Sandra Dee (born Alexandra Zuck; April 23, 1942 – February 20, 2005) 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 (1957). She became a teenage star for her performances in Imitation of Life, Gidget and A Summer Place (all released in 1959), which made her a household name.
According to her son’s book, Dee was born in 1944, but she and her mother falsely inflated her age by two years to find more work modeling and acting, which she began at a very young age. Legal records, including her California divorce record from Bobby Darin, as well as the Social Security Death Index and her own cryptstone all give her year of birth as 1942. In a 1967 interview with the Oxnard Press-Courier, she acknowledged being 18 in 1960 when she first met Darin, whom she wed three months later.
Producer Ross Hunter claimed to have discovered Dee on Park Avenue in New York City with her mother when she was 12 years old. In a 1959 interview, Dee recalled that she “grew up fast,” surrounded mostly by older people, and was “never held back in anything [she] wanted to do.”
During her modeling career, Dee attempted to lose weight to “be as skinny as the high-fashion models,” although an improper diet “ruined [her] skin, hair, nails—everything.” Having lost weight, her body was unable to digest any food that she ate, and it took the help of a doctor to regain her health. According to Dee, she “could have killed [herself]” and “had to learn to eat all over again.” Despite the damaging effects on her health, Dee earned $75,000 in 1956 (equivalent to $870,000 in today) working as a child model in New York, which she used to support herself and her mother after the death of her stepfather in 1956. According to sources, Dee’s large modeling salary was more than what she would later earn as an actress. While modeling in New York, she attended the Professional Children’s School.
Ending her modeling career, Dee moved from New York to Hollywood in 1957. She graduated from University High School in Los Angeles in June 1958 at age 16. Her onscreen debut was in the 1957 MGM film Until They Sail, directed by Robert Wise. To promote the film, Dee appeared in a December issue of Modern Screen in a column by Louella Parsons, who praised Dee and compared her appearance and talent to those of Shirley Temple. Dee’s performance made her one of that year’s winners of the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress.
MGM cast Dee as the female lead in The Reluctant Debutante (1958), with John Saxon as her romantic costar. It was the first of several films in which Dee appeared with Saxon. She provided the voice of Gerda for the English dub of The Snow Queen (1957). The stress of her newfound success and the effects of sexual abuse, caused Dee to struggle with chronic anorexia nervosa, and her kidneys temporarily failed.
In 1958, Dee signed with Universal Pictures and was one of the company’s last contract players prior to the dissolution of the studio system. She had a lead role in The Restless Years (1958) for producer Ross Hunter, opposite Saxon and Teresa Wright. She followed this with another film for Hunter, A Stranger in My Arms (1959).
Dee’s third film for Hunter was of greater impact than the first two: Imitation of Life (1959), starring Lana Turner. The film became a box-office success, grossing more than $50 million. It was the highest-grossing film in Universal’s history and made Dee a household name. She was lent to Columbia Pictures to play the title 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 those).
Universal next cast Dee as a tomboy opposite Audie Murphy in the Western romantic comedy The Wild and the Innocent (1959). Warner Bros. borrowed her for another melodrama in the vein of Imitation of Life, A Summer Place (1959), opposite Troy Donahue as her romantic costar. The film was a massive hit, and that year American box office exhibitors voted Dee the 16th-most popular star in the country.
