"Bobby Is An Idol To Me"

This article, written by Helen Hendricks, appeared in the February 1963 issue of Silver Screen Magazine.

"Before I got married, I was spoiled by my family. I never had to think about anybody but myself," Sandra Dee said.
I lifted my eyebrows. Most stars I know are not this candid about their faults-past, present, or future. But Sandra, sitting comfortably in a white chair in the contemporary home she shares with Bobby Darin and Baby Dodd Mitchell, was in a confidence-sharing mood. She and Bobby had just returned from his successful stint at the Flamingo in Las Vegas, and she was bursting with news, information and emotion.
When I saw her she was wearing simple, but beautifully tailored, black slacks and a light green blouse. "It was natural that I should be spoiled before I got married," Sandy said thoughtfully. "Of course I got my way about everything. I was the one getting up in the morning to go to work. If I came home and wanted to go right to bed because I was tired, that was all right with my mother. If I had wanted a purple ceiling, that's what I would have had. I never had to pick up after myself. My mother did all the picking up.
"Now, instead of being the spoiled child in the house, I have to contribute 50-50 to Bobby's marriage and mine. Well, perhaps it's no longer a 50-50 arrangement. Dodd, our nine-months-old son, is the real kingpin of our household."
Just then Mary Douvan, Sandy's mother, came in with the kingpin. I did a double take. You always hear about mothers who look like their daughters' sisters. It's usually flattery. But Mary Douvan, slim and pretty, could be Sandy's older sister.
As for Dodd, his face is like his father's. Same features. Same impish grin. Same slanting eyes. He cried a bit, because he's teething. Mary Douvan set him gently on the floor, put a teddy bear into his arms, and kneeled down on the floor herself, making funny faces at her grandson. "You'll spoil him," said Sandy. "Mother, dear, please take him off the floor. I keep worrying about him when he's sitting on the carpet. He might swallow one of the threads or something." Mary smiled, scooped Dodd into her arms, and took him into another room. It was obvious that when Dodd Mitchell is anywhere nearby, Sandy cannot rivet her attention on anything else.
"We have a nurse for Dodd, but I still can't help worrying about him," admitted Sandy. "Now that he's teething, I am twice as concerned as usual. The other day, I prepared three breakfasts for Dodd, and lined them up in front of him. I figured that if he couldn't eat one, he'd eat one of the others. But he passed them all up."
Many of the people who know Sandy well have been surprised at how completely she has thrown herself into the role of being a mother. They had thought she wasn't mature enough to take on such responsibilities. When Sandy married Bobby, she had an almost childlike attitude toward life.
"Till she was married, she lived in a dream castle," Ross Hunter told me. "Perhaps I was partly responsible for this. I was probably a father figure for her, and I did my best to protect her. She was a sheltered child thrown suddenly into the whirlpool of movie life. Many have criticized Sandy and her mother, but I defy them to go through the same experiences and come out so unscathed.
"Sandy never knew that maliciousness or jealousy existed in other people. She never felt such emotions herself and didn't look for them in others. I went along with this, and taught her to look for the best in people. "Because she was a young girl without a father and with a mother who had to cope with many emotional problems, I felt it advisable to play father to Sandy.
"She never went out with a fast crowd--only with the nicest girls, like Susan Kohner and Gigi Perreau. She didn't date much. If she did date a boy and I disapproved of him, she wouldn't date him again.
"Strangely enough, her very innocence brought criticism down on her head. Some ultra-sophisticated Hollywood people couldn't understand why, at 16, she dated so seldom, had never been in love and wouldn't dream of having an affair. Sandy didn't know what love was all about--till, at 18, she fell in love with Bobby Darin.
"When she called me from Rome to tell me she was in love and was going to accept Bobby's engagement ring, I said, 'Wonderful.' She said, 'You're kidding.' I replied, 'No, I'm not. If this is what you want, I want it for you, but don't be in any hurry to get married. Go out on dates with Bobby, and have fun.'
"We won't get married in a hurry," she promised. "The next thing I knew she and Bobby were in the East, and Sandy phoned me to say, 'You'll have to give me away. We've decided to get married.'
"When Sandy married Bobby, she had no idea of what marriage is like. To her, love was like being on a carousel. She wanted to get on for the ride."
Sandy herself confirms this. When I asked her what she had figured marriage would be like when she and Bobby had eloped, she said, 'I didn't figure. They say that the first year of marriage is the worst -- and I think it is. A girl wants to hold on to the romantic angle; she wants to hang on to the idea of being the girl friend. When you are first married, it is hard to adjust to being a wife, instead of a girl friend.
"I know it was for me. It's probably harder to adjust when you are a movie star and have dozens of people at the studio catering to you--including the wardrobe woman, the hairdresser and the make-up man. You come home and you expect the same catering at home. In a normal household, you don't get it.
"When Bobby was courting me, he sent me two dozen roses every day. After we were married, I was lucky to get roses once a week. I was used to Bobby's calling me nine times a day on the phone; now he didn't have to call me all day. He knew I was at home. Instead of our having candlelight dinners by ourselves, Bobby would invite four people over for hamburgers. Instead of chattering away when he was with me, he would sometimes be silent for a long stretch.
"I should have been flattered. It is a tribute when a husband is silent for a while with his wife... it means that he doesn't feel that he has to make conversation. He's at ease with her. But in the early months of our marriage I would wonder why Bobby was so quiet when he was with me when he had been so jovial with other people. I felt Bobby wasn't acting romantic about me any more.
"I couldn't tell Bobby how I felt, for it wasn't the roses I missed; it was the idea behind them. If I had told him about it and he had sent roses every day, it would have been meaningless, like ordering them for myself. I wanted him to do charming, impulsive things the way he'd done them when he was courting me. The roses were just a symbol.
"If I wanted to go out and Bobby said he was tired, I'd get angry. For one reason or another, I'd get angry several times a week. Four times a week I'd leave home and go to my mother's. There I'd get all my complaints out of my system. I was there so much and spent so much time complaining--I cried 'Wolf' so often, it was ridiculous.
"I was like a child who refuses to drink his milk because he wants to get attention. If a parent fusses about it and is obviously upset, the child has achieved his purpose and continues to refuse to drink milk. If you don't show any reaction, he'll give up his little strike against milk. After all, he was just trying to get attention.
"When I came home from my mother's, Bobby, bless him, wouldn't show that he was annoyed. He wouldn't ask me where I'd been or why I'd left the house. So since going to my mother's didn't serve any purpose, I stopped running to her home.
"About four months after our marriage, I told Bobby about the things that were upsetting me. I told him I felt he wasn't being romantic any more. He was wonderful about it. He understood--and that was what mattered most.
"I still don't get flowers every day. I get a much greater thrill when Bobby comes home with a single yellow rose for me, that I know he has selected himself. That takes a lot more effort and thought than picking up the phone, and telling a florist to deliver a dozen roses every day.
"There are other differences between us that Bobby and I have had to iron out. Bobby, who is more of an extrovert than I, would be happy having friends over 24 hours a day. But we dine alone a couple of nights a week because he knows it pleases me.
"I don't like to travel as much as Bobby does. Before I was married, I used to go on tour about four or five weeks a year, but Bobby was on the road 40 weeks a year. Because of his night club work, he still has to travel a lot more than I. We want to be together, so I go with him whenever I can.
"Bobby knows I like surprises, so he brings home unexpected gifts on special occasions--or just because he feels like it. One night he'll bring home a book on the art of cooking sukiyaki; another night he'll come home with a balloon or a bunch of marbles. I kidded him about those. 'A gift for me?' I laughed. 'You know you'll be shooting them, not I.' And he did. He loves to shoot marbles.
"Sometimes Bobby is 40 years old, sometimes 70, sometimes nine, and at times two months old. Perhaps that is why I fell in love with him. You never know which Bobby you're going to meet next--the two months old boy or the man with the wisdom of a 70-year-old. One thing's for sure: I could never get bored with Bobby."
What about those trouble rumors that have been floating all over New York, Hollywood, and points in between? No one's been more astonished by them than Bobby and Sandy. One columnist said that Bobby was furious because the reviews that Sandy had received on "If A Man Answers" were so great. The item came out before any reviews had appeared on the picture. Recently a column printed the rumor that Bobby and Sandra had had a knockdown battle in Las Vegas, when Bobby was appearing at the Flamingo.
"Do you want to know what really happened?" asked Sandy. I said I did indeed, and so she went on, "Bobby and I were having dinner with a wonderful group of people, all friends of ours, in the Candlelight Room of the Flamingo. For dessert Bobby ordered whipped cream cake. I said, 'Oh, no, Bobby. No cake. You're getting too fat.' Bobby is always kidding me; he calls me 'Bones.' He said, 'You should talk!'
"I dabbed a little whipped cream on his face. It was a gag, and he knew it. "Then Bobby looked at me with that impish grin. I was wearing a beaded pale green Jean Louis dress. If any of the whipped cream had landed on my dress, the cleaning bill would have been enormous. I said, 'Oh no, Bobby. Not on this dress!' "He grinned, took my hands in his, and squashed some of the whipped cream between my hands. Then he said, 'Honey, no matter what, I'm having an éclair,' and he ordered it. Everyone at our table was roaring. They all knew we were burlesquing the situation. We were kidding, and everyone knew it.
"Two head waiters came to our table and put down two cheese cakes, one in front of each of us, then ran like mad. The whole room was now roaring. Our whipped cream battle wasn't a battle at all. It was simply fun." "Knowing how easily such things are distorted, weren't you afraid to kid with Bobby in public about the whipped cream?" I asked.
Sandra shrugged her shoulders. "If people are going to distort what you do or say, you can't help it. We have had to learn to ignore the lies people sometimes tell. The important thing is not what people say, but the way we feel about each other.
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