Gidget Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: At the height of her spectacularly short-lived fame, coverage of everything from her dietary habits to her taste in men was enormous, with approximately 15 magazine articles appearing every month. The thing is, it all happened so fast, was over practically before it began, that we can almost be forgiven for misconstruing her as a cultural simulacrum: a blip on the monitor, a media invention, an adorable incarnation of a feminine ideal of the reluctant or unwitting nymphet, rather than a flesh-and-blood creature with needs and wishes (not to mention raging demons) of her own. The lightning speed with which Sandra Dee was first heralded and then discarded may have been just another example of the ”now you see her, now you don’t” phenomenon endemic to the fever-dream of Hollywood, but it also suggests the dark ”Miss Lonelyhearts” side of the American manufacture of celebrity — the ruthlessness that drives it and the despair it feeds off. She went from being discovered in 1956, at 12, to winning a Golden Globe Award in 1958, to being hailed by The Motion Picture Herald in 1959 as the ”Number One Star of Tomorrow,” based on her promising pigtailed debut in the sterling weepie ”Until They Sail” as well as her performance in ”The Reluctant Debutante.” Less than a decade later, her career all but ended when she was dropped by Universal, after her divorce, at age 22, from the crooner Bobby Darin. ”Sometimes I feel like a has-been who never was,” Dee told The Newark Evening News in 1967.
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Sandra Dee – IMDb: Sandra Dee, Actress: Gidget. Sandra Dee was born Alexandria Zuck on April 23, 1942 in Bayonne, New Jersey, to Mary (Cymboliak) and John Zuck. She was of Carpatho-Rusyn descent. 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…
Screen Star Sandra Dee Dies at 62: Sandra Dee, the blonde teen queen who starred in Gidget and was once married to singer Bobby Darin, died Sunday at age 62. She passed…
Sandra Dee Dead At 62: Actress Leaves Legacy Of Film Roles Including ‘Gidget,’ ‘Tammy’
Sandra Dee Dead At 62: Actress Leaves Legacy Of Film Roles Including ‘Gidget,’ ‘Tammy’
Beyond Miss Dee: Sandra Dee Grows Up | Interviews | Roger Ebert: You aren’t going to believe this, but Sandra Dee is an all-right chick. The first thing she said was: “Well, do you want the party line? You know, about my mother and my new mink coat, and how I feel about my divorce, and how much I love to cook, and how I’m really just a little ole homebody at heart?”
Gidget Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: At the height of her spectacularly short-lived fame, coverage of everything from her dietary habits to her taste in men was enormous, with approximately 15 magazine articles appearing every month. The thing is, it all happened so fast, was over practically before it began, that we can almost be forgiven for misconstruing her as a cultural simulacrum: a blip on the monitor, a media invention, an adorable incarnation of a feminine ideal of the reluctant or unwitting nymphet, rather than a flesh-and-blood creature with needs and wishes (not to mention raging demons) of her own. The lightning speed with which Sandra Dee was first heralded and then discarded may have been just another example of the ”now you see her, now you don’t” phenomenon endemic to the fever-dream of Hollywood, but it also suggests the dark ”Miss Lonelyhearts” side of the American manufacture of celebrity — the ruthlessness that drives it and the despair it feeds off. She went from being discovered in 1956, at 12, to winning a Golden Globe Award in 1958, to being hailed by The Motion Picture Herald in 1959 as the ”Number One Star of Tomorrow,” based on her promising pigtailed debut in the sterling weepie ”Until They Sail” as well as her performance in ”The Reluctant Debutante.” Less than a decade later, her career all but ended when she was dropped by Universal, after her divorce, at age 22, from the crooner Bobby Darin. ”Sometimes I feel like a has-been who never was,” Dee told The Newark Evening News in 1967.
Sandra Dee: Sandra Dee became the “Queen of Teens” in 1950s Hollywood, appearing in such films as Gidget and A Summer Place.
My botty best at summarizing from Wikipedia: Sandra Dee (born Alexandra Zuck; April 23, 1942 – February 20, 2005) was an american actress . she began her career as a child model, working first in commercials, and then film in her teenage years dee’s final years were marred by illness, and she died in 2005 of complications from kidney disease . she was of carpatho-rusyn ancestry, and raised in the Russian Orthodox faith . there has been some dispute as to Dee’s actual birth year, with evidence pointing to 1942 and 1944 . legal records, including her divorce record from Bobby darin, give her year of birth as 1942 . in a dee’s parents divorced in 1950, and her mother married a man who had sexually abusing Sandra . during her modeling career, Dee attempted to lose weight to “be as skinny as the high-fashion models” Dee’s onscreen debut was in the 1957 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) film Until They Sail . to promote the film, Dee appeared in a column by Louella parsons . her performance made her one of that year’s winners of the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress .MGM cast her as the female lead in The Reluctant Debutante (1958), with John dee was loaned to Columbia Pictures to play the titular role in the beach comedy Gidget (1959) the film was a solid hit, and she was voted the 16th most popular star in the country . she Dee was the nation’s seventh biggest star at the end of 1960 . worked with Bobby darin in his major film acting debut . married after filming, on December 1, 1960. Dee still had three years on her Universal contract, signed a new one for seven years . the newlyweds appeared together in the Hunter romantic comedy If a man answers . dee was a singer and recorded some singles in the early 1960s including a cover version of ‘When I Fall In Love’ she rarely acted following her 1967 divorce from Bobby Darin. in 1967 interview with Roger Ebert, dee reflected on her experience in the studio system . she found the ingénue image that had been foisted on her constricting . little Sandra Dee isn’ (1967) which was a mild success. (1967). The film was not a success. Dee appeared in the 1970 American international pictures occult horror film The Dunwich Horror . she refused to be nude in the film’s final sequence, which was written in the screenplay . Dee took roles dee’s final film performance was in the low-budget drama Lost (1983) she battled anorexia nervosa, depression, and alcoholism for many years . she quit drinking altogether after being she was interred in a crypt at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood Hills, California . ISBN 978-0-44651-768-3. Kashner, Sam; MacNair, Jennifer (2002). The Bad & the Beautiful: Hollywood in the Fifties. ISBN 978-0-39332-436-5. Lisanti, Thomas (2017). Hollywood Surf and Beach Movies: The First Wave, 1959-1969. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. Staggs, Sam (2010). Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film Actors: From the Silent Era to 1965. 1. New York: Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 978-1-557-83551-2.CS1 maint: St. Martin’s Griffin. ISBN 978-0-31260-555-1 . Wayne, Jane Ellen (2003). Golden Girls of MGM: Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly and Others. New York: Carroll & Graf. “Gidget Doesn’ Sandra Dee (March 18, 1991). “Learning to Live Again: A Former Teen Queen Shakes Free of Her Humiliating Past to End Years of Self-Hate and Loneliness”. People Magazine. 35 (10). Retrieved Profile of Sandra Dee; accessed March 24, 2014.
