In the Spotlight:
SANDRA DEE
The sweet and bubbly actress was born Alexandria Cymboliak Zuck on April 23, 1942 to Mary Cimboliak, who was of Rusyn ancestry, and John Zuck, in Bayonne, New Jersey.
Her mother enrolled her in school early so she could have a head start. Sandy was only four years old when she entered the second grade. Sandra was an extremely pretty young lady, which enabled her to get into modeling.
She progressed to television commercials and then made her first film, "Until They Sail", in 1957. There is some confusion as to her actual birth year, with evidence pointing to both 1942 and 1944; this likely stems back to her mother's practice of misreporting her age.
In 1958 she won a Golden Globe Award for "Most Promising Newcomer" (along with Carolyn Jones and Diane Varsi). Her film career flourished, and she became known for her wholesome ingenue roles in such films as "Imitation of Life", "Gidget" and the young love movie "A Summer Place" with Troy Donahue (1959). The success of the theme song in "A Summer Place" became unforgettable to many young people.
Her attempts to replace Debbie Reynolds as Tammy in "Tammy Tell Me True" (1961) and "Tammy and the Doctor" (1963) were mostly unsuccessful as Hollywood thought that it was the script and not the actress that made the Tammy character.
She also appeared in, "The Reluctant Debutante", "A Stranger in My Arms" with June Allyson, "The Wild and the Innocent", "Potait in Black", "Come September", "If a Man Answers", "Take Her, She's Mine", "That Funny Feeling", "The Dunwich Horror", etc.
Her marriage in 1960 to singer/actor Bobby Darin kept her in the public eye for much of the decade. She was contracted to Universal Studios, who tried to develop Dee as a mature actress, and the films she made as an adult--including a few with Darin--were moderately successful. They had one son together, who took the name Dodd Mitchell Darin, but in 1967 she and Darin were divorced.
During the 1970s she took very few acting roles, but made occasional television appearances. Her 1950s persona was the inspiration for the song "Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee", featured in the 1972 Broadway musical "Grease", and the 1978 film version.
To the delight of her fans, she resurfaced briefly after two decades of seclusion and was warmly embraced at Beverly Hill's Canon Theatre in a stage production of "Love Letters" with her "The Restless Years" (1958) film co-star John Saxon.
Reportedly sexually abused as a child by her stepfather, Dee's adult years were marked by ill health. She admitted that for most of her life she battled anorexia nervosa, depression and alcoholism.
In 2000, it was reported that she had been diagnosed with throat cancer and renal disease, but it later appeared that the throat scare was unfounded.
Complications from the kidney failure combined with a bout of pneumonia, led to her death on February 20, 2005 at age 62, in Thousand Oaks, California. She is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood Hills.
At the time of her death, she was survived by her son Dodd and two granddaughters, Alexa and Olivia Darin.
In 1994, Dodd wrote a book about his parents, Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, in which he chronicled his mother's anorexia, drug and alcohol problems.
She received renewed attention after the release of the movie "Beyond the Sea" (2004), the biopic about her late husband Bobby Darin that recalled and detailed their stormy, headline marriage. Despite its painful aspects, she reportedly approved of the project and gave it her blessing.