Late this spring a columnist heard the rumor that the Bobby Darins had broken up again, and that Bobby has established residence in his suite of offices. But knowing the Darins personally, the columnist felt this bit of news was highly suspect.
Like all "in" Hollywood, she had been at Bobby's Cocoanut Grove opening only a few nights before and had seen Sandy, beaming adoringly at Bobby, from ringside. Not only that, but to make it a very real occasion, Sandy had their small son Dodd with her, all decked out in a tiny tuxedo. Recalling that happy occasion, and Bobby's other recent opening in Vegas, with Sandra very much and radiantly there, the columnist felt the rumors simply couldn't be true. So she called Sandra at home to check them out.
Only she didn't reach Sandy and she left word for her to please call back. It never entered her mind that Sandy wouldn't do that, because ever since her arrival in Hollywood, eight years and nineteen pictures ago, Sandy has always been most cooperative with the press. Always her own sweet self. But Sandra did not return the call. The columnist then called Sandy's studio and finally reached a considerably embarrassed studio official who had to tell her, "Miss Dee says, 'If they have a story, let them print it!'"
So it was printed, and among the masses of people in the film colony who love Sandy it was crying time, for they knew how wretched Sandy must have been to have said that. She wasn't brought up to speak or act like that. But she wasn't brought up to do a lot of things she does now. And as for her and Bobby having smashed up their love boat again, that was really heartbreaking. Because they have been so deeply, wonderfully in love. Because they have everything to stay in love for. Because everyone around them has heard Sandra say fervently, "One thing I know for sure and always will: Bobby's been true to me and always will be." Surely the words of one who loves.
Thus, at the news, people were quick to tag Bobby as the villain. And if their glances conveyed the feeling that Bobby was a fourteen-carat louse, that was no more than had been said in a syndicated column about him close to the start of his show biz career. Yet these friends of Sandy's were wrong. Bobby wasn't the villain and never has been. Sure, he's fiercely ambitious and his sense of public relations is so lacking that it is practically in visible. But as Bobby says defensively, "They say I have a chip on my shoulder. Who wouldn't? I never expected to live to see my sixteenth birthday. I didn't ever have a father. He died before I was even born. The only person I loved until I met Sandra was my mother, and she died, too."
Which is true -- and exactly the reverse of Sandy's life. She has always had an absolute cocoon of love enveloping her. Her adoring mother was so devoted to her that when Sandy entered kindergarten her mother used to stand outside the school door, sobbing because they were separated. Mrs. Douvan, Sandy's mother, is a delightful, intelligent woman and perhaps her only weakness is in treating her lovely daughter like a goddess. She isn't a typical stage mother interfering with Sandy's career. It was she who first encouraged Bobby's courting Sandra, back in Rome in 1960 when the two first met. In fact, it was Mary Douvan to whom Bobby first sent flowers, because she had invited him to their suite for a drink. All the mother in her sensed the loneliness in his standoffishness, in his reserved manner.
Nobody is denying that Bobby was arrogant in 1960, not even Bobby. He was then - this slum kid who had to bring himself up - making $5,000 a day. He was so bold and brassy that people wanted to sock him, but how do you sock that kind of success? Today - well, love has been known to do wonderful things to people.
Anyway, back in Rome in 1960, Bobby Darin sent roses to Mary Douvan every day for months. Then, suddenly, one night he turned to Sandra and said, "Have dinner with me tonight." He paused, then added firmly, "Just the two of us."
Mary Douvan probably paled, because if either she or Sandy had told Bobby that Sandy had never had a date with a boy in all her glamorous young life, he would have thought she was lying. If they had said she had never been kissed, except on screen, he wouldn't have believed it.
But he got the date and when he brought Sandy back to her mother that night, he told Mary Douvan, "I'm going to marry your daughter, so go along with it." Being of Italian ancestry, he certainly had no intention of breaking up a family relationship - that is a sacred relationship among Italians. Bobby Darin, born Walden Robert Cassetto, in the slums of New York, had simply found the girl he intended to marry.
When Bobby's and Sandy's son was born exactly a year after their wedding he showed his family feeling by yelling joyously, "We're a family, and I'm eighteen feet tall!" And maybe by way of proving it, he then forbade Sandy's allowing the baby to be photographed by news photographers or spoken about to reporters. Not, of course, that that edict of Bobby's had anything to do with their marriage breakup. What has really always been lurking behind their courtship problem, their marriage troubles, and their present split is the way Sandra had been brought up by her mother. It is Mary Douvan who is the woman behind the trouble - even though she was only trying to do what was best for her daughter.
To begin with, Sandy had literally never been alone in her whole life until she met Bobby. Her mother was always there, always praising and always waiting upon her child, hand and foot. Even after divorcing Sandra's father and marrying the well-to-do Eugene Douvan, the mother and daughter relationship stayed close. Because of her beauty, her lovely long legged figure and the way her mother dressed her, Sandy became a model at twelve, a movie star at fourteen. As a model she averaged $40,000 a year, as fourteen-year-old movie star, twice that. Once she got to Universal, where Ross Hunter became a second father to her, the adoring atmosphere in which she had grown up was simply intensified. Her producer, hairdresers, make-up people, one particlarly wonderful publicity woman -- all became further worshipers.
That Sandy couldn't so much as boil water, that she didn't know how to comb her own hair, that she had never in her life made a bed or picked up a bath towel, and that she never had been alone, didn't seem anything but darling. That she had never in her life had a friend her own age or gone to a prom or even a Coke shop with a boy didn't seem important either. And even if Sandv herself was unaware of all this, but was restless and lonely, this too, was overlooked. Perhaps if Eugene Douvan had not died leaving Mary with no other outlet for her great love except her daughter, such an enclosed atmosphere might not have developed around Sandy.
Now it can be told that just before Sandy married Bobby, she was a very sick girl - physically run down because she persisted in over-dieting, mentally insecure because of her isolation from reality. She never went anywhere. She never saw anything but her great sixteen room mansion with its swimming pool and its luxury, mornings and nights, and Universal studio during the day. Universal arranged a few dates for her, but they were fakes because they were like her movie love scenes. Mary was always in the background, so close, in fact, that actors found it tough to get through love scenes with Sandy.
So when in Rome, Bobby Darin began courting her, Sandy was angry, not delighted. As Sandy herself says, "We fought on the picture by day and on dated at night, and there was never one single day without an argument. I hated Bobby just because I knew I was so much in love with him. When he finally proposed to me, Mother told me I wasn't ready for marriage, that I should wait."
Bobby just wasn't waiting. He was twenty-four years old in 1960 and he had been racing the clock all his life. He'd taught himself music. He'd taught himself rhythm, and when he first heard the rock 'n' roll sound, and realized that was the way to succeed, he wrote himself a tune, "Splish Splash" and he had it made. The money rolled in and the engagements. He next made "Mack the Knife" and got in touch with a million dollars.
There were many girls in his life. Then he met Sandy and he found true love-even though Sandy fought with him. Mary Douvan began fighting him, too, and when they all returned to America, and Bobby and Sandy announced their engagement, Mary Douvan, for the first time in her child's existence, walked out on her. The date was November 27, 1960. Sandy now says, "I'd never been alone before in my whole life. I was frightened to death. For the first time I had nobody, no dogs even, nothing. I phoned Bobby and four days later, in the middle of the night, we eloped to Elizabeth, New Jersey."
Husband Bobby went into action and did everything he could to protect his little wife. He was the one who found their honeymoon house in Hollywood, since Sandy knew nothing about house hunting. He was the one who bought their furniture, since she knew nothing about that, either. He hired the servants for the same reason. All Sandy did was to let him carry her in, wild with delight. She adored her husband. He adored her in return.
Only - soon they did have spats. Sandy admits that she packed her bags and walked out on Bobby about a dozen times in the first month of their marriage. Most of the time she didn't even get to the front door before she changed her mind or before Bobby gathered her up in his arms and stopped her. When, about four months after their wedding, Bobby told her she was pregnant, her whole life changed. Even then it was typical of their union that it was Bobby who had checked out with the doctor; Bobby who was overjoyed with the anticipation of fatherhood, before Sandy even knew about her condition. She was still the little-girl wife. When she knew about her approaching motherhood, she was ecstatic. So was Mary Douvan.
However, pregnancy was hard on Sandy. She now admits that most of the time she was very cross. She bore her little son easily, however. He was strong and healthy and, in looks, a compelling little blend of hers and Bobby's appearance - her blondness, Bobby's force. He was born in December, 1961, and Christmas that year took on a very new meaning for all of the family. Yet presently they were having fights again - over the baby, the baby's nurse, the management of their house, and over Bobby's nightclub dates.
Sandy hated the backstage atmosphere of the night clubs. Sometimes she refused to go along with Bobby on those dates. When she did go, she refused to be separated from her baby, yet said that was not the kind of background to bring up a baby in; 1962 rolled by and they kept on squabbling. In 1963 they parted. That was the first time Sandy really faced up to herself. At the studio, everybody felt sorry for her. At home, Mary was always with her. But all that love wasn't enough. Sandy wanted her husband's love.
Then Bobby went off to New York for an engagement, and not many days later, Sandy followed. She found herself in that city listening to Bobby's plans to take her to an unpopulated spot in the mountains. They went up there together in a trailer and parked for days on an isolated road beside a stream. Bobby said she'd have to do the cooking. That was how Sandy discovered - for the first time - how simple it was to make coffee, fry eggs. Food didn't matter so long as you were with the one you love. Soon they returned to Hollywood fully reconciled and with Bobby's promise that since it meant so much to her, he'd concentrate on acting and music publishing.
She and Bobby moved into a new home and Bobby did give up the night clubs and went into movie making. He made six pictures, in one of which (Captain Newman, M.D) he was so good that he got an Academy nomination. But the film itself didn't get the public. Meanwhile, Sandy advanced to being in the top ten of filmdom. All her films made fortunes, while The Beatles and all the other new rock 'n' rollers began taking over the place Bobby had held before in the record field and night clubs. In effect, it meant that Sandy was a bigger star than ever, and Bobby was just holding his own. For a real male like Bobby that was unendurable. So early this year he went back to the night clubs and he was once again Bobby Darin - and there was nobody like him.
When he went to Miami he traveled in style - in a private car with bedrooms for himself, Sandy and Dodd, with a special cook, porter, business manager, and without his mother-in-law. Yet soon a change came over him. He fired his business manager. He got into arguments. And several times friends caught Sandy lost in tears.
Now they are parted once again and Mary Douvan is comforting her daughter as she did in 1963. But this time Mary realizes how very much Sandy loves and needs Bobby, and she's trying very hard to get them back together again. Mary admits that more than anything else, she wants Sandy's and Bobby's happiness.
Yet the ultimate resolution of the situation is up to Sandy. Bobby has undoubtedly made as many compromises in marriage as any truly strong husband can make to his loving, yet still little-girl wife. What's more, Bobby suffered yet another blow last winter when a TV pilot on which he'd counted didn't sell, while Sandy is more in demand than ever.
So Bobby's ego needs boosting - and Sandy loves him and it is time she grew up completely, came out from behind the shadow of her childhood to emerge as the true woman and wife she can be. For she really is a girl who has everything -- youth, beauty, brains, talent, a son -- and husband only she can keep by her side!
See Sandra in the movie, A Man Could Get Killed, a Universal Pictures release.
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