Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee - By Their Son Dodd Darin

"Dream Lovers" is a daring book. Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee's son Dodd Darin sorts through his parents' shattered lives and marriage. His express purpose is to write definitively rather than risk seeing their story further distorted by others. He also seeks therapy: making sense of himself by exploring his parents' lives. In a fine writing job by collaborator Maxine Paetro, Dodd tracks their trail of secrets by talking to those who knew them best. They had deeper secrets than most. Bobby never knew who his real father was, a secret his mother and grandmother took to their graves with them. And Sandra's childhood sexual abuse by her stepfather - combined with her overprotective mother and the cocooning studio system - left her an eternal child who couldn't cope with life after her movie contract ended. I praise Dodd for so unflinchingly detailing their flaws while still loving them. One may argue it's precisely warts that sell such a book. And that's true to some extent. But reading this book may be most difficult for the Darin and Dee fans who are the most likely to read it in the first place. I'm in the first category, and this tarnished Bobby's shine for me - although perhaps I just have a more realistic view of him. I find it noble of Dodd that he is willing to write, say, that his father's brash arrogance was real, not just a press distortion. Or that his treatment of his birth family was shoddy and his financial provision for them, inexcusable. Or that said family really were such vulgarians as to make filial love difficult. Or that the Darin marriage may have sexually foundered because Sandra wasn't kinky enough to do threesomes or watch pornography with Bobby. This is not a hagiography. It took great courage and honesty of a son to write this candidly of his parents, while still wanting to build relationships with long-estranged relatives, and to regard affectionately the memories of those gone. He explores the mystery of Bobby's parentage. Some thought Bobby resembled "brother-in-law" and actual stepfather Charlie Maffia, a New York sanitation worker who helped raise him and was devoted to him. (Bobby never paid him more than $150 a week as his valet, and Charlie would have done better to remain a garbageman and at least retire with a pension, sister Vee opines.) Others thought the circumstances suggested Bobby's dad was a married mobster. But Vee recounts seeing their mother, waiting outside a doctor's office, visibly stunned at the sight of a man she then tells Vee was a friend of Bobby's father. Vee concludes it was the father himself, and that Nina's story revealed to Bobby in the 1960s - that Dad was a medical student she had a brief fling with and never told of the pregnancy - was true. Dodd is wounded by the darker view he develops of his grandmother Mary Douvan, whom he loved. Mary was a classic stage mother who wouldn't leave Sandra's side even when Sandra was grown. Dodd touches on, but doesn't seem to grasp, the key to Ma

So glad to see that the small Darin revival that was set off by the release of the movie "Beyond the Sea" has helped bring this book back in print. I made a point of taking it out of my local library before the movie even started filming, so that I would know the real story behind Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee before a Hollywood film could twist or omit facts. I was already a huge Bobby Darin fan by the time I started reading it, but I gained an even bigger appreciation for him and Sandra Dee, and an understanding of the demons that pained the both of them during their lives. Poor Sandra - I had no idea about the overbearing mother and sexually abusive stepfather that brought on her anoxeria and alcoholism. I loved that their son and co-author, Dodd Darin, was honest and didn't sugarcoat that faults, and that he devotes equal time to each of them in the book, chronicling in detail their childhoods, rise to fame, heartaches, and even post-divorce relationship (Bobby continued to spend evenings at Sandy's home after their marriage dissolved, proving to me that they never really fell out of love with each other.) At times it is sad to read, but extremely fascinating and you end the book feeling the immense love and respect that Dodd has for his parents. Highly recommended to anyone who is a fan of Darin, Dee, or both, or who wants to learn more about these two talented and beautiful people.

A detailed, well-written account of the lives of Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin as authored by their son. What is also interesting is that Sandra Dee's own comments are included, written in her voice, as if she is speaking to the reader. Her commentary is honest, sad, and painfully revealing; at times she sounds very detached, which makes it even more touching. Her onscreen image of a sweet, blonde teen-age virgin (as spoofed in the song "Look At Me I'm Sandra Dee" from the movie soundtrack "Grease") was the antithesis of what her life was really like. Starting at age 5, she was molested by her stepfather; as she matured, she was forced to submit to sex with him. Dee's mother knew about this, but turned a blind eye and lived vicariously through her daughter's movie career. Thanks to her dyfunctional mother and stepfather, Sandra developed a severe eating disorder which plagues her to this day. Of the two, I found Sandra's story to be the most interesting and the most tragic, although Darin's life wasn't a piece of cake, either. He struggled with a heart condition, living his life as a race against time, knowing that eventually his heart would give out. Once you start reading this book, you won't want to put it down. This book shows how two gifted young entertainers lived quite tortured and difficult lives once the cameras stopped rolling.