Sandra Dee

Dee was born Alexandra Zuck on April 23, 1942, in Bayonne, New Jersey,{{sfn|Monush|2003|p=158}} the only child of John Zuck and Mary ({{nee}} Cimboliak) Zuck, who met as teenagers at a Russian Orthodox Church dance. They married shortly afterward, but divorced before Dee was five years old.[http://www.biography.com/people/sandra-dee-9542304 Biography of Sandra Dee], biography.com; accessed August 14, 2014.{{cite magazine|url=http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20114698,00.html|title=Learning to Live Again|last=Dee|first=Sandra|date=1991-03-18|magazine=People|access-date=2009-09-02|archive-date=2018-09-19|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180919051139/https://people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20114698,00.html|url-status=dead}} She was of Carpatho-Rusyn ancestry {{Sfn|Darin|1994|pages=27–30}} and raised in the Orthodox faith; her son, Dodd Darin, wrote in his biographical book about his parents titled Dream Lovers that Dee's mother Mary and her aunt Olga [later Olga Duda] "were first generation daughters of a working-class Russian Orthodox couple", and Dee recalled, "we belonged to a Russian Orthodox church, and there was dancing at the social events." She soon adopted the name Sandra Dee, became a professional model by the age of four and progressed to television commercials.{{Sfn|Darin|1994|pp=27-30}}

According to her son's book, Dee was born in 1944, but she and her mother falsely inflated her age by two years to find more work modeling and acting, which she began at a very young age.{{Sfn|Darin|1994|pages=27–30}} Legal records, including her California divorce record from Bobby Darin, as well as the Social Security Death Index and her own cryptstone all give her year of birth as 1942. In a 1967 interview with the Oxnard Press-Courier, she acknowledged being 18 in 1960 when she first met Darin, whom she wed three months later.[http://interactive.ancestry.com/51899/News-CA-PR_2.1967_02_26-0054/507078710?backurl=http%3a%2f%2fsearch.ancestry.com%2fcgi-bin%2fsse.dll%3fgst%3d-6&ssrc=&backlabel=ReturnSearchResults&rc=619,1442,758,1467;837,1509,977,1534;187,1542,303,1567;284,1604,399,1629 Oxnard Press-Courier interview], interactive.ancestry.com; accessed May 9, 2014.

Dee's parents divorced in 1950 and, a year later, her mother married Russia-born Eugene Victor Douvan (1898–1956), who reportedly sexually abused Dee after he married her mother.{{Sfn|Kashner|MacNair|2002|p=269}} He died of heart ailments in 1956, aged 57, after being taken from NYC to Georgetown Hospital in Washington D.C. for treatment.{{Cite web |title=September 13, 1956, page 16: The Bayonne Times|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/909983572/?match=1&terms=eugene%20victor%20douvan |access-date=2025-01-29 |website=newspapers.com |language=en}} Douvan's application for citizenship reveals his history of immigrating to USA, aliases used (Eugene George Stewart and Frederick Von Bergner) and that he was living in Roosevelt, Nassau County New York at the time of the application.Other bio info is included and this document can be viewed at

[https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSMV-DSW4-7?view=index&personArk=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3A62XQ-RD7Z&action=view&cc=2060123] Various ads which he placed in Bayonne newspapers advertised he was available for construction and real estate work. He had two sons by a previous marriage. He was living in Bayonne with his son Robert in the 1950s. His older son had lived in Chicago and Michigan.[https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/61406/records/4613591?tid=&pid=&queryId=f3560771-04f0-499e-99e5-9fff67cb4eb2&_phsrc=HvW244&_phstart=successSource]

Producer Ross Hunter claimed to have discovered Dee on Park Avenue in New York City with her mother when she was 12 years old.{{Sfn|Kashner|MacNair|2002|p=268}} In a 1959 interview, Dee recalled that she "grew up fast," surrounded mostly by older people, and was "never held back in anything [she] wanted to do."Lydia Lane, "Sandra Dee, Teen-age Beauty", The Palm Beach Post. p. 42.

During her modeling career, Dee attempted to lose weight to "be as skinny as the high-fashion models", although an improper diet "ruined [her] skin, hair, nails—everything." Having lost weight, her body was unable to digest any food that she ate, and it took the help of a doctor to regain her health. According to Dee, she "could have killed [herself]" and "had to learn to eat all over again." Despite the damaging effects on her health, Dee earned $75,000 in 1956 ({{Inflation|US|75000|1956|r=-4|fmt=eq}}) working as a child model in New York, which she used to support herself and her mother after the death of her stepfather in 1956. According to sources, Dee's large modeling salary was more than what she would later earn as an actress.{{Sfn|Kashner|MacNair|2002|p=269}} While modeling in New York, she attended the Professional Children's School.

Ending her modeling career, Dee moved from New York to Hollywood in 1957. She graduated from University High School in Los Angeles in June 1958 at age 16. Her onscreen debut was in the 1957 MGM film Until They Sail, directed by Robert Wise. To promote the film, Dee appeared in a December issue of Modern Screen in a column by Louella Parsons, who praised Dee and compared her appearance and talent to those of Shirley Temple.{{Sfn|Kashner|MacNair|2002|p=269}} Dee's performance made her one of that year's winners of the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress.{{cite web|url=http://www.goldenglobes.com/person/sandra-dee|work=Golden Globes|title=Sandra Dee|access-date=March 30, 2016}}

MGM cast Dee as the female lead in The Reluctant Debutante (1958), with John Saxon as her romantic costar. It was the first of several films in which Dee appeared with Saxon. She provided the voice of Gerda for the English dub of The Snow Queen (1957). The stress of her newfound success and the effects of sexual abuse, caused Dee to struggle with chronic anorexia nervosa, and her kidneys temporarily failed.{{Sfn|Kashner|MacNair|2002|p=269}}

In 1958, Dee signed with Universal Pictures and was one of the company's last contract players prior to the dissolution of the studio system.{{Sfn|Kashner|MacNair|2002|p=270}} She had a lead role in The Restless Years (1958) for producer Ross Hunter, opposite Saxon and Teresa Wright. She followed this with another film for Hunter, A Stranger in My Arms (1959).

Dee's third film for Hunter was of greater impact than the first two: Imitation of Life (1959), starring Lana Turner.{{sfn|Kashner|MacNair|2002|p=268}} The film became a box-office success, grossing more than $50 million. It was the highest-grossing film in Universal's history and made Dee a household name. She was lent to Columbia Pictures to play the title role in the teenage beach comedy Gidget (1959),{{sfn|Kashner|MacNair|2002|pp=267, 272}} which was a solid hit, helping spawn the beach party genre and leading to two sequels, two television series and two television movies (although Dee did not appear in any of those).{{cite web |url= https://themotionpictures.net/2012/12/25/summer-in-cember-gidget-gets-a-sequel-or-two/|title= Summer in 'cember: Gidget gets a sequel (or two)|website= The Motion Pictures|date= 25 December 2012|access-date= 2023-10-07}}

Universal next cast Dee as a tomboy opposite Audie Murphy in the Western romantic comedy The Wild and the Innocent (1959).{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/feb/22/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries|work=The Guardian|location=London, England|title=Obituary: Sandra Dee|date=February 22, 2005|last=Bergan|first=Ronald|access-date=November 13, 2019}} Warner Bros. borrowed her for another melodrama in the vein of Imitation of Life, A Summer Place (1959), opposite Troy Donahue as her romantic costar. The film was a massive hit, and that year American box office exhibitors voted Dee the 16th-most popular star in the country.

Hunter reunited Dee with Turner and Saxon in Universal's Portrait in Black (1960), a thriller that was a financial success despite receiving harsh reviews.{{sfn|Wayne|2003|p=187}} Dee was listed as the nation's seventh-greatest star at the end of 1960. Peter Ustinov cast her as the lead in the Cold War comedy Romanoff and Juliet (1961) with Universal's new heartthrob John Gavin, reuniting them from Imitation of Life.{{sfn|Monush|2003|p=185}}

Dee and Gavin played together again in Hunter's popular Tammy Tell Me True (1961), in which Dee took the Tammy role originated by Debbie Reynolds.{{sfn|Monush|2003|p=185}} In Come September (1961), she worked with Bobby Darin in his film debut (following a cameo in an earlier film). Dee and Darin married after filming on December 1, 1960.{{sfn|Staggs|2010|p=154}} On December 16, 1961, she gave birth to their son, her only child, Dodd Mitchell Darin (also known as Morgan Mitchell Darin).{{IMDb name|id=1194245|name=Dodd Darin|section=Biography}}

In 1961, Dee, with three years remaining on her Universal contract, signed a new one for seven years.[https://www.proquest.com/docview/167911511 "Sandra Dee signs new contract at U-I"], July 19, 1961, Los Angeles Times. Dee and Darin appeared together in the Hunter romantic comedy If a Man Answers (1962). In 1963, she appeared in the final Tammy film, Tammy and the Doctor, and the hit comedy Take Her, She's Mine,{{sfn|Monush|2003|p=185}} playing a character loosely based on Nora Ephron. That year, she was voted the eighth-greatest star in the country, but it was her last appearance in the top 10. Dee appeared in I'd Rather Be Rich (1964),{{sfn|Monush|2003|p=185}} a musical remake of It Started with Eve, once again for Hunter. She was reunited with Darin in That Funny Feeling (1965) before appearing in her last film at Universal under her contract with the spy comedy A Man Could Get Killed (1966).{{sfn|Monush|2003|p=185}}

Dee was also a singer and recorded some singles in the early 1960s, including a cover version of "When I Fall in Love".{{cite web |url= https://secondhandsongs.com/performance/265704|title= When I Fall in Love by Sandra Dee|website= SecondHandSongs|access-date= 2023-10-07}}

File:Sandra Dee - Imitation of Life.jpg|Dee in Imitation of Life (1959)

File:Sandra Dee, Cliff Robertson, and James Darren in 'Gidget', 1959.jpg|The original Gidget (1959)

File:Sandra Dee in Imitation of Life trailer.jpg|Imitation of Life in 1959

File:Kinema-Junpo-1959-May-late-1.jpg|Dee in Kinema Junpo{{'}}s May 1959 issue

File:Sandra Dee 1961.png|Dee in Romanoff and Juliet (1961)

File:That Funny Feeling (1965) trailer 1.jpg|Dee with Bobby Darin in That Funny Feeling (1965)

File:Dean Stockwell and Sandra Dee in The Dunwich Horror.jpg in The Dunwich Horror (1970)]]

By the end of the 1960s, Dee's career had slowed significantly, and she was dropped by Universal Pictures.{{cite news |last=Merkin |first=Daphne |date=December 25, 2005 |title=Gidget Doesn't Live Here Anymore |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/magazine/25dee.html |newspaper=The New York Times Magazine |access-date=April 1, 2016}} She rarely acted following her 1967 divorce from Darin.{{YouTube | id=Wotn99LbFbw | title=Sandra Dee's Last Interview Pt 2/3 discusses Bobby Darin, her alcoholism, etc plus guest James Darren}} In a 1967 interview with Roger Ebert, she reflected on her experience in the studio system and on the ingénue image that had been foisted on her, which she found constricting:

Look at this––[a] cigarette. I like to smoke. I'm 25 years old, and it so happens that I like to smoke. So out in Hollywood the studio press agents are still pulling cigarettes out of my hand and covering my drink with a napkin whenever my picture is taken. Little Sandra Dee isn't supposed to smoke, you know. Or drink. Or breathe.{{cite web|url=http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/beyond-miss-dee-sandra-dee-grows-up|work=The Chicago Sun-Times|title=Beyond Miss Dee: Sandra Dee Grows Up|date=November 5, 1967|access-date=April 1, 2016|author=Ebert, Roger}}

Dee appeared in the somewhat successful Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding! in 1967. Hunter asked her to return to Universal in a co-starring role in Rosie! (1967), but the film was not a success. Dee was inactive in the film industry for several years before appearing in the 1970 American International Pictures occult horror film The Dunwich Horror—a loose adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story—as a college student who finds herself in the center of an occult ritual plot.{{sfn|Craig|2019|p=138}} Dee later said, "The reason I decided to do Dunwich was because I couldn't put the script down once I started reading it. I had read so many that I had to plow through, just because I promised someone. Even if this movie turns out be a complete disaster, I guarantee it will change my image." However, she refused to appear nude in the film's final sequence that had been written in the screenplay.{{cite news|date=April 18, 1969|page=26|title=Rosemary Is Expecting Again, in Mendocino|last=Miller|first=Jeanne|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/38927376/the_san_francisco_examiner/|work=The San Francisco Examiner|location=San Francisco, California|via=Newspapers.com}}

Throughout the 1970s, Dee took sporadic guest-starring roles on episodes of several television series, such as Night Gallery, Fantasy Island{{sfn|Monush|2003|p=158}} and Police Woman. Her final film performance occurred in the low-budget drama Lost (1983). In her later years, Dee told a newspaper that she "felt like a has-been that never was."{{Sfn|Kashner|MacNair|2002|p=274}}

Dee's years in the 1980s were marked by poor health, and she became a self-described recluse after retiring from acting.{{Sfn|Kashner|MacNair|2002|p=274}} At one point, she finally confronted her mother about the sexual abuse by her stepfather when she was a child, as well as her mother's obliviousness to it. She said:

One night I couldn't control the pressure any longer. My mother and I were at home with a few of her close friends, and she started eulogizing my stepfather. I was slowly getting more and more irate. Finally I said, "Mom, shut up. A saint he wasn't." My mother started defending him, and I said, "Well, guess what your saint did to me? He had sex with me." My mother was shocked, then angry. I knew I hurt her. I wanted to. I had so much anger toward her for not doing something to help me. But she ignored me, and the subject never came up again. I realize now that my mother erased the abuse from her own mind. It didn't exist, so she didn't have to feel guilty.{{cite web|url=http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20114698,00.html|work=People Magazine|title=Learning to Live Again|date=March 18, 1991|access-date=July 20, 2021|author=Dee, Sandra|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120510124959/http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20114698,00.html|archive-date=2012-05-10}}

Dee battled anorexia nervosa, depression, and alcoholism for many years, hitting a low point after her mother died of lung cancer on December 27, 1987, at age 63. Dee stated that for months she became a recluse living on soup, crackers and Scotch, with her body weight falling to only {{convert|80|lb}}. After she began to vomit blood, her son compelled her to seek medical and psychiatric treatment. Her mental and physical condition improved, and she expressed a desire to appear in a television situation comedy, partly in order to belong to a family. She stopped drinking altogether after being diagnosed with kidney failure in 2000, which was attributed to years of heavy drinking and smoking.{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2006-A-Ec/Dee-Sandra.html|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of World Biography|access-date=April 1, 2016|author=Brennan, Carol|title=Sandra Dee Biography}}

In 1994's Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee,{{Sfn|Darin|1994}} Dodd Darin chronicled his mother's anorexia and drug and alcohol problems, stating that she had been sexually abused as a child by her stepfather Eugene Douvan.{{cite news | url=https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-12-14-1994348160-story.html | title=Son's book takes new look at Darin, Dee | first=Lynette | last=Rice | date=December 14, 1994 | work=The Baltimore Sun | access-date=February 2, 2019}} The same year, Dee's final acting credit occurred with a voice-only appearance on an episode of Frasier.

File:Sandra Dee Grave.jpg, Los Angeles]]

After requiring kidney dialysis for the last four years of her life, Dee died of complications from kidney disease on February 20, 2005, at the Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, California, at the age of 62.{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/movies/20cnd-dee.html |title=Sandra Dee, 'Gidget' Star and Teenage Idol, Dies at 62|last=Kehr|first=Dave|date=February 20, 2005|newspaper=The New York Times|access-date=September 2, 2009}}{{cite news|url=http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,1029880,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080320030143/http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,1029880,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=March 20, 2008|title=Screen Star Sandra Dee Dies|last=Marla|first=Lehner|date=February 20, 2005|publisher=People|access-date=December 28, 2015}} She is interred in a crypt at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in the Hollywood Hills.{{cite news | newspaper=Daily News |location=New York | date=July 7, 2009 | page=4 | last1=Kemp | first1=Joe | last2=Goldsmith | first2=Samuel | title=He'll be buried among Tinseltown's legends | url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/96257972/forest-lawn-sandra-dee/}}

In the following years, exhibitors voted Dee one of the most popular box-office stars in the United States:[http://www.reelclassics.com/Articles/General/quigleytop10-article.htm Quigley's Annual List of Box-Office Champions, 1932-1970 October 23, 2003] accessed July 9, 2012

• 1959—16th
• 1960—7th
• 1961—6th
• 1962—9th
• 1963—8th

Dee is referred to in the song "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee", from the 1971 musical Grease and its 1978 film adaptation. In American Graffiti, Terry the Toad gets the attention of the blonde Debbie by telling her she looks like Connie Stevens. She says she thinks of herself as looking like Sandra Dee.

{{Reflist}}

• {{Cite book |last=Craig|first=Rob|year=2019|title=American International Pictures: A Comprehensive Filmography|location=Jefferson, North Carolina|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-1-476-66631-0}}
• {{Cite book |last=Darin |first=Dodd |year=1994 |title=Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee |url=https://archive.org/details/dreamloversmagni00dari |url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=Warner Books |isbn=978-0-44651-768-3 |oclc=30071949}}
• {{Cite book |title=The Bad & the Beautiful: Hollywood in the Fifties|url=https://archive.org/details/badbeautifulholl00kash|url-access=registration|ref={{SfnRef|Kashner|MacNair|2002}}|author1=Kashner, Sam |author2=MacNair, Jennifer |year=2002|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|isbn=978-0-39332-436-5}}
• {{Cite book |last=Lisanti|first=Thomas|year=2017|title=Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959–1969|publisher=McFarland|location=Jefferson, North Carolina|isbn=978-1-476-60142-7}}
• {{Cite book |editor-last=Monush |editor-first=Barry |year=2003 |title=Screen World Presents the Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film Actors: From the Silent Era to 1965 |volume=1 |location=New York |publisher=Hal Leonard Corporation |isbn=978-1-557-83551-2}}
• {{Cite book |author=Staggs, Sam|year=2010|title= Born to Be Hurt: The Untold Story of Imitation of Life |ref={{SfnRef|Staggs|2010}}|publisher= St. Martin's Griffin|chapter=Pretty Baby|isbn=978-0-31260-555-1}}
• {{Cite book |last=Wayne |first=Jane Ellen|title=The Golden Girls of MGM: Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly and Others|url=https://archive.org/details/goldengirlsofmgm00wayn|url-access=registration|publisher=Carroll & Graf|location=New York|year=2003|isbn=0-7867-1303-8}}

{{Commons category|Sandra Dee}}

• {{IMDb name|364}}
• {{Tcmdb name}}
• {{cite magazine |author=Sandra Dee |date=March 18, 199 |title=Learning to Live Again: A Former Teen Queen Shakes Free of Her Humiliating Past to End Years of Self-Hate and Loneliness1 |url=http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20114698,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090603013710/http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20114698,00.html |archive-date=3 June 2009 |magazine=People |volume=35 |number=10 |access-date=September 7, 2017}}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20061205060053/http://thegoldenyears.org/dee.html Profile of Sandra Dee] at Golden Years; accessed March 24, 2014.
• [http://www.tccweb.org/prominentcarpathorusyns.htm Sandra Dee – The Carpathian Connection]

{{Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year Actress}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dee, Sandra}}

Category:1942 births

Category:2005 deaths

Category:20th-century American actresses

Category:Actresses from Los Angeles

Category:American child models

Category:American child actresses

Category:American film actresses

Category:American television actresses

Category:Deaths from kidney failure in California

Category:Actresses from Bayonne, New Jersey

Category:American people of Rusyn descent

Category:Russian Orthodox Christians from the United States

Category:Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)

Category:New Star of the Year (Actress) Golden Globe winners

Category:University High School (Los Angeles) alumni

Category:21st-century American women