Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee - By Their Son Dodd Darin [Mass Market Paperback]

Darin was an extraordinarily talented singer who became a pretty good actor; Dee was an extraordinarily beautiful child model who became a pretty good actress. Both were major stars when they married-she at age 16 and he at 24-and this is the fairly depressing story of their lives and of their brief marriage as told by their son. Dodd Darin relies on his own memory and on extensive recollections from the family's friends and associates. His father suffered from a heart condition that he knew would kill him at a relatively young age and that led him to concentrate on his career to a fanatical degree. His mother was a teenaged alcoholic, hobbled by an abusive childhood and an intrusive, overprotective mother who never permitted her to grow up. Their marriage was doomed from the start, and this book is their son's way of trying to deal with his conflicting feelings about their lives and his father's death. The book's tone varies from chatty to despairing but is always intensely personal, giving the reader the unsettling impression of eavesdropping on someone else's psychotherapy. Recommended only for large general collections.
--Rick Anderson, Contoocook, N.H.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

At first glance, a book about singer Bobby Darin and his onetime wife, actress Sandra Dee, would seem to be of interest only to their son, Dodd, who happens to be the book's author. But glance again. With the help of cowriter Maxine Paetro (oddly absent from the title page), Darin has fashioned a real page-turner--part insider's look, part expos{‚}e, part cri de coeur from the author, an injured bystander on the scene of a broken celebrity marriage. Those who remember Bobby and Sandra, stars of the late 1950s and early 1960s, will do so from his songs ("Mack the Knife," "Beyond the Sea") and her movies (A Summer Place, Gidget). Darin, a brash, sometimes unlikable scrambler, moved fast because a damaged heart ensured that he would die young. Dee, an American sweetheart, was a closet anorexic, sexually abused by her stepfather. Darin died in 1970 at age 35, but Dee survives, an alcoholic and a recluse. The book is peppered with quotes from celebrities, but its strength is the vivid chronicling of Dodd Darin's intense personal journey and his own observations of what life was like with two talented yet tormented people. Ilene Cooper --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The son of two of Hollywood's most famous stars, Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin tells the story of his parents. These seemingly perfect all-American idols hid dark secrets including illness, alcoholism, illegitimacy and sexual abuse.