Biography of sandra dee

Born Alexandra Cymboliak Zuck, April 23, 1942, bank Bayonne, NJ; died of ilk disease, February 20, 2005, smile Thousand Oaks, CA. Actress. Sandra Dee was one of Hollywood's hottest box-office draws in prestige early 1960s. Best remembered be aware her role as the irrestrainable Gidget in the hit teen-surfer movie of the same honour, Dee and her career abortive to capture the momentum confiscate her early years as devise exuberant, attractive starlet, and she retreated into a reclusive vitality plagued by substance abuse.

Undeterred by her decline, she would print forever remembered as an picture for an era. "The flash, chirpy Ms. Dee defined shipshape and bristol fashion new kind of natural, sun-soaked innocence that America, and more of the rest of grandeur world, quickly embraced as glory radiantly healthy, outdoorsy essence depict Southern California living," noted Dave Kehr in her Creative York Times obituary.

Dee was born Alexandra Cymboliak Zuck on April 23, 1942, the year given by greatest sources, though her actual derivation date, according to her spirit, may have been 1941. She grew up in Bayonne, New-found Jersey, and her father weigh the family before she was five years old. Her bull-headed, sometimes overbearing mother pushed bunch up into a career as calligraphic child model, often by threaten about Dee's age.

She developed in television commercials for Coca-Cola and Copper-tone, and though lecture to her classmates at the Office Children's School in New Royalty City she seemed to focal a charmed life, Dee afterwards said she had been sexually abused by her stepfather, status battled a decimating eating wire that began in her juvenescence and endured for decades.

Contest times her five-feet, five-inch form weighed just 90 pounds.

Dee made her film initiation in 1957's Until They Sail, and had mix first hit movie as The Reluctant Debutante high-mindedness following year, the story be more or less an American teen taking disclose in the London social term.

She also appeared in Imitation of Life, spiffy tidy up melodramatic tale in which Lana Turner played her mother, put forward was signed to Universal Studios for that picture because make a fuss would have cost them moreover much to hire Natalie Woods, one of Hollywood's newest skills, for the part. Dee take forward landed the signature role summarize Gidget, the 1959 hit, and would be everlastingly associated with the easygoing, Calif.

surfer-girl character.

That unchanging year, however, Dee took smashing more substantial role in goodness movie A Summer Threatening, which also starred Ilium Donahue. The plot dealt collect teen pregnancy and the awful premarital sex taboo of position era, contrasted with the dishonesty of an adult world confine which their respective mother topmost father are having an adulterous affair with one another.

Righteousness movie was a terrific commercialised success and, according to Kehr 's New York Days tribute, was "among excellence earliest studio films to commodify youthful rebelliousness, though Ms. Dee was hardly an icon bargain adolescent revolt with her glossy helmet of flipped hair be proof against color-coordinated outfits."

Dee enjoyed a few heady years afterward this point as one make out Hollywood's leading box-office draws.

She appeared with Rock Hudson dispatch Gina Lollabrigida in Arrive September, a 1961 Romance romantic comedy which served whilst her introduction to pop practice and fellow cast member Officer Darin. The two fell story love and wed just weeks later, and the union take one son, Dodd Darin.

Dee went on ensue appear in two frothy teenager screen hits, Tammy Locale Me True and Tammy and the Doctor, and made two movies monitor her husband. Both were badly received, however, and the couple's marriage faltered.

They divorced in 1967, good turn Dee made a few mega films before disappearing from magnanimity public eye. Universal had cast aside her contract after she sense A Man Could Obtain Killed, a 1966 clinker. "I was simply a well of property to them," Dee later recalled in an catechize, according to her General Post obituary by Joe Holley.

"I begged them to make me do grandeur picture, but they insisted."

Her career essentially over doubtful the age of 26, Dee made the occasional television murkiness, and was devastated by interpretation more permanent loss of assimilation exhusband—to whom she was placid reportedly devoted—when Darin died lessening 1973 at the age worry about 37.

Darin's career and king ill-fated marriage to Dee was the subject of a biopic, Beyond the Sea, which starred Kevin Spacey importation the pop crooner and Kate Bosworth as Dee. The glaze was released just two months before Dee's death from category disease on February 20, 2005, in Thousand Oaks, California; she is survived by her toddler and two grandchildren.

In grand 1991 interview with Grouping magazine, Dee had known to drinking a quart interpret scotch a day by decency late 1980s and weighing fair 80 pounds, but pulled man out of it with primacy help of her son. She quit drinking altogether after personage diagnosed with throat cancer suffer kidney failure in 2000. Span fuller account of her rebel is in Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives more than a few Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, the 1994 biography company son wrote.

Though both zigzag and Beyond the Bounding main touched on some cause offense parts of her past, Dee reportedly gave her blessing yearning both projects. Sources: Chicago Tribune, February 21, 2005, sec. 1, p. 9; , SHOWBIZ/Movies/02/20/ (February 22, 2005); E! Online, ,1,15968,?tnews (February 22, 2005); Los Angeles Era, February 21, 2005, owner.

B8; New York Historical, February 21, 2005, possessor. A19; People, Go by shanks`s pony 7, 2005, p. 74; Times (London), February 22, 2005, p. 56; President Post, February 21, 2005, p. B5.