Bobby and one of his many "friend-girls" JoAnn Campbell
These were Bobby's ideas on dating and were told to Barbara Henderson. The article appeared in the April 1959 issue of Motion Picture Magazine.
MOTION PICTURE told me to be frank, but they
didn't know what they were saying. I don't date,
see. I go out.
I can count on my fingers how many dates I've had.
Ten, about.
All this phony talk, and not really getting to know
each other because you're both so worried trying to
live up to the other person's illusions about you. Very
ill.
If you ask me, the only good date is no date. At least
not in the "conventional" sense.
Maybe the trouble with me was I had to work after
hours when I was in high school, so I didn't have time
for luxuries like having a nervous breakdown over
what girl to take to the senior hop.
I had lots of friend-girls though. They were mostly
girls I could drop in and visit, or meet somewhere and
take for a Coke without planning it for a week in advance. Mainly, they were girls I could talk to, because I wasn't strangled by dating conventions.
Calling a girl up a week in advance? Who knows
what's doing a week from now? Let me give you an
example of the kind of thing that can happen:
I met this chick. A real doll. This, I thought, is for
me. Then I started talking to her. That was my first
mistake.
"Honey," I said, "you are my teenage delight. You
are practically my queen of the hop. There is only
one thing you must never ask me to do."
So, she looked at me with big question marks in her
sugar-coated baby blue eyes. "Honey," I replied, "my
life is yours. I promise faithfully to rock when you roll.
But please—no matter what, never ever ask me to take
you out on a date."
It could have been beautiful. We were meant for
each other. But she didn't dig my line. She took it
personally.
I don't know what's the matter with women these
days. Dates are harder on the girl than the guy. Especially first dates. They're the worst.
The day before, the girl spends hours worrying
about what to wear, washes her hair two or three
times, walks around with a mouthful of bobby pins,
changes her mind at the
last minute, and makes her mother iron the
blouse she forgot was in the closet.
Then comes the big moment. The doorbell rings. In walks Romeo. Suddenly the
girl remembers something crucial back in
her room. She dumps the guy on her parents—usually her father—and cuts out. Her
old man looks him over, and tries to think
of something to say that will make the kid
feel like less of a cluck. Before he comes up
with anything, the girl tears back into the
room and snags her high heels on the carpet.
The guy helps her on with her coat, a frantic
manuever that can take 10 to 15 minutes.
Scene shifts to the movie house. The
happy couple pretend to concentrate on the
movie. But he's wondering if he should
try to hold her hand the first time and where
should they go after the show and she's sitting there crushed because he hasn't tried
to hold her hand, and what did she do
wrong, and will he ask her out again?
Finally, they get around to talking—if you
can call it that. They dig in at a soda fountain table, glare at each other over the top
of their straws and fire away. "Great show,"
says the guy. "Umm," says the girl, still peeved
because he didn't hold her hand.
By this time they're really swingin'. Then
it's time to go. He pays the check— three-
fourths of his weekly allowance.
He takes her home. At the door she gets
overcome with tenderness. "A great big
thanks," she says. "Great show."
She's crushed again. No goodnight kiss.
"Um," says the guy. This dame is a real
iceberg,he decides. But he likes to torture
himself so he says, "See you next week."
The girl closes the door and faints from
ecstasy. He asked her out again! That does
it every time. She tells her mom the guy
is a doll. She tells her friends he's a dream.
When her mom says, "What did you talk
about?" she says "Everything!" When her
friends ask about his technique, she practically swoons.
Dates are a bundle of fun, bubbles in the
wine, whipped cream on the hot dog.
But mainly, dates are poison. Dates are
sicker than the Chinese water torture.
Dates are also boring. The formalities of
hand-holding. The peck on the check. It's
all forced and anything forced is ill.
You can't get to know a girl on a date. I
can get to know a girl in ten minutes. Ten
minutes of just talking. Whether it's quiet
and private or in the middle of a party. But
it can't be on a date.
It's hard to be me on a date. It's hard
to be anybody. If I feel like swinging like
a monkey on the subway strap, I want to be
able to do it without worrying whether my
date will think it's not the conventional
thing to do.
Or maybe something will hit me in the
middle of an Italian restaurant and I'll yell
for Wonton soup.
If you have a date, there seems to have
to be a theme for the evening. Like dancing.
I mean dancing all evening. To have to dance
all evening and not want to do anything else
may be conventional, may be what everybody
else is doing, but it's a drag. Or there's the
other theme. You go to the movies. That's
the bit for that evening, Very educational.
A whole evening of dancing and nothing
else, or a whole evening of the double feature and nothing else. That's a way to get
to know somebody? I doubt it.
The only thing that's worse than a date,
is a blind date. I absolutely never blind
date. If I ever did, we'd probably both be
in for an awful surprise. I've seen my friends
get stung plenty of times. The least you can
do is do yourself the favor of getting an
intro ahead of time.
But one thing a guy should never do is
let a girl go home alone. It's not the thing.
I'll always take a girl home even if she lives
on the tip of Long Island which on the subway at 2:00 a.m. is about as far away from
my home in Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey, as
California. But I take the girl home.
Probably my main trouble was that I was
much more interested in how to get into
show business at 10 than how to date at 11.
I cleaned stores after school, and worked at
hotels in the mountains in the summer. Most
of the guys I knew weren't heavy daters
either. Most of us had responsibilities at
home that came first.
All the girls I knew were lovely, sweet—
and married by now. I cut myself off from
most of them because I merely could not
take the time for all the ridiculous conventions of dating.
Picking a girl up! Meeting her father!
I'm all for the father—I think more of a
father and mother who want to meet the
boy—but that's not for me, Jack. All this
censorship!
It's annoying. I'm an honorable citizen.
I don't have to answer to anybody. I know
what's proper and what's not.
Fortunately, I'm not forced to date the
conventional way. My mom, for example.
She's there when I need her. Anything I do
is all right with her. She trusts me not to
do anything sick.
The business I'm in is a fast kind of game.
Most of the girls I meet now are in show
business, too. They understand that l'm a
career guy, and that means very little time
for outside interests such as serious involvements with a female.
The way I avoid conventional dates is in
asking myself: What's the purpose of a date
anyway? It's to have a good time, isn't it?
So I do everything I can to insure a good
time.
Number one, I don't set up any standards
or values or expectations. Not about the
other person, or the evening.
The only way a good time will come of
itself is when two people jell. Not because
the guy has a fancy car or the girl bought a
new dress, but because they just like being
together. There's as much to sitting on the
porch holding hands as there is in going to
a fancy theater.
That's the main fault with the way kids
date. John calls up Jane to go to a show.
That's all they should expect. A show.
Period. As soon as they start expecting
something more, they're disappointed.
That's why so many first dates flop.
Because the kids never go out for the first time
together without building everything in
their minds ahead of time. Then comes the
letdown.
If they would just go—and be themselves. Laugh
and stop worrying so much, they'd actually
have a good time!
Of course, you have to think about certain
things. The guy shouldn't come in his sneakers, and the girl shouldn't wear her father's
shirt. But aside from looking nice and being
natural there's nothing to worry about.
The best kind of date—the only kind of
date I ever have—is one where I don't plan.
It's pressureless. Usually I don't even have
time to think about it more than 10 minutes
in advance.
All of a sudden I look at my schedule.
The evening's free. I call up a girl. (I have
lots of girl friends now.) A couple of them
are very close. Even though I've never actually dated them.
I never worry about what the girl wears
either. I'm very uncritical about woman's
clothes. I like her hair to be neat and I like
a face that's easy to look at. Mainly, I like girls who are young, but have real grown-up
think-equipment.
She doesn't have to be well-read. Just as
long as she knows how to read. I like a little
schooling. Not academically, but socially.
It helps if she understands me. You know
how it is. Tomorrow I'll be depressed and
go lock myself up in my room. The next evening
I'll walk out and have a ball.
Mostly, I'm for doing what you feel like
when you go out. I'm for what each person
feels for the other. Sudden impulses. Sudden
kisses. If you want to kiss a girl and it's
mutual, then you should do it. If you're
going to swing, swing!
It's funny, but I can only remember one
of the 10 dates I've been on in my life. What
I remember is sitting in a restaurant making
a lot of sick conversation, then standing on
a street corner for half an hour trying to
decide what to do, finding out it's time to
go home anyway, and getting to her house,
where I gave her a quick kiss on the nape
of the neck. I never saw her again.
Oh well. Bobby Darin trying to tell teenagers not to date! MOTION PICTURE told me
to be frank but not out of my mind. . . .
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