CC: You made three films with Bobby Darin. Did you enjoy working together?

SD: Come September was the funniest! We had a motor scooter ride that played thirty seconds on screen. For three weeks, Bobby and I had been sitting on a hill without doing anything. We were like oil and water. I don't know how many days or weeks it took to do the scene, but it was just one shot. However, everyone could tell that we had had a fight in the meantime because, in the finished film, we are shown simultaneously with and without my arms around his waist. But there was no way they were going to re-shoot it after all those weeks.

In another scene, I have to hit Bobby. I had never hit anyone before, let alone the man with whom I was falling in love. The director, Robert Mulligan, said, "Well, I'm sorry, you're just going to have to hit him." So, I hit him. I did the best that I could, but it wasn't the best hit in the world. As a result, the next day it was decided to have a re-take. By then, Bobby and I had had an argument, and this time when I was told to hit him, he really saw stars! In fact, he thought he had a concussion. I told him, "You're such a cry baby. I've taken worse than this."

CC: How did you initially feel about Bobby?

SD: I hated him! We spent four weeks in Portofino shooting and I never said anything. He used to try to goad me just to get a reaction. He asked my mother, "Why doesn't she give me a reaction?" and my mother replied, "That's my daughter!" When we got to Rome my mother sat down with me and said "You're going to have to make peace. How are you going to finish the picture?" That started it, that one time. He shut his mouth and he lay in the carriage and his head was almost on my lap. I looked and thought, "With his mouth shut, he's not as obnoxious." He would do anything for a reaction. He wet me down in one scene and I had to be dried off. I thought the director was going to kill him. He proposed to me before we started the picture. He had just arrived in Portofino and was in a canary yellow suit. And now he'd be very much in style. He looked ridiculous. I looked up and said "Who the hell is that?" He was waving, "Hi, I'm Bobby Darin. You're going to be my wife."

CC: One article said you met Bobby before Come September.

SD: No, I had never met him. I was supposed to see him at the Greek Theatre. I had loved Mack the Knife and Beyond the Sea. I played that one album over and over. I never had been on a date, so when his manager called and asked what time he should come to get me, I asked, "Where's Bobby?" He replied that he was performing. I said "I don't know you," and I never went. I never met him in the States. I was supposed to. I was naive. Of course, he had to be on stage at eight o' clock and couldn't pick me up.

CC: When you were falling in love with Bobby, did he know you were only sixteen at the time?

SD: I don't know. He didn't care. I have a feeling that's why we had a son the first year because we were threatened with annulment. We eloped and I had to lie about my age.

CC: Universal put you though a series of comedies. They announced adult roles in The Long Rain and The Twelfth of Never. What happened to those films?

SD: Universal, or any studio for that matter, is in the business of making money. They hit on a formula. I called them the 'Poor Man's Doris Day Films'. They hit a button. People came. They didn't care about reviews. I was in the top ten box office for years. I didn't care. I was having fun and I had the baby. I'm sorry now that I didn't have the chance.

CC: However, you did break into those adult roles with some fine acting on TV episodes of Night Gallery and Police Woman.

SD: MCA bought out Universal. MCA allowed me to do the TV episodes. Universal had said no television whatsoever. It was the first chance I got to be the adult. I loved doing them. I had the most fun with Police Woman. I played a blind woman. There were no glasses to wear. I thought I did that pretty well.

CC: Who was managing you at Universal?

SD: Abe Glassman was my manager. I was pregnant when it was time for my contract renewal. Abe said to Bobby, "Talk to her; they're getting a million dollars and she's getting a salary." I was pregnant. I was bored, they were my family. They give me a hairdresser, they gave me clothes, they gave me the traveling make-up man and a new car every year. And I was so happy, too. I re-signed for another seven years. I had already put in four. In the interim, MCA took over and my 'family' was gone. No family with MCA! In a TV movie named The Man Hunter, I had to play a Cajun woman - with my skin and blonde hair! I played opposite Roy Thinness. This was humiliating. To get the words out we would have to stand by and giggle and laugh first. It was like "Me Tarzan, You Jane." When I got excited, I went to a Brooklyn accent. It was terrible! It was dumb! The truth is that Roy Thinness couldn't back the movie. I backed the movie in order that they could pay him off. That was the last thing for Universal I had to do to be free.

Sandra Dee turned the conversation in a different direction. The Hollywood star system and its potential for exploitation and control reminded her of Elvis Presley, and she shared these thoughts with me:

SD: Elvis Presley was such a fine actor. He would come in to read. Bobby and he were at the same lot when I was very pregnant. He would come in and say, "Read this with me, you know they won't let me do this. I just wanted to hear if I could do it." And God, could he do it! He used to come in Bobby's dressing room to talk to him because he was having a horrible time with pills and diets. Bobby told him, "Screw them all, you can't go on like this." But he would come by like that every day. Eventually they put him to sleep with pills, woke him up with pills, and they gave him the diet pills, and pills to calm down. He hated what he was doing. He hated every stinking pill. And as a matter of fact, I think the reason he went to Bobby's dressing room was that it was out of the way. It took them awhile to find him. But once they found him, he couldn't return that often.

CC: Is it hard for you to balance being a public figure and caring for your family?

SD: It's hard when I know about Dream Lovers. I didn't know how much it bothered Dodd. He's telling the truth. It's what he felt. It's what I've been always told. Little slips like "I always felt third in line." He was third in line. When we went out they wanted his father and me. He's right. Yes, you were third. He was between us. These were our jobs. And he developed a complex about that which I never knew. He was an out-going little boy. I never knew this. There were little things that bothered him - and big things that bothered him. To be fair, honestly, he tells the truth.


CC: How was Sandra Dee as a mother?

SD: I gave Dodd a normal upbringing in Toluca Lake instead of Beverly Hills. As I had grown up feeling really alone, I didn't want him to grow up that way. The reason I went into modeling was because I was alone so much.

CC: In Dream Lovers, Dodd credits you as a survivor.

SD: I don't know how I've survived the last five years. When my mother died, my world went. I went from mother and father to Dodd, and being a daughter to nothing. I just sat in the room. It was insane. My son took care of the burial. I didn't go. I sat with her and dressed her in my house. She was going out: dead. I just didn't want to remember. The cancer. She hadn't seen a doctor since I was four. That doesn't seem possible to modern day people. My mother's attitude was that no one was going to cut her open. When the doctor finally had to do surgery, he said that there's nothing he could do. I had her at my house. Dodd was in Arizona. No one was supposed to know what she had. Her office would call and ask, "How's your mom?" I would reply that she was doing better; she had a virus. The next time they called to ask, I answered, "She's dead." She was almost ashamed of it. I just refused to believe it! The last five years of my life without my mother have been horrendous. She was such a good mother. A strong person. I saw her everyday. She'd call nineteen times a day. I'd get tired of her calling. "Come on Mom, nothing happened to me since you last talked to me." I never knew how to write a check. I had a business manager with whom she dealt, not me. I didn't know how to shop and write a check in a store. It was like a new world dawning on me. It was just habit. When you see someone everyday. I lost control for five years. I don't want that feeling anymore. I want control of my life.

CC: How much involvement will you have on a film project of your life story?

SD: A great deal. I want to tell the truth. I don't want it to be a trashy summer read. This is my life and I've put a lot into it! I raised a son, I had a career. We had trouble, both between Bobby and me and Dodd and me.

CC: Your fans are anxiously waiting for you to be active again.

SD: I'm going to launch a perfume line called Sandra Dee's Sun Signs on QVC, as well as 'Infomercials'. Recently, I was a caller on TV's Frasier. And I'd like to produce films.

CC: What acting project would you consider?

SD: It would have to be something super. A Hallmark Hall of Fame. It's a fine show. I would like to do a Woody Allen film. I'd love to do theatre. And I'd like to play myself as a cartoon character on The Simpsons.

After our interview, I was shown a recent TV commercial Dee made for a restaurant chain. The actress who always passed as older than her years, now looked younger amid youthful surfers who recalled her days as Gidget. She still has 'what it takes' and could light up the screen with her presence. After meeting Sandra Dee and seeing her again on film, I left with the feeling that, despite her difficult recent years, a rewarding future awaits her both professionally and personally.


(Co-interviewer Evelyn Gabai wrote "Interview with the Vampire: Christopher Lee" in issue #5 of Celebrity Collector. Thank you again, George Carpinone)




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