center;"|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| 1965
| style="text-align:center;"|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| 1966
| style="text-align:center;"|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
| 1967
| style="text-align:center;"|
|
| style="text-align:center;"|
|-
|}
Box-office ranking
In the following years, exhibitors voted Dee one of the most popular box-office stars in the United States:
- 1959—16th
- 1960—7th
- 1961—6th
- 1962—9th
- 1963—8th
In popular culture
Dee is referred to in the song "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee", from the 1971 musical Grease and its 1978 film adaptation.