Sandra Dee, Quintessential Ingenue

A successful young model from Bayonne, New Jersey, Sandra Dee got into the movies in a big way in 1959, starring as the daughter of blonde icon, Lana Turner. Dee was so well cast, that Turner’s kid, Cheryl Crane, reportedly was upset, crying that Dee looked more like her mother than she did.

Sandra also made “A Summer Place” in 1959 with handsome blue-eyed blonde-haired Troy Donahue, and she was the darling of the fan mags, the quintessential ingenue. Sandra’s 1960 marriage at age 18 to 24-year-old singer and bobby-soxer idol, Bobby Darin, seemed to be the step that would transform Sandra into her generation’s Debbie Reynolds. But it was not to be.

Despite the addition of a son named Dodd to their family in 1961, the couple’s marriage became strained due to their own personal problems and the demands of their separate careers, and they divorced in 1967, (which incidentally was a longer marriage than that of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher!)

Bobby and Sandra’s son, Dodd, wrote a book about his parents called “Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee”, giving much insight into the private hells of both Sandra and Bobby.

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