The Rush and the Tears

The Story Behind the Bobby Darin-Sandra Dee
Runaway Marriage

"I want to love and be loved, and I hope I won't be hurt, but who am I to expect that heartaches will never cross my path? I can tell you this: if real love comes along--something I know is real and wonderful--I won't test it, or question it, or dodge it just because it might not last forever. I will welcome it for whatever it brings." -- Sandra Dee, in an interview one month before she met Bobby Darin.

To Hollywood, it was the marriage of the year. And, in some ways, the marriage of Sandra Dee to Bobby Darin read like a movie script. Ideal boy meets ideal girl; they fall in love, they marry, they live happily ever after. But the truth is, all things are not as they seem.

For the first time, here is the exclusive story behind their whirlwind courtship and elopement.

Last December 1st, in a surprise 3 A.M. ceremony, a nervous, happy but overly tearful Sandra Dee looked at Bobby Darin as if he were her last friend and said, "I do." She had reason to be tearful. There were a dozen guests at the wedding, but not one was a close friend or relative of the bride's.

Her mother, her aunt--her family had refused to attend.

Sandra's mother, Mrs. Mary Douvan, was having no part of it. She didn't approve of the wedding. She didn't approve of the groom. She told friends that Bobby was too old for Sandy, that Sandy was too young for marriage to anyone, and that they should both wait at least six months before even considering such a step.

Sandy and Bobby didn't want to wait. They were in love and, as a friend of the couple said, "Love can't wait."

Mrs. Douvan according to friends, was shocked by Sandy's attitude. Sandy didn't usually disagree with her. Sandy had been taught for all the years of her life that above all else, her actions must be in "good taste," and here she was, in love with a boy known more for his brashness than for anything else, especially good taste. Furthermore, Sandy wasn't only disagreeing with her mother about details or timing. She was marrying Bobby. Period.

When Sandy showed her mother the engagement ring from Bobby, Mrs. Douvan reportedly cried: "Don't ever let me see you wearing that!" And as the couple got closer to marriage, Mrs. Douvan tried to persuade them over and over again to wait until June. Despite her arguments they set a January date and she was more vocal against it than ever. One friend told this writer that every time Sandy and Bobby had a disagreement with Mrs. Douvan, they would push the wedding date up still closer.

A friend who reported to Mrs. Douvan that the kids planned to elope before January, brought the whole pot to boil. Sandy and Bobby denied the friend's report, but Mrs. Douvan, angry and unhappy about what she considered a breech of faith by her daughter, packed her belongings and moved out of the hotel room they shared.

For the first time in her life, Sandy was left completely alone. She couldn't reach her mother. An aunt, to whom she was very close, was unable to take sides. And her producer, Ross Hunter, who has become sort of a big brother, did not wholeheartedly approve of Bobby Darin.

They changed the wedding date to December 2nd and Bobby's sister, Nina Maffia, and his niece, Vee Walden, took turns spending the nights with Sandy. Nonetheless, she was unbearably lonely.

On November 30th, Sandy, Bobby, NIna and her husband Charles Maffia went out to celebrate Nina's birthday. When Bobby picked her up, Sandy was crying. "I can't stand being alone any more," she told him. "Please, Bobby, marry me. Marry me tonight."

As Bobby went to the phone to make arrangements for the early morning ceremony, Sandy had a call of her own to make. She telephoned her aunt in Bayonne, New Jersey and invited her to the wedding. "Would you," she said, "call my mother and tell her? I want her to be with me at my wedding and Bobby does too." But her mother wouldn't or couldn't attend. Sandy put on her actress smile and went ahead with the wedding.

This was the first and only time that Sandra Dee rebelled from the sheltered, well-ordered pattern of her life.

Sandra was born Alexandra Zuck on April 23, 1942 in Bayonne, New Jersey. Relatives still tell her how they called her mother, eighteen at the time, a "baby with a baby." Her mother worried so over her only child's health that Sandy wasn't allowed to crawl on the floor. Until she was nine months old, she was kept safely imprisoned in a crib where no germs could get at her.

When she was four years old, she started kindergarten. Her mother expected it to be a very upsetting experience. She told friends: "Sandy's never been alone among total strangers in her life. She'll be so homesick, she won't stay more than an hour." But Sandy took to the idea of being with other children without a qualm. She sailed off to school, while her mother stayed home and wept.

"It wasn't that I had anything against home," Sandy said, "but I loved the children and I loved school." Every afternoon, she'd make up excuses to stay after class until her mother volunteered to help the teacher with the class. For several months, Mrs. Douvan spent three hours each school day monitoring the kindergarten.

When she was almost five, her mother and father separated. Today, Sandy says: "I know some children are unhappy when a family problem of that sort develops, but I would be misrepresenting my true feelings if I said I suffered any trauma at all. All it meant to me was that I changed schools, and I liked the new school even better than the old one."

On March 12, 1951, Sandra's mother remarried. "It was positively the most stupendous day in my life," she recalls. "I wore a bouffant while silk organza dress and a matching poke bonnet, and was out of my mind with excitement."

To Sandy her new stepfather was everything a man should be. During his four year courtship with her mother, Eugene Douvan lavished Sandy with gifts, love and masculine understanding. When they married, Sandy went along on the honeymoon.

"I remember walking down Atlantic City's famous boardwalk and Daddy Gene asking me what I would like to do that afternoon," Sandy said. "Did I want to ride the roller coaster? Ride a basket chair? Go to a movie? I remember Mama saying a shade plaintively, "Whose honeymoon is this, anyhow?'"

As soon as Eugene Douvan came into her life, Sandy accepted him as her father. Douvan was comfortably wealthy and very giving. He was the head of the house in every sense of the word and had a lot to say about Sandy's upbringing. He had a weak heart, but according to Sandy, "He lived each day completely."

A school fashion show started Sandy on her career. "All the girls in school were talking about what fun it would be to model in the show. I tried out, made up references and experience and was accepted. All through the show, Mama stood beside me and I could feel her shaking in time to my shivers." A representative from the Conover Modeling Agency saw the thin big-eyed youngster and signed her to a contract.

From that day on, Sandy learned what it meant to be a professional. There were long hours to keep, authority to respect and a world to live in that was completely without people her age. Within a year, she was one of the busiest models in the agency.

By the summer of 1956, she had made the transition from modeling to television with Douvan promising her the next step would be Hollywood. "You can do anything you want to, Sandy," he said. But on September 11th, Douvan died of a heart attack. On the 17th, still red-eyed from weeping but disciplined, Sandra was interviewed by producer Ross Hunter for a part in a Universal-International movie. Red eyes and all, Eugene Douvan was right, she could do anything she wanted.

By the time she met Bobby Darin, Sandy was a star of considerable stature in Hollywood. Her movies were guaranteed box office smashes, her name was unsullied and she was universally well liked and respected. With Hunter guiding her professional life and her mother guiding her personal life, Sandy jumped to a huge salary for an eighteen-year-old. But her social life was somewhat bleak.

There was little time for dates and most of those she did have were studio arranged. She'd never gone steady, never been lost in any near-serious romance. She told a reporter she couldn't wait until she was eighteen. "Then Mama won't have to be on the set so much." That must have been the beginning of her rebellion.

But Bobby Darin was no stranger to rule breaking. He was the second child born to Polly Walden Cassotto after she had suffered two miscarriages and her husband Sam's death during this pregnancy. Bobby was a very frail infant and doctors warned her not to expect him to live very long. But in the face of all these deaths, Polly not only expected him to live, but wrapped her life around that dream. Her greatest pleasure was to wake up during the night, go to his crib and to find him--amazingly enough--still alive. As he grew older her pleasure came from dedicating all her hours to him.

For Bobby was no "normal" child. He'd suffered four rheumatic fever attacks and was left with a bad heart. In the East Harlem slum he came from there was no room for a sickly child. He didn't fit in with the neighborhood kids, he couldn't take part in any sports with them and he was too intelligent to have much to talk to them about. To make up for his lack of friends, he spent most of his time with his mother and sister, Nina, many years his senior.

To keep their minds off the Welfare people who supported them and the tenement they lived in, they read stories to one another. Soon it was discovered that Bobby could not only read the stories, but he could act them out. And he could sing and mimic and dance. His sister says, "He was a real little ham right from the start." His mother, an ex-vaudevillian, recognized his talents and started encouraging him toward a career in show business. But he wasn't to be a run of the mill entertainer. Bobby Darin was going to be the very best. She had always promised him that.

"My career was the thing that was going to get me out of the slums," he says. "And my mother was such a beautiful person; if she thought it was good for my career, good for me, she'd throw herself out of a window."

His mother made him the man of the house and aware of his responsibilities. No matter how much she wanted to spend all her time with him, she made him independent of her. He respected her opinions--"He thought she was so bright, she could solve any problems" a friend says--but he made the decisions.

So the life Bobby was leading had two sides. On one hand, he was sickly. His health had to be constantly protected. On the other hand, he was the protector in the household. In the streets, he had no friends. At home he was surrounded by love.

As soon as he was old enough to learn about women, he decided he was going to marry someone like his mother. While he was still in his teens, he had an affair with a dancer thirteen years older than him. Misguidedly, he might have thought she was like his mother because of her age. But she wasn't like anybody's mother.

Aside from being a chronic liar, picking up with every man she met--"He's just my brother from out of town," she told Bobby--she also allegedly was a dope addict. "I went through hell with her until I realized what she was," Bobby says.

But she taught Bobby to be hard and to expect that people were out to hurt him. Don't give your feelings away, he learned, or you'll get banged around. Bobby grew up; he was no longer naive.

His career got started after months of hanging around managers' offices and telling everyone who'd listen how great he was going to be. He'd written a rock 'n' roll hit "Splish Splash" (it took twelve minutes to write), recorded it and became a success in the ranks of teenage singers. Eventually, he recorded "Mack the Knife" and became exposed to adult audiences. From then on, he was a big star. People like Sammy Davis Jr. and Jerry Lewis said he was the only real entertainer of his generation. His nightclub appearances were always SRO. And Bobby himself predicted he'd be a legend by the time he was twenty-five.

Instead of growing more content with his success he was more uneasy. His mother had died and he was stricken with grief because she never saw how successful he became. "I pit me against me and I always lose," he told this reporter. He made enemies. People talked about his affrontery, his total selfishness, his bad manners. Close friends said this was just a defense--the real Bobby Darin was sensitive and giving but he was afraid to show it. He was afraid of getting hurt again.

These were the conditions Sandra Dee met him under and those were the stories she had heard about him.

When he was first signed to co-star with her in UI's Come September, she reportedly didn't want to work with him. When they first met on the set in Italy she was cordial but reserved. She didn't like what she'd heard about him in print and she wasn't too impressed with him in person.

But Bobby was smitten. The first day he met her he turned to his brother-in-law and said, "That's the girl I'm going to marry." She was Hollywood aristocracy and she was beautiful. Blonde and petite, she resembles his mother. "And she's pure, like my mother," Bobby says. But Sandy remained disinterested.

It was her mother, Mary Douvan who first got friendly with Bobby. He'd take her to lunch and dinner dates always asking if she'd give her permission for Sandra to marry him. Mrs. Douvan thought he was kidding. They were too incongruous a couple. Bobby seemed much older than his twenty-four years. And Sandy didn't like him anyhow.

But Mary didn't notice that Sandy was beginning to come around. Bobby pursued her as relentlessly as he did his success. He sent her flowers, catered to her moods, constantly told her that he loved her. Finally, she began accepting dates with him, in a crowd at first and then alone. And every day he'd say, "Sandy will you marry me?" At first she laughed and ignored it. Then she started blushing and saying, "Oh, Bobby, don't act so silly." Still Mary didn't realize what was happening.

When they came back from Italy they announced their engagement. Even their closest friends were stunned; everyone thought their dates were just a publicity set-up for the movie. Sandy's mother was against it and Ross Hunter advised her to wait but Sandy didn't care what anyone said. She was in love, swept off her feet; and she said, she was "on Cloud Nine."

If Bobby felt proud of what he'd done, you couldn't blame him. Here was the boy who, he says, "can't pass a mirror without feeling unhappy" running off with the most beautiful prize in Hollywood. But he was also afraid. He told one columnist, "I only hope she's really in love with me, and not running away. I can make her happy if she lets me. I have all the patience in the world. I know I can. For me there's no turning back. It (his love) keeps forever and so help me God that's the way it always will be!"

Married only a few months, they've already run up against some problems. They had reconciled with Sandy's mother but it's been rumored that they've since split again. Exactly where the situation with Mary Douvan now rests no one knows. They've also had the problem of a two-career family. Sandy informed her studio that her 1961 schedule had to be built around Bobby's, she didn't want to be separated from him. When she was working on Tammy, Tell Me True, she flew to Las Vegas every weekend where Bobby was preparing a nightclub act. On some occasions, she reported back late for work. Every lateness ties up production, schedules, and brings up costs. Officially, the studio bosses have made no comment, but unofficially, they're said not to be too happy.

Also, when Bobby first met Sandra he thought he found a new peace within himself. "I never before had a girl to really care about," he said. He was quieter than he used to be, he lost a lot of his brashness and friends were quick to believe that this was a "new Bobby Darin." Unfortunately, reports from the Coast indicate that Bobby is once again driving himself and the people around him. If these reports are true, Sandy must be shocked by his behavior. In her protected life, there's never been any room for temper tantrums.

But Sandy and Bobby can be good for each other. Each of them has carried an ideal of the kind of person they wanted to marry and, in a way, they've each fulfilled that ideal. Sandy needed someone strong to take care of her and be unquestioned head of the house. Bobby's like that. In some ways, Bobby reminds Sandy of Eugene Douvan. And Bobby has always wanted a pure, innocent girl like his mother. Not only does Sandy physically resemble Mrs. Cassotto, but she's like her in many other ways. She's bright and talkative and, most important, willing to do almost anything for Bobby.

How good a chance do they have of making their marriage work? Despite different backgrounds and different temperaments, they apparently have the same needs. And they're in love.

As Sandy said: "If real love comes along, I won't dodge it just because it might not last forever. I will welcome it for whatever it brings."

They're taking a great romantic chance. And sometimes, it's just those big chances that work out.