The Whole Story of My Life
Part 2 of the article appeared in the August 1960 issue of Movieland and TV Time Magazine -- BY Sandra Dee
When I saw it, I couldn't believe my eyes. I thought it was AWFUL. I cried like mad. It wasn't bad enough to have that picture grinning at me from every newsstand, it was blown up several times lifesize and displayed in the lobbies of several downtown buildings! Just when I'd begin to feel that I didn't look like something drawn by Charles Addams, I'd pass another of those blowups, and there would go another box of cleansing tissues.
I had no way of guessing it then, but in the next few years I was to have my picture taken more times than I could count. Out of all those pictures there is only one that I liked. It showed me wearing a bubble hairdo, and a green dress, and looking over a pasture fence as if I were a colt in Old Kentucky.
There were some wonderful things about being a model. I don't want to sound conceited, but I wouldn't be truthful if I didn't admit that being chosen by the Saturday Evening Post as one of America's top ten models was great. So was appearing on the covers of seven national magazines in a year (even if I didn't care for the pictures.) And it was fun to earn $30 an hour, even though my allowance stayed at one dollar per week. Taxes, you know, and insurance, and agency fees, and clothing. Besides, Daddy wanted to give me all the things a working girl usually buys for herself.
There was one sad thing about all of this, although I came to realize it a long time later. I had to give up public school, of course, and go to professional school. Later, when I came to Hollywood, I attended classes--usually alone--at the studio wherever I was working in a picture.
When I was ready to graduate in June, 1959, I was included in the senior class at University High School, complete with white mortarboard, gown, and diploma. The whole thing.
Graduation meant to me that I was through with studies and the confusion involved in trying to keep up with American History and a film script at the same time. Sometimes it was real rough.
But it was clear that Graduation meant something entirely different to most of the regular students. All during the commencement exercises, many of the girls cried as if they were leaving something precious forever. Even the boys looked glum.
The President of the Student Body took me to the Senior Prom and I had a ball, but even that party was overshadowed by a sense of sadness at leave-taking. Suddenly it came to me that I had missed a great deal. I had missed the feeling of intense school loyalty, of being in the midst of something vital with other people my own age, of being able to store up certain memories that the students kept assuring each other "would last a lifetime."
I felt so sorry for myself that day that I had to take a week's trip to New York to comfort myself. I kept reminding me that other girls don't know Johnny Saxon, or Jimmy Darren, or Jean Simmons, or Lana Turner, or Paul Newman, or Troy Donahue. I suppose that it all evens out in the end.
To go back to December, 1955: it was the best Christmas we had ever had. Sometimes I think a person instinctively knows when things are too wonderful to last. I had that feeling all during the holiday season, but I paid no attention. I was too happy over one of the best presents imaginable: a Pomeranian puppy named Pom-Pom. I found him--a fluffy sort of something just three inches long--in the top of a bobby sock Christmas morning, a present from Daddy Gene.
I still have Pom-Pom. He's kookie--barks, barks, barks when people are standing in a room. Shuts up when they sit down. Why? You'd have to speak Pomeranian to find out, I'm sure.
By the summer of 1956 I had made the transition from modeling to television, and Daddy Gene was saying that some day soon I would take the next logical step from TV to movies. "You can do it, Sandoosh," he would say. He always called me "Sandoosh" or "Sandooshka,' which is Russian for "Little Sandra."
One September night I was awakened by confusion in the hallway outside my room. I put on a robe and opened my door, more asleep than awake. Police officers were bringing a huge cylinder down the hallway. Someone told me, "Go back to bed. Everything is all fight. Your daddy fainted and we're going to give him oxygen to help him breathe."
I didn't think much about it. To me, Daddy Gene was indestructible. He might have a cold, or he might be tired, but he could not be sick, seriously sick. He was protection against anything and everything, my Rock of Gibraltar.
The next morning, he went to his office as usual. He had another heart attack that night. The following day he and Mama went to Washington to complete a business transaction. He had his third attack there, and the doctors decided on surgery. I cancelled everything except one TV show on Monday so that I could fly to Washington on Tuesday. Monday night I talked to Daddy on the telephone. He was a great tease. He said he was going to be a little bit sick, so we could all take a long vacation. He sounded just the same as usual . . . laughing and
joking and sure of the joys of the world.
The next morning my mother called to say that Daddy's operation had gone well. I said I would be with her that afternoon, then suddenly she hung up. I learned later that the doctor had just come into the room to tell her that Daddy's heart had stopped. Mama couldn't tell me. She built up enough courage to telephone a friend of ours, who came to the house to be with me when I learned what most people have to learn at some time in life. That was September 11, 1956. My daddy, Eugene Douvan, was a great and good man, and all of us who loved him will remember him forever.
The next Monday was September 17, and my agent, Len Luskin, had made an appointment for me to meet a producer from Universal-International named Ross Hunter, who was interviewing applicants for the boy and girl roles in "The Restless Years."
I tried to get out of the interview because I had no heart for it. It all seemed so futile. But Mr. Luskin refused to let me skip the interview, even though my eyes were red from days of crying.
When Mr. Hunter handed me a script and asked me to read for him, I told him that I'd be glad to, but that I'd like to look it over first. I didn't see how I could pick up a page of dialogue and read it with any sense unless I had some idea of what the story was about. He seemed a little surprised, but let me do it my way.
Afterward I told my mother, "Some very young man from Hollywood (Ross Hunter looked awfully young to me--still does) says he is going to make a motion picture star of me." I shrugged. It was the sort of thing you hear about all the time--standard gag. It seldom amounts to anything.
The next thing I knew, my mother and I were flying to Hollywood to make a screen test. We arrived late one Thursday night (Thursday has always been my lucky day), about two weeks before Christmas, 1956. I couldn't believe the temperature; it was like May in New York. When we reached our room in the Knickerbocker Hotel, I rushed over to the window to look down on neon-lighted Hollywood Boulevard to my left. To the right I could see the near silhouettes of the tops of scraggly palm trees, and high above the outline of hills there shone a lighted cross. I tingled all over. I told my mother, "I think this is going to be my town."
The following morning I changed my mind. To a New Yorker, the sunshine glittering on everything seemed unnatural.
I studied the shirt-sleeved men and the women in scuffs, clam-digger pants and unmatching blouses strolling along the streets, and I told Mama, "It certainly doesn't look much like Christmas around here. If I should sign a contract, we'd have to live here for seven years. I don't think I like this. I think I want to go home."
On that optimistic note the studio car arrived and we were driven out to U-I, where--wouldn't you know it--my test consisted of a love scene with John Saxon. Me, in a movie love scene, without ever having kissed a boy alone in my life! It was ridiculous.
Well, maybe it wasn't. When my grandmother saw "The Restless Years," for which the love scene was filmed a second time, I am told she asked my mother, "Where did Sandra learn to kiss like that?"
I told my mother, "One look at Johnny and who had to learn?"
A long time afterward I asked Johnny what he had thought about me during the test. (We're very good friends nowadays.)
He said, "You were so fragile and so tiny, I was half afraid you would break, but I thought from the first that you would be great. Real great."
But the day of the test, he and I didn't exchange more than a dozen words.
At the end of the week Mama and I flew back to New York. Back to cotton puffs of breath on the air, frost on the streets in the morning, skating at Rockefeller Center, carols on Fifth Avenue, and Christmas everywhere. If I had my way, I would always spend December in New York.
The next thing that happened was funny. One morning my booking agent telephoned, so mad he could scarcely talk ---only splutter----demanding to know why I had failed to tell him that I was leaving New York. He said he had bookings far in advance, that only common courtesy, to say nothing of professional integrity, etc., etc., etc.
He must have gathered from my stunned tone that he had lost me on Line One. He yelled, "It's in Louella Parsons' column. It says in headlines that Sandra Dee is going to appear in 'Until They Sail' at MGM .... "
My mother sent a bellboy out for a newspaper and we read it with our chins dropped to here.
A few weeks later we were in California, walking through the Farmer's Market so I could buy some apples. When we passed the pet shop, a French poodle puppy came over to the window to put her paws on the glass where my hand was resting. I had to have her. "Please," I said to my mother. "Please."
There were about 80 people standing around, taking in this big drama of Girl Loves Dog, so Mama was shamed into buying her for me. We named her Melinda, and she gets along fine with Pom-Pom. Gets along fine! Together, they RUN our house. I mean, they're in charge.
"Until They Sail" was a fun picture. I fell in love with Jean Simmons, and she was wonderful to me. I felt the same way about Joan Fontaine. Every morning, when Joan was in the hairdressing department as I came in, she would part her long, thick hair--hanging over her face like a curtain--and call out, "Here comes Ugly."
Paul Newman called me "Pigeon-toed" or "Hideous." Between set-ups we would sit over doughnuts and coffee and tell sick jokes. Gruesome.
My second picture was "The Restless Years," opposite John Saxon--a ball-then Mama and I flew to Europe for "The Reluctant Debutante."
I fixed myself up dandy with the French. When I wanted a light for a cigarette on the set, I would ask the nearest French workman, "Avez-vous un lit, s'il vous plait?" The Frenchman would duck his head, peering at me in a state of mild shock, and hurry away. Finally a lurking American explained to me that the word I wanted was "alumette" for match, NOT "lit" for bed.
In Paris I took up painting--which figures. You're in Paris, you paint! My first picture was a study of the Eiffel Tower on a sunny Sunday morning. I was pretty proud of it until I showed it to a member of our company and asked for critical comment. He squinted at it and said thoughtfully, "Colorful, hmmm. What IS it?" End of my painting phase.
"Gidget" came next on the shooting schedule, and it was a smash. I loved every instant, particularly the time spent at Malibu. This was my first experience at working almost entirely with young, young people, which was fun, and I learned a little surfboarding in the bargain.
"Imitation of Life" was a picture on which I learned a great deal. Working with Lana Turner was one of the great experiences of picture making. I know I'll never forget it.
Later came "A Summer Place," opposite Troy Donahue. We locationed at Monterey, one of the loveliest places in the world, and I bought a Rolleiflex camera. I drove everyone half crazy, calling out, "Just a second"--snap! I tried for dramatic angles, mood lighting, silhouettes, the whole bit.
In "Portrait in Black" there were two large plus qualifies: I worked again with Lana Turner, and a complete Jean Louis wardrobe was designed for me--and given to me afterward by the studio. That's "livin'."
By the time you read this, I think I'll be in ROME (Italy, not New York) working with the brilliant Peter Ustinov and the handsome John Gavin in "Romanoff and Juliet." I get goose bumps like porcupine quills when I think of it.
After the picture is completed, Mama and I plan to visit Switzerland, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark, and fly back to Hollywood via the Polar Route. Imagine me, getting a picture of the midnight sun, maybe with cloud effects.
My mother says there is one other thing that I should tell about myself. So far, I have recorded four sides (four songs): "Do It While You're Young" and "When You Fall in Love" from "The Snow Queen," and two originals, "Questions" and "Dear Johnny."
When the first record came out, I nearly drove everyone crazy, making them listen to it--especially when I could pick it up on a DJ show. Every play meant a nickel to me and I pointed this out to everyone who failed to show proper musical appreciation!
My own favorite song is "The Party's Over," although I've never recorded it. Also: I'm mad for show music such as "The King and I," "The Music Man," and "Gypsy." Honestly, I've played "Gypsy" until the neighbors have been ready to kill Ethel Merman.
The neighbors also know another of my secrets: I'm learning to play piano-strictly by ear. I may never be Victor Borge, but I'm going to master "Chopsticks" if I have to live on chow mein to do it.
Now, here's a funny thing. "Funny!" What am I saying! It's serious, as any girl my age will agree. I receive quite a bit of mail from girls who confess that they envy me because of my "glamorous" dates.
It's true that I know some wonderful boys. But it is also true that working in movies, and going out on personal appearance tours to publicize the films, present obstacles to dating those boys. Other girls can count on Saturday nights for fun; often I don't know from one week to the next where I will be.
In the past I have had dates with Edd Byrnes, Sal Mineo, John Saxon, and Troy Donahue, but in my work I usually meet older people (older than I by quite a bit) instead of boys and girls my own age. If I were in high school or going on to college I would be living the usual life of girls in their late teens, but I'm an actress so my life is different.
When I'm in New York I have dates with boys who aren't in the entertainment business, but I never mention their names. They are private citizens who are going to be doctors, or lawyers, or business men, and I think they have a right to privacy.
When I'm in Washington, or during vacations when Georgetown University is not in session, I have dates with a California boy who is a Georgetown student (I don't have dates with anyone else when he is in town), but he, too, has a right to privacy so I have never identified him by name. There is nothing serious between us at present, even though I think he's one of the greatest.
So this is my story to date. I've had 18 years of constant surprises, of friendship, love, laughter, and accomplishment. I think the next 18 are going to be even more exciting, because sometime during those years I'm going to fall in love, marry, and have children.
I'll tell you all about it, when the time comes.
THE END
(Sandra Dee is in Universal-International's "The Snow Queen," "Portrait in Black" and "Romanoff and Juliet.")
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