Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin:
Their Life Is Love and Fireworks
This article appeared in Modern Screen Magazine April, 1966
Take one singing and acting star, Bobby Darin, add one beautiful actress wife who loves him, throw in one 4-year-old son and you've got the cast for an opening night in Las Vegas and also the wackiest, most wonderful marriage in Hollywood.
When Bobby's waiting to go on and it's opening night, you'd expect Sandy to be there with him--well, you'd be wrong.
Bobby's in his dressing room, but he's high-strung and nervous as a witch, and his family is nowhere in sight. No indeed. Sandra is upstairs in their suite, clasping the exquisite antique diamond pendant, which will be her sole ornament for the evening, about her neck. Everyone else will be loaded with jewels and she'll sweep into the room, escorted by son Dodd (that was Bobby's idea), wearing her chinchilla coat (which Bobby loves) and this delicate diamond (his Christmas gift to her). She's had her hair done the way he likes it best--up---she's wearing a black dress which is his favorite everything for Bobby--but she hasn't talked to him for two days. They sleep in each other's arms but they don't talk . . .
"I don't talk to Bobby for two days before an opening, not the day before or that day. They sleep in each other's arms but tells me. "I know. I did it wrong to start with, that was one of my mistakes. I thought I was the little mother superior, hovering over him, trying to help. I couldn't stand seeing him so nervous. I work so differently. I'm not only not nervous, I oversleep the first day of a new picture! And Bobby is such a pro and he has such fantastic talent . . . I just figured this is his business like my business is mine and to get so nervous is simply like-stupid. I found out it was I who was stupid. I'd hang around his dressing room making bright talk like: Do you like my dress? Honey you didn't notice my hair. Bobby, you're not looking at me. How's that for openers when a guy is
chewing cigarettes and thinking how it's going to be out front with no retakes? Now it's just ciao until after his first show, which of course is great, then we have a big reunion, there's usually a press party. From that moment on, we have a ball. I love Vegas. The excitement is electric and Bobby's electric. He gets so keyed up, we never get to bed until like six in the morning. We see all our friends and catch other shows, it's just great. Bobby and I really get along. I love him and he's my whole life, he and the baby. But no one in the world is happy every minute and heaven forbid my feelings get hurt, 'cause when they get hurt, I blow! I don't care where I am, either, and that's when you read in the columns . . ."
The last time was at Kurt Frings' home. It was one of those star-studded parties where every name is news, everyone elegantly and beautifully dressed, champagne and music and instant conversation. Sandy and Bobby had just arrived (she was wearing her chinchilla and pearls and looked quite the lady), they'd met some friends and gotten into a conversation that elicited a quick clash of opinions. Bobby said what he had to say and Sandy said what she had to say and Bobby said . . . and then fast, before she could lose her temper and really flash back, Sandy just turned on her heel and left.
And two minutes later she had made the grand exit and was zooming up the hill to her mother's. At the top of the hill she suddenly groaned out loud, realizing what she'd done. Oh you idiot, when you pick 'em you really pick 'em. What a lollapalooza of a place you picked this time! That'll be all over the columns tomorrow morning. And her host, Kurt Frings. She scarcely knew him and hadn't stopped to say goodbye. And the friend of Bobby's who'd just gone to get her a glass of champagne! She told her mother the whole story and her mother told her what she already knew--she was wrong. It's one thing to blow at home, another to do it out in public. But if she'd stayed, she would have blown... because her feelings were hurt.
And the fact is, wrong as she was, Sandy wasn't sorry. Bobby'd been wrong and she'd been wrong and it kind of tickled her that he had to call up someone and get a ride home. By the time she got there, he was sleeping like a baby. And that was the end of it.
"Gee you're popular," she quipped next morning. "How come all your friends didn't bring you home?"
"I thought it was dramatic entrances, great actresses made, not exits," Bobby quipped back, and they both laughed.
The funny thing . . . two nights later they were out again, this time at The Daisy, having a marvelous time and there were several newspaper men in the place and one famed columnist stayed until two in the morning watching Sandy and Bobby and waiting for another fight. What he didn't understand was that there hadn't been a fight, that's what the exit was about. It was precisely to avoid a fight. Finally, at 2:15, the columnist left and missed the item of the evening, which was that five minutes later, a fellow who'd had too much to drink, got a little too fresh with Sandra and Bobby went to war.
"Oh and Kurt Frings was at The Daisy that night. He came over and said, "What's the matter, wasn't I a good host?' and what could you say?" asks Sandy. It's difficult to explain to people who don't know you well that your marriage is a lovely mixture of love and understanding and occasional fireworks, because you are two totally different people. "Bobby's an individual and I'm an individual and you can't totally blend and it would be dull if you could." That was one of Sandra's mistakes in the beginning.. She thought two people could become one. It was a shock to her to find out that although they could occasionally think together or feel together, two people with intense personalities are still two people, and you have to be your own self. She tried being her own self without Bobby and hated it. When they went back together it was with the realization that they were two human beings deeply in love who had their love, their respect for each other and their child in common and must have the freedom to be individual the rest of the way.
No marriage is without problems and no one formula works for all marriages. There's the matter of two careers. Sandy had handled her own career since childhood but she wanted Bobby to help her and he tried.
From the minute he started to help her, she got so lazy she wouldn't make a decision... wouldn't read a script. Is it any good? she'd ask Bobby. "You wouldn't believe it how lazy I can be. It's like when I'm alone at home with Dodd and he gets cut. I take care of it without any trouble quite efficiently. If Dodd gets cut and Bobby's home, I hide my head in the bathroom and scream for Bobby to do something. Well, it was the same with my business. I just wouldn't make a decision. I wouldn't read a script." Finally Bobby laid it on the line.
"This is it," he said. "If you want to quit, quit, just be my wife. But if you're going to stay in the business, you handle it. I'm not your manager, I'm not your agent, I'm just the crutch you're leaning on and I'm through being that."
She was sensible enough to see that he was right. And she is sensible enough not to offer advice in his business. He has associates who can advise him. Her job is just to enjoy him and that she does.
Their Christmas this year was the end. They'd been supposed to spend it in London where Sandy was to make a film Kaleidoscope with Warren Beatry. One week before Christmas, they gave her a reprise--she thought out of kindness, after having been away so long shooting UI's A Man Could Get Killed, she could spend the holidays at home, but actually, it turned out, because the script wasn't ready for shooting. "Now Kaleidoscope has been cancelled because the late start would conflict with Three on a Wedding, the first of a three-picture deal at MGM.
Now with one week to go before the holiday, Sandy swung into high-gear. The real prize gift for Bobby was an antique pool table inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Sandy noted, "And what I got into with that pool table! Bobby is crazy about it. In fact, it's a toss-up between the table and me. I have to polish it and brush it and cover it. I'm learning to play, I'm crazy about the game and am taking lessons, and Bobby worries that I'm not holding my cue right and I'll scratch the table. Don't scratch the table is his new theme song."
Bobby gave her all kinds of presents too, including ten beautiful Wilkie paintings for her "collection." She's never been mad about painting and hasn't known too much about it but these primitives she really digs. First guests to enjoy them with her were the eighty-odd people the Darins entertained on New Year's Eve. Sandy made all the arrangements, had the food catered from Chasen's, and this year everything ran smoothly. You can't always tell with Sandra Dee parties. There was the time they were having a small group in and Bobby ran into dozens of people and invited them too and forgot to tell her, so that at the last minute, she sent out for Chinese food. Now the original dinner had been stew, so the buffet consisted of stew, ribs, shrimp, all the most incongruous foods. They had just moved in the house, the help was off and Sandy couldn't find the serving bowls or platters, so they had to serve right out of the cartons. Bobby didn't think that was very funny, but for some reason Sandy did.
That her sense of humor and Bobby's do not always function simultaneously isn't surprising. As Sandy says, "We're as different as day and night. I'm spontaneous, he's a planner. He's a worrier, I'm not. He's more serious minded, I'm strictly for fun. But what makes me laugh is different from what makes Bobby laugh. I tell a joke that kills me and he says 'Okay, where's the punch line?' He loves golf, I hate it. I love to ski and skate, he doesn't. He's a mad cameraman, I'm not.
"He's mad about loud music. In the morning, for example, we have coffee in bed and read the papers. But when he gets up, on comes the rock 'n' roll station from the radio in his dressing room, and I mean loud enough to be heard in Pasadena. He has to hear it in the shower and sing along with it. All the way. Now I'll never like that radio. I try, but I never will, and the big thing with us is that I don't have to pretend. You could go along pretending and pretending and saying yes, I like it, but eventually, you'd snap because you're dishonest. The wonderful thing about Bobby and me is, we don't have to be dishonest about anything.
"I have faults and Bobby tells me. He says I'm overprotective of Dodd and I guess I am. I hate to have him out of my sight and I haul him around with me . . . I'm rude to people I don't like because with me, I can hide nothing. Luckily Bobby doesn't have a boss or anyone I have to entertain whether I like it or not. I'd pity Bobby if I had to . . . And when I'm not working I get bored. Home daily I go out of my mind and start picking at myself. Last week I thought I'd found a bump on my nose and was going to have plastic surgery. I was dead serious. Bobby almost had a fit . . . And I smoke and he'd like me to stop. We really try to take care of each other. When he's sick, I'm a good nurse. He may be talking to Japan but when it's time for his medicine, he gets his medicine. And when I'm ill, as I was last week with intestional virus, he'll make soup, cook it himself, so I'll eat.
"We settled our problem early, thank God. Two people can't and don t have to be one, that was my problem. And neither of us would care to live without the other. Really. There are times when I'm mad or depressed or unhappy, but I'd rather be that way with Bobby than without him and it's only a mood anyhow. Next day or in two hours, I'm perfectly happy again. We are so in love and have such need for each other and respect for each other that when we do get mad, we are free to holler. Like I say, there's nothing temperate about this relationship. We can yell and say what we want to say and know that it doesn't mean the end. I can walk out of Kurt Frings' and know that in an hour Bobby'Il be at home curled up sleeping like a lamb and tomorrow we'll both be laughing about it. Luckily, we both love to fish, we both love music, we both love Dodd and we love each other.
"It may not be a formula that works for every marriage but it works for ours. Love and fireworks and honesty and fun.
By JANE ARDMORE
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