Sandra Dee Dies
 

Sandra Dee, who starred as Gidget and as Tammy in Tammy And The Bachelor has died.

Feb 20, 4:44 PM (ET)

By BOB THOMAS

(AP) Actress Sandra Dee, portraying a nurse's helper in the motion picture production "Tammy and the...
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LOS ANGELES (AP) - Actress Sandra Dee, the blond beauty who attracted a large teen audience in the 1960s with films such as "Gidget" and "Tammy and the Doctor" and had a headlined marriage to pop singer Bobby Darin, died Sunday. She was 63.

Dee died at 5:57 a.m. at the Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, said Cynthia Mead, nursing supervisor.

Mead said Dee's family requested that no other details be released. CNN reported that Dee had been undergoing treatment at the hospital for two weeks for complications of kidney disease and pneumonia.

At Universal Studio, Dee was cast mostly in teen movies such as "The Reluctant Debutante,""The Restless Years,""Tammy Tell Me True" and "Take Her She's Mine."


Occasionally, she was able to do secondary roles in other films, such as "Imitation of Life,""A Portrait In Black" and "Romanoff and Juliet."

After a one-month courtship, Dee married Darin in Elizabeth, N.J., in 1960. A son, Dodd Mitchell, was born to the couple the following year.

In 1965, with her divorce from Darin dampening her teen appeal, Dee was dropped by Universal.

"I thought they were my friends," she said in an interview that year with The Associated Press, referring to her former bosses. "But I found out on the last picture ('A Man Could Get Killed') that I was simply a piece of property to them. I begged them not to make me do the picture, but they insisted."

Born Alexandra Zuck in Bayonne, N.J., Dee became a model while in grade school.

In a mid-career interview with The Associated Press, she explained her name change: "I used to sign vouchers and sign-out sheets with 'Alexandra Dee.' Somehow it stuck." When she was signed to her first film, she said, "'Sandra Dee' was the name they gave me."

Dee made an independent film "Rosie!" (1968), starring with Rosalind Russell, but her movie career dwindled after that.

In a March 1991 interview with People magazine, Dee said she was sexually abused as a child by her stepfather and pushed into stardom by her mother. Dee, who turned to pills and alcohol, said she hit bottom after her mother died in 1988.

"I couldn't function," she told People, adding that she began drinking more than a quart of scotch a day as her weight fell to 80 pounds. She said she stayed home almost constantly for three years.

Dee credited her son with helping her turn her life around. She began seeing a therapist regularly and hoped to land a job on a TV series.

Kate Bosworth portrayed Dee in last year's movie "Beyond the Sea," a biography of Darin.

Actor Kevin Spacey, who played Darin the film, has said Dee, who was living as a virtual recluse in Los Angeles, approved of the film. "She called me...and said she loved it," he said last year.

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Associated Press Writer Laura Wides contributed to this report.

That is so sad- she was so young too.
I have recorded a movie with her in it with Bobby Darin, the movie where they first met and fell in love, Come September. It's a good movie. I knew that she had problems but I didn't expect her to die. At least she is out of pain and with the man she loved for the rest of her life.

My thoughts to Dodd and family.

is true very young with 62 Years...


Sandra Dee was born Alexandria Zuck on April 23, 1942 in Bayonne, New Jersey. Her mother envisioned a show business career for her daughter and would often lie about her age in order to get Sandy where she wanted to go. For example, her mother enrolled her in school early so she could have a head start. Sandy was only four years old when she entered the second grade. Sandra was an extremely pretty young lady, which enabled her to get into modeling. In fact she was already very successful at her craft by the time she was 12 years old. This in turn led to television commercials for local companies, an added benefit for the young model. Through her mother's prodding and the talent scouts, Sandra was signed to do a movie when she was 14 called UNTIL THEY SAILED, released in 1957. While the film didn't exactly top the charts, it would lay the foundation for Sandra's career. The new young actress was then signed to two more films for 1958, THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE and THE RESTLESS YEARS, the latter with a young actor, John Saxon. In 1959, Sandra appeared in five productions with GIDGET and A SUMMER PLACE being the two most popular. Sandra was 17 years old and becoming the heartthrob of teenage boys all across America. In 1960, Sandra appeared in only one film, PORTRAIT IN BLACK, but is remembered by her for something else. She married teen idol Bobby Darin in December that year. It may have sunk a few teen boys' hearts, but most still were enamored of her. Her work, once again, took off. The 1961 releases were COME SEPTEMBER, ROMANOFF AND JULIET, and as Tammy Tyree in TAMMY TELL ME TRUE. Sandra had replaced the ever-popular Debbie Reynolds in the Tammy series, but the film and its 1963 sequel, TAMMY AND THE DOCTOR, didn't do all that well at the box-office. The films were now slowing for Sandra. The last few that she made were I'D RATHER BE RICH (1964), THAT FUNNY FEELING (1965), A MAN COULD GET KILLED (1966), DOCTOR, YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING (1967), and ROSIE! (1968). Her career was effectively over at 26. She had divorced Bobby Darin in 1967 and it was hard to get a role in films when she was looked at as a divorcee rather than a competent actress who could play parts other than a teenager. Sandra did nail down the part of Nancy Wagner in 1970's The Dunwich Horror (1970). After four made for television movies in the 1970s, Sandra played in her last film for the silver screen, Lost (1983).