"Sandy, It's A Boy!"


This article, written by Ruth Waterbury, appeared in Modern Screen Magazine June, 1962



Eight days before this past Christmas, at 2:17 am, Dodd Mitchell Darin made his debut into this World.

He was right on schedule, practically to the hour of when he was expected. He probably inherited this characteristic from his nineteen-year-old mother. She's always on schedule, when it's something she wants to do.

Dodd weighed an absolutely ideal six pounds and eight ounces. He probably inherited that from his twenty-two-year-old dad, a very smart fellow who loves his food but keeps his figure.

Dodd had long, dark hair and tremendously big, very dark blue eyes. He measured a flawless nineteen inches in length. He made no unusual fuss about arriving and most importantly he was, indubitably, a boy.

A miracle babe, in other words. A miracle babe, as of course, all first babies are when they are the first to loving young parents. And it is to be doubted if you could find parents who love with more intensity, intelligence and impetuousness than Mr. and Mrs. Bobby Darin, she who was, as the society columns always say, nee Sandra Dee.

Also to let you know how much Sandy stayed Sandy that pre-Christmas morning, she was on the telephone half an hour after Dodd's arrival, talking to her friends. The first person she called was Ross Hunter, her producer and discoverer.

Sandy didn't have to call her mother--her mother was right there beside her; or Bobby--he was right there, and practically beside himself with happiness, kissing Sandy's face and hands and even feet. Actually, Bobby was the one who thought of a charming thing for Mrs. Douvan, Sandy's mother, to do. He let her be the one who told the world about the baby's coming. As you probably remember, there was a faint skirmish between Mrs. Douvan and Bobby when she knew he was encouraging Sandra to elope.

Mrs. Douvan has liked Bobby from the moment of their first meeting, when she and Sandra were in Italy for the shooting of Come September. In fact, she liked him long before Sandy did.

Nevertheless, being as sentimental as Santa Claus combined with the Easter bunny, she had always dreamed of her darling daughter having a regular church wedding with all the Lohengrin trimmings: the white bridal gown, the bridesmaids, the ushers and all the rest of the romance jazz. Bobby was too in love to wait for that. Sandy was briefly love-tossed between the two of them--her mother whom she really adores, and this first boy she had even so much as let hold hands with her until they were officially engaged.

But Mary Douvan couldn't hold out for more than a week or so after the kids were really married. All during Sandra's pregnancy, it has been Bobby who carefully planned everything so that they were a trio. In the last month of Sandra's pre- natal time, they even all lived together at Mary's house. That was really because the Darin house was loaded with painters and carpenters changing every inch of it, except the nursery.

The nursery Sandy had fixed, down to the last blue velvet bow on the white bassinet, before she was three months gone. The nursery walls are white and blue. So are the drapes and the chairs. That is because Sandy refused to have a girl. She said if she had a girl she'd send her back. And she said her son would be named Jeffrey, because she and Bobby didn't know any Jeffreys, so no relative would get his feelings hurt at the child not being named for him.

But when Dodd came along, she had a much better reason for calling him that. Bobby's family called him Dodd when he was a baby. You know why? Well, they loved him so. He was a little god to them, that's all. But Bobby's parents were Italians and reverent. So they changed the word just a little---Dodd.

Having a second little Dodd in the family proves Sandy's smartness because--well listen to this love story.

Hollywood is always full of love stories, the majority of which don't last long enough to make the final payment on the engagement ring. It is also full of marriages that don't last to the fifth anniversary.

Mr. and Mrs. Bobby Darin are two young people of temperament, personality, talent and self-earned wealth. Sandy had been very spoiled by her mother, and then by her studio. Bobby should have had his head turned by the World's applause. Blended together, that could lead to trouble, except . . .

Miraculously, both of them--perhaps due to their very active intelligence--had never lost their sense of proportion. Sandy, before she met Bobby, could have dated every night. She didn't, because she had sense enough to see through the one type of wolf who wanted to go out with her just because she was a celebrity. She felt nothing but sorry for the really nice boys who, when out with her, got pushed around by headwaiters.

"You go out with some nice fellow and you're the man," Sandy used to explain. "The headwaiter says, 'Miss Dee, would you like a table by the window? Miss Dee, are you ready to eat now?' All that the nice fellow can do is stand around and act like a stooge."

Therefore, being also in love with her work, Sandy preferred to stay at home most of the time. What's more, even if she had been a teen-age model, and then became a star, she was brought up as virtuously as Jackie Kennedy. And she stayed that way.

Bobby had dated scores of girls, yet when he met Sandra, he knew at once that she was the one he wanted to marry, and he went after her, To Sandy's dismay she found that she couldn't boss him around, and she couldn't get rid of him. When they did go out together, it was "Mr. Darin, would you like a table by the window? Mr. Darin, would you like to eat now?" Sandy now blissfully sighs as she recalls it: "Oh, it was so wonderful going out with a man who was much more important than I was."

When they married, Bobby quickly adjusted to the realization that his bride would never be a housekeeper. So he hired a housekeeper. He saw that Sandy would never be a cook. So he hired a cook.

But you can't hire a wife. You have to love her and train her. Which is just what Bobby did. With tenderness and strength and knowledge, Bobby began to teach Sandy the job of being a married woman.

At first, it wasn't too easy. Sandy fought with Bobby.. Now she confesses: "I was about eleven, emotionally." The first few months of their marriage, she packed up and left him more than twenty times.

She always came back. Sometimes she returned within ten minutes. The longest it ever lasted was an hour. They made up with love and kisses in one another's arms. Sandy found that she could never stay away from Bobby for more than an hour-until Dodd was born.

It suited Bobby just fine when, four month's after their wedding, Sandy was expecting. She was not pleased--for all of a day. It interfered with her plans for herself and her career. But as she realized Bobby's joy, as his passionate love of her turned at that moment into a passionate worship, she swiftly began to look forward to parenthood as much as he. It is no exaggeration to say that with motherhood, she has come to adore her husband.

She is still herself, too. For instance, as they waited for the baby, Bobby thought he wanted his son to live in a world apart from his and Sandy's celebrity. Sandy just listened. That's one thing a year of marriage has taught her: to listen to her husband. Nevertheless, Sandy is just as bright as Bobby, which is very bright.

So when Bobby said he wanted their son to go to school under the name of Cassotto, she listened quietly. She even seemed to agree to the baby being named Jeffrey Cassotto--Bobby's real surname is Cassotto--until the day when she asked, in a soft voice, "Don't you suppose our little Jeffrey Cassotto will have to do a lot of explaining in school as to why we won't let him use our name? All his school chums will know that you are Bobby Darin, and I am Sandra Dee. Well, I suppose Jeffrey will just have to fight every new class he goes into."

Bobby stared at her. "Are you bucking to have him be Bobby Darin, Jr?"

"Oh, no," Sandy said. "I don't want him to be Junior, or second or little Bobby. I want him to be himself. Only . . ."

That's when the idea of calling him Dodd was born--Dodd stands for Bobby in the Darin family. Smart wife, huh?

The house they bought was a compromise between them, too. Bobby wanted a big house on four acres--but he only wanted it in ultra-deluxe Bel-Air. There simply isn't a big house on four acres in all of Bel-Air. Said Sandy, "I guess he was figuring on about an acre to a child."

Finally, they discovered a very modern house, in a most modern section--right next to Ross Hunter's house. It hasn't even a half of an acre of land, but it does have privacy and a high, walled garden where a baby can play in safety and sunshine. It had three bedrooms and glass walls--which serve equally as doors or windows--from floor to ceiling. And what made them purchase it? A tremendous, completely-equipped nursery.

They moved in, and immediately began pulling it apart--all except the nursery. One of the bedrooms, they immediately converted into a sound-conditioned music room for Bobby--a place where he could compose, sing, record and listen to disks, to his ambitious heart's content. The second bedroom they simply made into a clothes closet for Sandy which will give you some idea of the extent of her wardrobe. Bobby loves to have her dressed to the last vogue-ish gasp, and nothing more delights Sandy. The third bedroom, which was the largest, they kept for themselves.

It was a good thing that Bobby was sent on location right then--for Hell Is For Heroes--because that did get them out of the house for a little while, during which time walls moved. And also during this time, Sandy discovered about eating and fishing.

Eating is something Sandy never has done in all her life, until she was carrying her baby--eating with any sense, that is. She has always swung between times when she ate literally nothing but a leaf of lettuce a day, or the juice of a couple of lemons, or consumed a whole pound of nutcorn; it is a blend of nuts, syrup and popcorn, which has very little nutrition.

But with the baby coming, she did follow the doctor's orders. Bobby saw to that. And once she formed the habit of regular, good eating three times a day, she was startled by the change in her.

It can now be told that Sandy's studio has been worried about her health for the past two years--and it was largely because of her wacky diets. Her nerves were as nearly shot as an eighteen-year-old girl's can possibly be. She was given to crying spells, to spells of insomnia. With her pregnancy, all those symptoms disappeared. She became as healthy as a Shetland pony. Out in the red-hot desert where Heroes was shooting, Sandy never knew one uncomfortable moment. Except when she and Bobby went fishing.

Bobby adored fishing. It bored Sandy nearly out of her mind. While fishing with Bobby, she asked her loving spouse, "What's with this fishing? Why don't the fish bite all the time? Do you mean to tell me you just sit here?"

"Yep," said her husband.

That was the way Sandy learned to relax--presently, that is. The Italians have a phrase dolce far niente, which, roughly translated, means the sweet do-nothing.

Bobby, for all his dynamic drive toward success, for all that fierce rhythm of his, also knows about dolce far niente. Eventually, over those long, waiting nine months, it began to rub off on Sandy. She can now sit still for nearly a whole half hour, utterly idle. She never used to be still for three minutes at a stretch.

She read, too, during those nine months--mostly the baby books the doctors gave her. John Cassavetes wife had the same obstetrician and the girls compared notes all the time. And every day Sandy shopped. She has enough clothes for eighteen babies, all the way up to five years. She has mentally had her son in and out of every prep school, public school and college in the United States as she waited to welcome him.

Actually, the only activity that Bobby had in which she didn't share was making an almost nightly trip to the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, where eventually his son and heir was born. He timed it at every possible speed. He took every possible route, just in case on the important night there might be a fire or a parade that would hold him up.

So what Sandy did was to bring the baby in on schedule. She wasn't even in delivery much more than an hour. When the doctor brought the news of a son to Bobby, he wildly threw his arms around Mrs. Douvan and yelled, "Congratulate me, grandmother, I am the father of a son." Next, he went to see Sandy; he fell down on his knees beside her, and rained kisses down upon her. Then as he saw Sandy's eyes getting heavy with sleep again, he rushed out of the hospital.

Ten minutes later he was back, grinning. "What happened," his mother-in-law asked. "What have you been up to?"

"I went to buy my son a Christmas tree," the proud father said. "Dodd simply must have a Christmas tree. I was too superstitious to buy one before, but now--" That was when Mary Douvan got her turn at hugging Bobby. She and Sandy are very touched by Bobby's being an orphan and having only one close relative in the world--his sister, to whom he is devoted.

So Mary didn't even tease Bobby too much the next morning, when they discovered that he'd bought a tree simply too tall to get into their house. They practically had to chop it in half to make it fit their big living room.

It was three a.m. before both grandmother and the proud father were once more allowed in the new mother's room; and there she was, talking on the phone to Ross Hunter. They heard her telling her producer, "Ross, I'm flat. I'm absolutely flat again. When can I come to work?"

"Tomorrow," said Mr. Hunter.

Sandy screamed, "That's a Sunday."

"Don't alibi," said Ross. "Don't forget I've already given one of your scripts, The Chalk Garden, to Hayley Mills. If you want a career, don't just lie there," he joked.

Actually, she didn't lie there. She was home, with Dodd in her arms, in less than three days. And then she knew the greatest moment she had yet known--when she put her baby into his crib, then planned to feed him and bathe him.

Careerwise, Sandy would be at work in a month, co-starring with Bobby in If a Man Answers, which she had already read.

Still, on her first night home Mrs. Darin had something much more important to think about than acting. She stood in her husband's arms, in the middle of their son's nursery, and asked, "Do you think Tracy would be a cute name for a daughter?"

Bobby nearly collapsed. If she had said she wanted to name her daughter The First National Bank of Fried Egg, Kansas he would have said "Yes, darling" to her at that moment.

But Sandy kissed him, making no further reply necessary.

Since baby Dodd's birth, Sandy has become much more beautiful. And this isn't merely the glow to her skin or the tender light in her eyes. Actually, the whole shape of her face has changed. Along with worrying over her health, for the past two years her studio has been worrying because Sandy's face was getting puffy. It showed in her stills and close-ups, and Sandy worried about it, too. This was part of the reason for her foolish diets. She thought if she kept her figure thin, her face would slim down. But it didn't work.

Now, with her figure more rounded and lovelier than ever--for she has now dropped all the extra weight she put on for Dodd--her face is very slim. It is almost a new shape and very beautiful.

A long time ago, that writer Aldous Huxley said that the greatest source of beauty is an experiencing soul.

That's Sandy, mother of Dodd Mitchell Darin and wife of Bobby; she's a very young soul, but smart and loving, too.



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