Movieland & TV Time May 1960

"I Know What It Means To Be Hurt!"

This article, written by Lee Dumont, appeared in Movieland & TV Time Magazine May, 1960

"If someone offered to smooth away all the bumps for me," Sandra Dee said without the least little quiver of hesitation, "I'd turn down the offer."
What bumps was she talking about? Why, the bumps that make black-and- blue marks on the emotions. The bumps we call hurts, and to which Sandra is no stranger.
"Yes," confirmed Sandy, "I know what it means to be hurt!"
Yet she doesn't ask or expect to be spared in the future, any more than she was in the past. She considers being hurt as part of living—and she wants to live. It's as simple as that.
Or maybe it's not so simple when you have to do your living in the full glare of the spotlight, especially when someone focuses the beam so it distorts you beyond recognition by those who know you best.
"That happened to me," said Sandra, "when a writer got into print with a story about me being temperamental on the set and giving my directors a hard time. I was terribly hurt, and there was no truth at all to the story.
"When I'm on the set my director is everything. He gives me the orders and I follow them. Even if I wanted to be temperamental—and I don't—I couldn't be. I'm not experienced enough to know what to do on my own. What's really true is that every director I've ever worked with has become my friend. My good friend," she declared happily.
As if to prove that Sandra has the facts on her side, Ross Hunter, Universal-International's brilliant young producer-director and discoverer of the Dee doll, stopped by her table in the studio commissary for a moment. The moment stretched on and on while he lingered fondly for a few friendly laughs with Sandy and her pert, petite mother, Mrs. Mary Douvan.
It's probably typical of Sandra that what hurt her worst about the glaringly false word-picture she had just described was not the light it put her in personally, but the reflection it cast on her family's way of bringing her up.
To some people the whole incident might seem like not too hard a hurt to take; a minor matter compared with the major success and acclaim that have come Sandra's way in the past. And right now there's more of the same rolling up for her, namely in "The Snow Queen." That's the Russian-made Hans Christian Andersen cartoon film where her speaking voice is heard as the heroine, Gerda, and in which she sings a delightful featured song, "Do It While You're Young." Next —and what a challenging next—is her upcoming Hollywood suspense drama, "Portrait in Black."
But while Sandra's success can be gauged by degrees in terms of box office and fan following, there honestly is no scale that can weigh the burden of her hurts, nor is there any method of measuring their bulk.
There is, however, no doubt that one hurt Sandra suffered has the great depth of tragedy. The death of her beloved step-father in 1956 filled her with the kind of shocked hurt that numbs all feeling except a bewildering sense of loss.
"Suddenly everything was gone," she said, her brown eyes darkening under the shadow of the memory. "People kept saying, 'There, there. In time it will be better.' Only the first few months of time turned out to be worse instead of better.
"Maybe it was because the holidays came soon afterward . . . Thanksgiving . . . Christmas . . . Easter. They were all hard, but Christmas hurt worst. My father used to have a rule about no gifts being opened until after breakfast on Christmas morning. I'd grown up with that rule, but every year he had to remind me of it constantly. Now, all at once, he was no longer there to tell me not to open my gifts ahead of time."
Sandra's voice grew little and lost as she spoke of that first Christmas without Eugene Douvan, who so devotedly filled the role of father.
His loss introduced her to another, newer hurt after time had finally fulfilled its promise and eased the ache of her father's passing. What came next was the hurt brought on by the first realization that unconsciously—by instinct and not by applied effort—she was re-learning to live happily.
"I felt guilty when I found myself starting to be happy without my father," Sandra confessed. And so that, too, was an unforgettable hurt for her because she didn't know then that she was following a perfectly natural emotional pattern shared by all human beings who undergo—and survive—a great bereavement.
Adults . . . kids . . . girls . . . boys . . . Sandra has been hurt by every two-legged specimen that peoples our planet. She's even been hurt by herself. But then, who hasn't?
"The first time I was hurt by a girl friend was when I was about 11 years old and going to school on Long Island," she said. "This girl was like a sister to me. When we weren't at school together she was at my house from early morning till bedtime.
"Naturally, every once in a while we'd have some big arguments. But the bigger they were the closer they seemed to draw us together. Then, one day we had a little argument. So little, I haven't the slightest recollection of what it was all about. Anyway, however insignificant it was, that tiny disagreement marked the end of our friendship. I never saw my friend again from that day to this, and I left school without even saying goodbye to the girl who had been like a sister to me. I wish she could know how sorry I am."
What Sandy did that time in coddling her hurt at the expense of her friendship was like cutting her nose to spite her face. She says she hates to admit it, but she still does a bit of nose-snipping face-spiting; a very little bit. She's glad she has been able to cut it down till it's practically non-existent.
Sandra has noticed that the price of false pride is usually too high to make it worth bothering with. Take, for instance, the case of a girl at a party who thought the fellow she was with had hurt her feel- ings. She declared she was going home right that minute. Unhappily, nobody stopped her and she carried out her threat, coming off with two things—her pride and a miserable evening.
Sandra herself is frank about what she expects of boys in the deportment department. One of the things she won't put up with from them is gossip, especially about girls.
"There are times when a few boys do gossip, and then they're worse than girls. On one occasion I was hurt just by hearing that kind of talk from a boy," she disclosed. "I can't repeat what was said because then I'd be gossiping, too. But I can tell you he was making unkind, untrue remarks about a very dear girl friend of mine.
"Instead of huddling into my hurt when I heard him, I stood up and lit into the boy and told him if he wanted to talk like that he couldn't do it in my home. He was so surprised that he couldn't believe his own ears. He knew that in my house—up till then—the rule had been that the guest is always right. Well, I may have shocked him as a hostess that night, but at least I stopped his gossiping," she said, managing to look pleased and indignant at the same time.
It was never a case of an adult picking on a child or teenager when Sandra was hurt by grownups. The trouble always came from something else—something that Sandra trapped in a few words.
"What some adults don't appear to understand," she said, "is that no matter how cool I seem outside, I can be deeply upset and hurt inside. They think I actually don't care because I can control myself outwardly. They don't realize that however straight and strong I stand, there are times when I really need a shoulder to lean on.
"They think that because kids' and teenagers' experience doesn't cover a lot of ground it doesn't go very deep. They forget that whatever we feel, we feel hard." Sandra clenched her slim little fingers into fists tight with intensity. "They know that as kids and teenagers we're forming ourselves into what we're going to be in the future. But, oh, I wish they'd understand how important NOW is to us!
"Even those who know and understand, forget this sometimes," Sandra sighed, then brightened at a sudden thought.
"There's this about being hurt: every time it happens you learn a little more about people. You get a chance to see the other side of things—their side. Once you see it, you can at least begin to understand it. And the next thing you know, you're not hurt so much about whatever it was that bothered you in the first place."
A long time ago, several years before she was able to understand about seeing the other person's side of a conflict. Sandra learned to forgive. She learned so well that she could even forgive those who set out deliberately to hurt her.
She was still in grade school on Long Island, but had already begun to have a successful career as a junior model. That was her big disadvantage. The modelling —and the success—made her different from her classmates, and being different is, of course, a cardinal sin in the eyes of so many conformity-minded school kids.
"One day," said Sandra's mother, taking up the story, "Sandy came home from school and the pretty, light green outfit she'd been wearing was practically ruined. Her little green shoes were suddenly all scuffed, and there were ink stains covering the back of her collar. When I asked Sandy what had happened, she tried to pass all this off as an accident. But I could tell there was more to it than that.
"Later, I talked with her teacher, who explained what had been going on. She told me that when Sandy was asked to stand up and read aloud in class, her trained, professional diction was so clean and precise the other children resented it. She also said Sandy's clothes were so outstanding that the youngsters took exception to them.
"After finding out what had been bothering the kids. Sandy left the professional diction out of her class recitations, and I did my part by dressing her in nothing but the simplest skirts and sweaters. They didn't cost any less than things like the little green outfit, but at least they looked as if they did, and that was all that was necessary.
"Anyhow, soon the kids got to know Sandy, and the very same ones who had taken part in the green ensemble incident lovingly gave her a going-away party when we left Long Island."
This school episode was the exception to what later became a general rule of Sandra's; the rule being to avoid getting seriously hurt twice by the same person or persons. The method: never to go back for more. Sandy's willing to learn about people and things the hard way, but when the lesson's over, she's ready to graduate to the next experience.
"I go all out for someone I like," said she. "I'll do anything they need to have done. Be anywhere they need me. Scrub their floors, if necessary. But I also show my feelings when I don't like someone, and that saves a lot of disappointment and mutual misunderstanding."
People who pretend they can't be hurt are, according to Sandra. just covering up. Trying to kid others, if not actually deluding themselves.
"I know a girl like that," Sandra said. "You'd think she's protected with glass, but inside she's a bundle of hurts, and they're all the worse because she keeps them bottled up."
Sandra admits that people being what they are, anyone who can be hurt is also capable of inflicting hurt on others. She claims no exemption on this score for herself.
"I have a way of blurting out things and then regretting it," she blurted out—looking not a bit regretful at having blurted out this particular confession.
After giving some thought to the matter, she denied that the hurts she has suffered have been damaging to her in any way. She agreed that their effect on her life has been just the opposite.
"If you have no capacity to be hurt, you can't be anything else much," was the way she put it. "It's part of being a well-rounded person."
Perhaps Sandra would never have discovered this so early in life if she herself hadn't known some of the hurts that come to most people much later. Almost from the time she enjoyed her first professional success, she was introduced to the deep pain of personal loss, the hurts of disappointment and rejection.
From each of these she has gained something: spiritual values, the courage to put up with things as they are, the strength to go her own way and be herself—but tactfully.
As she says, being hurt is a necessary part of living—and she wants to live!

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