Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin:

Why She Had To Forgive Bobby

This article appeared in Modern Screen Magazine October, 1963

There were two questions that needed asking. And so we asked Sandra Dee, point--blank, first:
"Rumor has long had it that your announcement of the separation from Bobby came as a complete surprise to him. That it caught him off-guard, hurt him, humiliated him, angered him. Is this true?"
"No," Sandy answered, simply. "Bobby and I were separated for a month before the announcement was made. That's all I can say about that--please?"
We then asked:
"Is there, Sandy, any one specific thing for which you can honestly blame yourself--or Bobby--that caused your marriage to go phfft? One specific thing for which you or Bobby might well ask the other's forgiveness?"
"One thing?" Sandy repeated, questioningly. Then a shake of the head, and her voice was a little husky now--a cold, perhaps; or maybe a result of the heavy tension she'd been living under these past six months.
"No, not one thing," she answered. "With both of us, it was a whole lot of stupid things, piled up. Twenty stupid things. It's never just one thing, I don't think. For instance, if a woman finds out her husband is cheating on her--she's not going to divorce him just for that. There have to be other things, lots of them, that have already caused--and worsened--the situation. In our case, as I said, there were only small and silly things--tempers flying, little bickerings about this and that. But have that go on and on, add them up all together, and well that's it, I guess ...."
She rose slowly, and headed for a breakfast table a few yards away.
"I need a little coffee," she said. And asked herself aloud, "Is this my seventh or eighth cup of the morning? I don't even know."
We watched Sandy as she poured the coffee, as she returned to the chair across from us.
As she sat, we noticed something faraway-looking about her as her eyes began to gaze around the room, this large and luxurious sitting room of this plush and flower-filled hotel suite.
We saw that she smiled a little smile then. A rather wan and inward smile.
And we wondered, as we watched her, if she were not recalling now exactly what we had recalled a little while earlier ....
A December evening three years earlier. An elevator door opened and out rushed a then-18-year-old blonde. She was breathless when she saw him standing there in the middle of the lobby. Sandy and Bobby were madly in love. They dashed to the car for a midnight rendezvous with a no-doubt tired justice of the peace. The time was December 1, 1960.
And now it was July, three years later. And the marriage was seemingly over. Upstairs somewhere Sandy sat--alone, finishing her breakfast, getting ready for our interview. Waiting, we'd looked over some of the recent newspaper clippings we'd brought along; clippings concerning the Darin-Dee "split-up" and "separation."
Two clippings had struck us as significant:
One, by Louella Parsons, dated July 3rd, read: "Bobby Darin planed into L.A. over the weekend because he couldn't bear not seeing his 16-month-old son, Dodd, any longer. But it was a moot question as to whether he and Sandra Dee would meet. A happy little family group to a softball game settled that question!"
And another, by New York Journal-American columnist Atra Baer, dated July 9th (only a few days before our interview) read: "A Bobby Darin-Sandra Dee reconciliation may be in the on-and-offing. The other night they were hand-holding at Andre's in Great Neck, but Bobby turned down the proprietor's request for pictures of the entente cordiale--and he turned down the request politely!"
So significant, in fact, had this last item seemed to us that we'd immediately phoned the restaurant for further details.
"Yes . . . the Darins were here last Saturday night," we'd been told by the maitre d'. "They came very early, about 7 o'clock, and they left at about 8:30. The restaurant, of course, had not yet even begun to fill up by then. Still, Mr. Darin requested a corner table, where they could be alone. They were both very quiet, very unobtrusive. They both ordered steak, as I recall, and both ate very little. Did they talk much? Yes. Did they look happy, sad? Let me put it this way--there was certainly no effervescence about them. They spoke very softly and they looked quite serious. I would say that they looked either like a married couple talking about their troubles--or, if I didn't know who they were, I might have guessed that they were a young engaged couple the night before their wedding. Their last supper as single people, if I may put it that way-with the two principals showing all of the nervousness and the low-key excitement and that paleness of face which very often accompanies that kind of romantic situation."
And so, with this double interpretation, had a maitre d' summed up the situation.
"What about these reconciliation rumors? Any chance?" we asked.
The coffee cup came down. Sandy smiled, but the smile was less wan than before.
Sandy shrugged. "Honestly--I don't know," she said. "I'll tell you this, though -- Bobby and I hate the word divorce. It makes us both shudder. And anyway, as far as we're concerned, there's no thought or talk of an immediate divorce; I mean, it's not like we've decided to go ahead with anything full-speed. We're in a talking stage now. I'm in the East plugging my picture (Take Her, She's Mine). Bobby's in the East, doing nightclub work. So we're talking in the East now .... Meanwhile, it's as though we're both waiting for the truth of the situation to hit us, like one morning we'll both wake up miles apart probably and know, first thing, what to do--end our marriage or get back together again."
"How about you, Sandy? Are you, personally, willing to reconcile?"
Sandy gave another shrug and paused again. And that pause was more eloquent, much more meaningful, than the answer that she finally gave.
"I'm sure both of us would like a reconciliation. But--you see--we want to be sure first that it's the right thing. We don't want to repeat the rush that accompanied our marriage. You know that story. I wanted to get married so desperately that I couldn't even wait for us to be in the same city with my mother. It was romantic, I guess. But it made no sense--rushing like that. Well, I'm 21 now. I'm a little more mature now, hopefully. I want to slow things down a bit--especially in something as important as this."
We remembered now, from other talks with Sandy, that she was basically, a religious girl. And we asked if there had been times these past few months when her faith had carried her through.
Sandy nodded. She was thoughtful for a moment. "Yes," she said, "I guess when you feel very much alone---out of a need, a desperate need--you turn to God. I certainly do. I know, for instance, there have been nights recently--the baby has gone to Vegas to spend a few days with his daddy, I'll be at the studio all day working, and there have been nights when I've returned to the house alone--absolutely alone--and just sat and turned to God, and prayed. Prayed to find an answer to the doubt inside me; asked, 'Have I done the right thing? Please, tell me somehow what to do.' Well, I know darn well that God is much too busy to answer these questions of mine. But--amazingly--He is still with you at times like these, I feel, because what He is actually doing is making you listen to yourself. So you talk; you ask questions. And somewhere along the line, alone for a change, you begin to sense the inklings to some of the answers. Those more scientifically or modern-minded I guess would turn to a psychiatrist. But I--I turn to God at times like this."
"How about friends, Sandy?" we asked next. "Do you turn to them?"
She laughed a little. "Huh-uh. No. Not to friends or parents or anybody. I can't" -- a vigorous shake of the head--"because your friends are on your side and what's the help there? The same with my mother -- no mother on earth could be objective about this kind of thing; to my mom, I'm absolutely right. That's the pitch you get from everybody. With tears in your eyes sometimes you find yourself asking, 'Was I right?'--and everybody nods and says yes; 'I couldn't have been wrong, could I?' -- and they all shake their heads no. You know that they mean well, these friends. But the fact is that after a while I find myself even getting mad at some of them because they give Bobby no credit at all for anything--and I feel like telling them, 'Hey, feel a little sorry for him, too!'"
She laughed again now, more heartily than before. Partly at the little funny she had just made. Partly because, smart girl, she knew what question was coming:
"I know. I know. Your next question will be, 'Aren't you still in love with Bobby?' Well, to answer"--and the laughter began to subside--"I am. More than anything now, I love him as . . . a friend. I haven't really had too many good friends, as you probably know. And Bobby--he started out as my boy friend, then my husband. But now he is my friend-friend, somebody I can talk to. Somebody I like. And I think sometimes that this liking for one another is something we never shared before. Everything else, yes!--but never real friendship. It's funny, really, the way it's turning out now. I mean the way he phones me every day, every single day--mostly to find out how the baby is; but to know how I am too. It seems that in marriage a wife doesn't get this question asked often. I mean it's like, well, you're my wife, so of course you've got to be all right; you're protected, taken care of, clothed, fed--so what could be wrong?' But now, alone, away from Bobby a lot, he wonders about me, my health, am I sad or glad--and I'm corny enough to be very touched by this--"
Sandy paused, and her eyes closed for an instant. She entertained a private thought or two, then said:
"But, as I was saying, it's funny now,when we meet each other from time to time--when we have to sit and talk--other couples who are separated, they just get together and talk and nobody thinks anything of it. But if we do it, openly--well, there are the photographers and the reporters, and believe me, this makes it a little tough on two people trying to iron some vital matters out. So we kind of do it sneaky. At least we try to. The other night, for instance, Bobby phoned me and asked me to have dinner with him--'We'll drive out to the country,' he said. 'Nobody'll recognize us or bother us.' So we drove out to Great Neck, Long Island--you can't get much farther, I don't think---and I dressed like a peasant, the babushka on the head and all that. We got a nice, quiet table at this restaurant. But I'll be darned if a little while later someone didn't come up to us and ask to take our picture. Quietly we said no. Nicely the photographer went away. But you see what I mean--the chances to talk are pretty rare. So, mostly, when Bobby and I want to be together we drive. Most of our talk is about the baby, of course. Bobby can't hear enough about his son. And, sometimes, I just have to tease him. Like that softball game I took Dodd to back in L.A.? Well, it was really a disaster. I mean, I can see a team losing--but Bobby's team lost 20-to-l! And I tease Bobby by saying, 'I'm glad your son doesn't really understand the game yet--because a Mickey Mantle you're not!'"
Time was passing now (we knew that Sandy had a business-lunch appointment scheduled for early that afternoon), and so we asked our next questions quickly: "What, Sandy, have you learned most about yourself during the separation?"
"That I can be alone," she answered. "That I can run a home. That I can be both mother and father to our son, when he's separated from his daddy. But I don't like it this way. I don't want it this way for too long. Because a baby needs both parents. It's not fair to a little boy to make him live with only women for too long."
"How does your definition of love differ from that of five years ago, say?"
"Love's a struggle," Sandy answered, immediately. "A great big struggle. It brings the greatest unhappiness, the greatest disappointments. Before, I could only think of Prince Charming as being my definition of love; of the romance, the hearts, the flowers, the beautiful moments. Well, I've had both now. But, to answer your question, five years ago I didn't know that there's that big unhappy part that goes along with it."
"You spoke to someone recently about being glad that you finally, at least, would have a chance to test your new-found independence. Has it been tested?"
"Yes. Once," Sandy laughed. "I decided about a month ago to give a big fancy outdoor dinner party--all by myself. It took me three weeks to make the decision and when I finally gave the party, it bombed. For some reason, I hired a chef who liked to drink. I didn't know this, of course, but it didn't take me long to realize that he was closer to the bar all night than to the grill. I'd bought 20 beautiful steaks for the party and at one point, when everyone was starving, I said to him, 'Don't you think it's about time you got to work?' And he was so loaded, this nut, he kept saying to me, 'But I feel good . . . good! . . .' Finally, I got him to where he belonged. And within minutes every one of those 20 steaks was burned to a crisp, absolutely inedible. So I asked the chef to leave, I went into the kitchen and got out the hot dogs--and that's the way my fancy dinner party ended, everybody sitting around eating weenies!"
She paused once more.
"It's been a heck of a year, hasn't it?" she murmered. "I mean, I know, I have so much to be thankful for . . . but the losses . . . the losses .... "
She rose and walked across the room to a window and looked out at Park Avenue below--at the hurried pedestrians, the hurried traffic; New York in mid-summer, hot, sticky, crowded, but always exciting, moving, rich and vital.
She looked across the Avenue for a moment, diagonally across. And she saw it now, the building where it had all begun for her, six years earlier--the Universal International Building--where, just a kid then, a little junior-miss fashion model, they'd spotted her standing outside the building, waiting for her mother, and they'd taken a good, long look at her and asked, "You want to be in pictures?" And she'd blinked, and nodded. And so, Cinderella-like, it had begun; the dazzling life.
Then she looked down, straight down. A cab pulled up. A young couple, leaving the hotel, holding hands, tightly, got into the cab. And it was there, she must have remembered, that same spot, where the big black car had waited for them, that cold December night--so long ago it seemed now; that night she had giggled and he had looked at her with tender eyes and they had kissed and then rushed off to be married. That night when it had all begun. The dazzling life as his bride, his wife . . .the beginning of "always."
She shook her head a little now, standing there at that window. "The losses ...." she repeated once more, whispering.
And her voice, like the room, was suddenly filled with a vast and heavy loneliness ....
Exactly three days following our interview with Sandy (Sunday, July 14), this item appeared in Dorothy Kilgallen's column: "Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee are close to filing for divorce, probably in Los Angeles. That's why they were seen here together in New York recently--in huddles that made the romantics think there might be a reconciliation in the wind. It will be 'amicable.'"
The column was headlined: "Bobby And Sandra Parting Is Final." Final? With Bobby and Sandy having so many obviously "friendly chats" in so many "out-of-the-way places"? And, for a couple who are thinking seriously of separation, and who are "waiting for the truth to hit" them as to whether they should make up or break up, isn't going away on a two-day fishing trip together rather pushing their decision toward a reconciliation angle? For that's what Mr. and Mrs. Darin were doing a few days after MODERN SCREEN's interview with Sandy--fishing! And Bobby, who apparently wanted everything to go smoothly on this trip, went to great lengths to ensure that all would be comfortable. He went into a big New York department store and purchased everything with the exception of caviar and he even bought a camper truck. MODERN SCREEN, titillated by this hopeful turn of events, tried every means available to contact Sandy when the fishing news broke, but, to all events and purposes, Sandy had vanished into thin air, and it was assumed that she had returned home.
Then came added news, but of a more tragic variety. On every radio program and in every newspaper came reports that Bobby Darin had collapsed of exhaustion on the way to an engagement at Freedomland and was immediately confined to bed by an anxious physician. Bobby's personal doctor, Dr. Martin Levy, jetted over from Los Angeles the minute he was notified of Bobby's collapse which was said to be due to overwork. Meanwhile, no news from Sandy. A couple of days later, Bobby bravely played his three shows--but with an ambulance and oxygen tent ready to back him up. Reports at that time indicated that it was not overwork that felled Bobby, but "a virus," caught when Bobby had insisted on going on with the show in spite of heavy cloudbursts. "If my fans are getting themselves drenched waiting for my show," commented Bobby, "then I can get wet too." And he obviously did.
By the time MODERN SCREEN found out that Sandra Dee had a booking right beside Bobby Darin on a train--destination Hollywood--it was too late for a further interview. But perhaps Sandy didn't have to say anything more. It seems that Sandy had been hiding out in New York with Bobby--maybe even tending to him in his Manhattan apartment when he became ill. Perhaps it was even this very illness that brought them back together again. In any event, right now it looks as though a reconciliation is very likely, but no one will swear to it with these two volatile personalities.
BY ED DE BLASIO

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