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Actress Sandra Dee dead at age 63
BOB THOMAS
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES - Sandra Dee, the blond beauty who attracted a huge teen audience with films such as "Gidget" and "Tammy and the Doctor" and had a headlined marriage to pop singer Bobby Darin, died Sunday morning of complications from kidney disease. Her family said 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.
She had been hospitalized nearly two weeks, said Steve Blauner, who represents Darin's estate and is a longtime family friend. He said Dee had been on dialysis for about four years.
"She didn't have a bad bone in her body," he told The Associated Press in a phone interview. "When she was a big star in the pictures and a top five at the box office, she treated the grip the exact same way she treated the head of the studio. She meant it. She wasn't phony."
Born Alexandra Zuck in Bayonne, N.J., on April 23, 1941, 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,'" she recalled. "Somehow it stuck and when (producer) Ross Hunter signed me to my first picture ... 'Sandra Dee' was the name they gave me."
At Universal Studios, Dee was cast mostly in teen-appeal 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 adult films, such as "Imitation of Life," "A Portrait In Black" and "Romanoff and Juliet."
After a one-month courtship, Dee married Bobby Darin (born Robert Cossotto) in Elizabeth, N.J., in 1960. A son, Dodd Mitchell, was born to the couple the following year.
At the height of her fame, Dee was arguably the biggest female teen idol of her time.
"She was Gidget, and she was Tammy, and for a time she was young America's ideal," film historian Leonard Maltin once said of her.
In 1965, with her divorce with Darin dampening her teen appeal, Dee was dropped by Universal.
"I thought they were my friends," she said in a 1965 interview 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."
Dee made an independent film "Rosie!" (1968), starring with Rosalind Russell, but her movie career dwindled after that.
Her name was resuscitated in 1978 with the film "Grease," which featured the song "Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee" that mocked her squeaky-clean image. But Dee didn't mind, Blauner said.
"She always had a big laugh about it. She had a great sense of humor," he said.
Blauner said her favorite films were the ones she made with Darin, adding that despite their divorce the singer remained the love of her life. Darin, who had rheumatic fever as a child, died following heart surgery in 1973. He was 37.
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. She said she sought solace in pills and alcohol, hitting rock bottom after her mother died in 1988.
"I couldn't function," she told People, adding 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.
Although the "Sandra Dee" song in "Grease" brought her renewed attention, Dee led a generally reclusive life in recent years. Her last film credit was for the 1983 movie "Lost."
Actor Kevin Spacey, who portrayed Darin in "Beyond the Sea," last year's film biography of the singer, said Dee had seen the movie and approved.
"She called me last week and said she loved it," Spacey told an interviewer last year.
Actress Kate Bosworth had played Dee's part.
Private services were pending.
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Associated Press Writer Laura Wides contributed to this report.
My sympathies, Jixby.
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