Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin:

"Sandra Dee: Her Dream World Over"

This article, written by Toni Shaw, appeared in Movie Life Magazine January, 1963

There's an old saying that what you don't know can't hurt you. And, like most "old sayings," it applies to people in all social classes, on all financial levels in all geographical locations--even extending into Hollywood and pertaining to stars like lovely Sandra Dee, who, over a few short years, has found a new, adult world in love, marriage, motherhood. And she's just turned twenty, too.
The saying isn't entirely foreign to Sandra, who's had other ways of saying practically the same thing in the past. Once, for instance, was when she'd been talking wistfully of the differences in her life and the lives of the teenagers all over the country who pay to see her on the screen. She was attending the studio school then--and as its one and only pupil. There were no classmates; no after school activities; no club meetings, dance committees, football games. No passing notes, playing hookey or meeting friends in the hall between classes. She could only dream what life would be like in a regular school--just as ordinary schoolgirls wondered what life would be like as Sandra Dee. But was she sad?
"It's like strawberry shortcake," she said. "If you've never had it, you don't miss it."
Actually, it's the things Sandra Dee has never had that now offer her her greatest chance for adult happiness. For example, Bobby Darin is her very first love, and many people thought this a handicap in their marriage. She has no other romances to compare this one with, they insisted. She has never known what it is to go steady with half a dozen different boys, to imagine herself in and out of love a dozen times. But Sandra does know how happy it makes her to be with Bobby, to do things for him, to be there in his corner when he's battling the world. "He makes me happy," she says. And is that so bad?
"What are teen years anyway?" She once asked an interviewer. "Dating? I've started that. Talking on the telephone? I do that. I talk to my former stand-in, friends I've met through the agency. I call my girl friend in New York every week .... What I would like most of all, though, is a girl friend... out here (Hollywood) . . . my age or older . . . to talk to, and share things with . . you know, like secrets." But that, of course, was before she met and fell in love and married Bobby; before their son was born.
There is a danger, however, to having lived in such a narrow and confined world. There are no close friends with similar problems; no pals left over from childhood to enrich adult life.
"I'm not able to give advice to teenagers," she told a writer a few years ago. "The kids could give me better advice. I've had no contact with kids."
Sandra loves her career, which started when she was twelve. It shouldn't have been particularly surprising that she wouldn't want to give it up for something she'd never known. But what was surprising was, the adult way she accepted her position of a child moving in an adult world.
Still Sandra dreamed. And why not? She was more of a "fairy tale princess" than most girls who wait for a Prince Charming to suddenly appear and whisk them off to a happy-ever-after future. She loved her mother and her late step-father dearly; she loved her home. She dreamed of a home of her own someday, with a husband as loving and attentive as Eugene Douvan had been. And babies--she dreamed of them, too.
This maternal love of Sandra's really mushroomed when she was 17 and became Godmother to a cousin.
"For the first time I really, really felt that wonderful cozy warmth that runs through you when you are part of a big family," she said after the Christening. "A new,party dress, a new gown, high heels and those things can sometimes make a girl feel very grown up. But to know that you have just pledged your eternal loyalty and love, to a little baby is something that makes you feel proud and useful and a little bit taller."
In all her life Sandra has had little touch with family life where she wasn't the center of things, And now her life revolves around her tiny son. And you have only to watch the warm, tender way Sandra talks about him to know how important he is in her life, how much more he's matured her.
Her dream world is in the past now, for Bobby and Dodd are very real; very much a part of her present and future. And Sandra is faced with the gigantic task of looking after a home, a husband, a son--and continuing her fabulous career.
Granted she was young when she married, and inexperienced in the ways of romance. But she was more mature than many girls her age, than many girls much older. This very maturity may be what sees her through her period of adjustment.
Just like every young bride and mother in Anytown, U.S.A., Sandra is having to adjust to the very real fact that marriage is not all candlelight dinners and sweet talk; that arguments develop when you least expect them--and that making up is fun. Even with help, there are menial tasks, menial problems that can be very disillusioning to a young bride and mother if not accepted in the proper light. What can be more unromantic than garbage or a blown-out fuse (after the candles have been stored away in some remote spot) or an empty band-aid box when some minor cut has you bleeding all over the bathroom sink? And there's more to having a baby in the house than staring glowingly into a crib or playing peek-a-boo now and then. There's the draggy feeling when he wakens you at night, or the feeling of inadequacy when he cries any time, or the hundred and one little extra chores that come with keeping him alive from day to day. But Sandra knows about career demands and short tempers, about self discipline and responsibility. And she has so much love in her heart for Bobby and their baby.
The realization of something is never as exciting as the anticipation, some wise man has said. And reality is never quite the same as a dream. But excitement can be replaced with warmth and understanding. And love, tenderly nurtured, can grow. Sometimes the "real" is even better than you had dared to dream it might be. With her dream world behind her, may this be true for Sandra.

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