Sandra Dee

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.

Dee was born Alexandra Zuck on April 23, 1942, in Bayonne, New Jersey, the only child of John Zuck and Mary ( Cimboliak) Zuck, who met as teenagers at a Russian Orthodox Church dance.

They married shortly afterward, but divorced before Dee was five years old.

She was of Carpatho-Rusyn ancestry and raised in the Orthodox faith; her son, Dodd Darin, wrote in his biographical book about his parents titled Dream Lovers that Dee's mother Mary and her aunt Olga [later Olga Duda] "were first generation daughters of a working-class Russian Orthodox couple", and Dee recalled, "we belonged to a Russian Orthodox church, and there was dancing at the social events."

She soon adopted the name Sandra Dee, becoming a professional model by the age of four and progressing to television commercials.

There has been debate as to Dee's actual birth year.

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.

However, the cryptstone her own family ordered gives 1942 as her year of birth.

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.

Dee's parents divorced in 1950 and her mother married real estate executive Eugene "Gene" Douvan, who reportedly sexually abused Dee after he married her mother.

Producer Ross Hunter claimed to have discovered Dee on Park Avenue in New York City with her mother when she was 12 years old.

Despite the damaging effects on her health, Dee earned $75,000 in 1956 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.

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.

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.

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 (1958).

She graduated from University High School in Los Angeles in June 1958 at age 16.

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.

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 became a teenage star for her performances in Imitation of Life and Gidget (both 1959), which made her a household name.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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 early 1980s.

The rest of the decade was marked by alcoholism, mental illness, and reclusiveness, particularly after her mother died in 1988.

Dee sought medical and psychological help in the early 1990s and died in 2005 of complications from kidney disease, brought on by lifelong anorexia nervosa.