page_title: Sandra Dee
section_title: 1959–1965: Stardom
hierarchical_section_title: Sandra Dee / Life and career / 1959–1965: Stardom
caption_attribution_description: English: Sandra Dee in publicity still for Imitation of Life
context_page_description: Sandra Dee was an American actress. Dee began her career as a child model, working first in commercials, and then film in her teenage years. Best known for her portrayal of ingénues, Dee earned a Golden Globe Award as one of the year's most promising newcomers for her performance in Robert Wise's Until They Sail. She became a teenage star for her subsequent performances in Imitation of Life and Gidget, which made her a household name.
  By the late 1960s, her career had started to decline, and a highly publicized marriage to Bobby Darin ended in divorce. The year of her divorce, Dee's contract with Universal Pictures was dropped. She attempted a comeback with the 1970 independent horror film The Dunwich Horror, but rarely acted after this time, appearing only occasionally in television productions throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Dee's final years were marred by illness, and she died in 2005 of complications from kidney disease, brought on by a lifelong struggle with anorexia nervosa.
context_section_description: Dee's third film for Hunter had the biggest impact: Imitation of Life (1959), opposite Lana Turner. The film became a wild box office success, grossing over $50 million. At the time, it was Universal Pictures's highest-grossing film in history, and made Dee a household name. She was subsequently loaned to Columbia Pictures to play the titular role in the teenage beach comedy Gidget (1959), which was a solid hit, helping spawn the beach party genre and leading to two sequels, two television series and two television movies (although Dee did not appear in any of these). For a complete change of pace, Universal cast her opposite Audie Murphy in a Western romantic comedy, The Wild and the Innocent (1959), playing a tomboy. Warner Bros. borrowed her for another melodrama in the vein of Imitation of Life, A Summer Place (1959), opposite Troy Donahue as her romantic co-star. The film was a massive hit, and that year U.S. box office exhibitors voted her the 16th most popular star in the country.
  Hunter reunited Dee with Lana Turner and John Saxon in Universal's Portrait in Black (1960), a thriller that was a financial success despite receiving harsh reviews. Dee was the nation's seventh biggest star at the end of 1960. Peter Ustinov used her as the lead in the Cold War comedy Romanoff and Juliet (1961). Her romantic co-star was Universal's new heartthrob John Gavin, reuniting them from Imitation of Life.
  Dee and Gavin played together again in producer Hunter’s Tammy Tell Me True (1961), where Dee took over the Tammy role originated by Debbie Reynolds. It was popular; even more so was Come September (1961), where she worked with Bobby Darin in his major film acting debut (following a cameo in an earlier movie). She and Darin married after filming, on December 1, 1960. On December 16, 1961, she gave birth to their son, Dodd Mitchell Darin (also known as Morgan Mitchell Darin).
  In 1961, Dee still had three years on her Universal contract. She signed a new one for seven years. The newlyweds Dee and Darin appeared together in the Hunter romantic comedy If a Man Answers (1962). She appeared in the final "Tammy" film, Tammy and the Doctor (1963). She had another big hit in the comedy Take Her, She's Mine (1963), playing a character loosely based on Nora Ephron. That year, she was voted the 8th biggest star in the country; it would be her last appearance in the top ten. I'd Rather Be Rich (1964) was a musical remake of It Started with Eve, once again for producer Ross Hunter. She was reunited with Darin in That Funny Feeling (1965), then appeared in her last film at Universal under her contract with the spy comedy, A Man Could Get Killed (1966). Dee was also a singer and recorded some singles in the early 1960s including a cover version of 'When I Fall In Love'.
caption: Dee in Imitation of Life (1959)
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