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It’s hard to envision Sandra Dee as an actual person. For so long, she was an icon, an emblem of virginal purity who seemed incapable of complexity, vulnerability, or even inner life. She was Gidget, American teenager. She was Tammy, cute-as-a-button bumpkin blessed with an altruistic streak a county mile wide. She played a classic Douglas Sirk ingénue in Imitation of Life, made us remember the enigmatic theme of A Summer Place, and even became the satirical subject of a hit Broadway show tune, Grease‘s seminal showstopper, “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee.”
Her death Sunday at age 62 (due to complications from kidney disease) was not so much a shock as a sad reminder of how far removed from the current cultural landscape she had become. Never a sex symbol per se, Dee is now a nostalgic memory, her bright blond flip and dimpled smile tokens of an era long gone. Yet there was more to her life than a celebrated marriage and eventual rejection by her once-adoring public. A deeply troubled woman, Dee battled personal demons as well as anorexia, depression, and substance abuse almost every day of her sad, somber life.
Of course, such a tabloid-ready tale had to begin somewhere. Born Alexandra Zuck on 23 April 1942, Dee was a child of divorce when she was only five. Her mother eventually remarried, and young Alex would never see her biological father again. By her own accounts, her stepfather became a monster, a man who allegedly began sexually molesting her when she was eight. But by the time she was 12, the newly crowned Sandra Dee was a model and budding commercial actress. But the constant push for fame from a frantic stage mother, not to mention the harm caused by her stepfather, led to teenage alcoholism and a steady descent into despair.
By the time she wed singer Bobby Darin in 1961 (her one and only trip to the altar) she was a manufactured mess, a teen dream assembled from clichés. She also became a poster child for those once famous faces now lost in the changing social morés of the 1960s and early ‘70s. Sweet confections like Dee were replaced by sexual sensations like Raquel Welch. While Dee may have been the daughter every parent wanted to raise (or have their healthy male son bring home with plans of matrimony), she was no longer a model for adolescent girls. Far from it: she was everything they were rebelling against.
In a story that is far too familiar, Dee was more or less washed up by the time she and Darin called it quits in 1967 (aspects of their relationship were featured in Kevin Spacey’s 2004 Darin bio-pic, Beyond the Sea, in which Kate Bosworth played Dee). Now seen as Darin’s ex-wife instead of a professional performer in her own right, she suffered further indignity when Universal cancelled her contract. Though she made the occasional big screen appearance—reduced to generic junk like 1970’s The Dunwich Horror—or TV movie cameo, she soon fell into obscurity.
Dee would later tell People magazine and The National Enquirer that she soothed the pain over losing the love of her life (Darin died at 37 while having open heart surgery) and her place in the spotlight with a steady diet of drink and depression. This led to a near-fatal bout with anorexia that left her 5’ 5” frame weighing a staggering 86 pounds. More or less a recluse until she died, Dee did make infrequent forays into the world of her past glory. Most memorably, she toured with her only son Dodd Mitchell (the sole child from her marriage to Darin) when he was promoting a tell-all book about his tortured parents, 1994’s Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee.
For all the changes she endured, Dee remains fixed in most minds as a sunny ideal. Like so many manufactured faces, she was a collection of concepts. Once sold, the image was hard to repossess. But her work was real enough, including sharp, subtle performances in films like 1958’s The Reluctant Debutante (alongside John Saxon, with whom she remained close) and 1961’s Romanoff and Juliet. Unlike her famous ex, who fought hard to stay relevant, Dee seemed to surrender, turning her disappointment and shame inward.
And now she’s gone. This even as she was already vanished, the answer to a couple of trivia questions. It’s a safe bet that in a world populated by Hillary Duffs and Lindsay Lohans, few young girls are modeling themselves after an Eisenhower-era icon. But once, Sandra Dee was the epitome of an American values system. She never found a place beyond it.
