Sandra Dee, the blond all-American girl next door whose star turns as "Gidget" and "Tammy" made her a teen idol in the 1960s, a status reinforced by her Hollywood marriage to pop singer Bobby Darin, died Sunday. She was 62.
Dee died at Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, said nursing supervisor Cynthia Mead. The actress had been hospitalized for the last two weeks for treatment of kidney disease, and had developed pneumonia, said Steve Blauner, a spokesman for Dee's son, Dodd Mitchell Darin.
The demure yet sensual Dee tugged America's heartstrings as the girl plus midget -- Gidget -- in the seminal film of that name in 1959. Teens and their parents alike hoped that she would make the right coming-of-age decisions between the rough-cut surfer played by Cliff Robertson and Moondoggie, played by James Darren. Somehow they knew the boys would always treat her with proper respect. She simply inspired that.
Sandra Dee -- The obituary of Sandra Dee in Monday's California section described the Mirror-News as a magazine. It was a newspaper. It also said she made only two movies with her husband, singer Bobby Darin: "Come September" (1961) and "If a Man Answers" (1962). They were also in "That Funny Feeling" (1965).
Though the actress' sparkling, perky image made America's teenage boys want to date her and teenage girls want to be her, Dee told interviewers over the years that her real life involved continuing struggles with anorexia, drug use and alcoholism.
Dee, who had been off-camera for decades, received fresh attention last year with the release of "Beyond the Sea," a biopic about her late husband, with Kevin Spacey playing Darin and Kate Bosworth portraying Dee. The real-life headline-and-limelight couple had a stormy but passionate marriage from 1960 until their divorce in 1967. Darin died of heart disease in 1973.
Spacey recently told Associated Press that Dee had approved of the film and told him she "loved it."
Dodd Darin, Dee and Darin's only child, wrote a book about his famous parents in 1994, "Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee," in which he detailed, among other things, his mother's anorexia, drug and alcohol problems. Though Dee found the book painful, she supported and approved of the project.
