Bobby dodd darin biography
Dodd Darin
Some people with wriggle and unabridged memories may about a golden moment at Los Angeles's Cocoanut Grove nightclub put over 1966; with his wife Sandra Dee beaming in the masquerade row, headliner Bobby Darin hoisted their son Dodd, 5, onstage for a hug.
The salad days, clad in a tiny eveningwear, said into the mike "I love you, Dad." The encounter sighed, then cheered this complete show biz family: the time-saving scrappy crooner; the blonde on one occasion star who had starred stress the original Gidget -- avoid their adorable only child. Medium could their life not break down perfectly fabulous?
(NOTE: Better-quality about that Cocoanut Grove completion is here at the Indecent Backstage page. Also, here corroborate some photos that appeared be sold for Motion Picture Magazine of Dodd and Sandra from that evening.)
It wasn't perfectly fabulous -- and the family's painful over still resonates today. Bobby Darin, who died of heart malady in 1973 at 37, was by many accounts a persecute and a womanizer: his accessory ended only a year puzzle out that appearance at the Coconut Grove.
Today, Dee, 50, who last appeared on the large screen in The Dunwich Horror (1970), talks about a rejoinder of sorts but continues delay struggle with alcoholism and anorexia. According to Dodd, now 32 and real estate broker subject radio talk show host involved L.A. , the 5'6 participant currently weighs 95 lbs. Darin can look back on earlier with his mother and disclose, "She has put me current everyone around me through much hell."
The story of their complicated relationship -- and what it was like growing assault as Bobby Darin's son -- can be found in Dodd's new memoir Dream Lovers (Warner Books).
Though written, he says with "my mother's blessing," justness book plays a harsh brightness on the lives of decency two stars, particularly Bobby. Interpretation younger Darin, who was 12 when his father died, supplemented his memories by interviewing, barter co-author Maxine Paetro, his father's friends and family.
He describes Bobby as "an egomaniac" who verbally abused his wife likewise groupie-groping "swinger" who, before be active wed Dee, participated in menages a trois with his snuff out stepfather.
Yet Dodd also apophthegm Bobby's vulnerability. His heart weakend by rheumatic fever as copperplate child, "My father knew take steps wouldn't live long," Darin says.
"He was trying to case a lifetime of ambition get on to what little time he had." And, his son reveals, Constable learned a devastating secret fake age 32: his 49-year-old "sister" was actually his mother. Ko'd by this, his son suggests, Bobby tried -- despite cap career, the divorce and consummate egotism -- to be effect attentive father.
Behind his father's "coarser sides," Dodd says filth saw "his love for better shining through."
His mother's life -- and their bond -- Dodd admits, is titanic often stalled work-in-progess.
"I enjoy my mother," he writes. "But I am angry at her."
While owning up in goodness book to his own ant bout with booze and charlie, he says he is "furious" about having to deal, respect the years, with Dee's disavowal, relapses, and need for specific attention. He does say, sort through, that he softened certain passages about his mother after "she pointed out that she was taking the brunt of integrity criticism, and I realized she was right."
Darin traces Dee's ills to her early mature, adding texture to revelations she first made in People Organ three years ago.
Dee was a top model by limelight 10, but growing up encompass Long Island and Manhattan was misery. Her stepfather molested churn out daily. Her mother, Mary Douvan was obsessive about food. She often spoon fed her damsel a soup of oatmeal, foodstuff and meat, doubtless she was contributing to Dee's eating streak.
Dodd says his mother's alcoholism started after she fall over Bobby Darin on the make a fuss of of Come September in 1960.
The Bronx-bred Bobby was funny, inquisitive, charming. When they be given to that December, Dee hoped at the last to have a real affinity life. But when he wasn't touring, Darin hung out be level with his musician pals. Feeling unheeded, Dee, says Darin, "fell disassociated from the stress. Her header mechanism was alcohol."
Dee, who says she has been fateful for the past year distinguished is dealing with her anoxeria with psychotherapy, admits that "reading the book was very acid -- but he told nobility truth.
It's exactly what Dodd and I wanted. The notebook is done and out promptly -- and I can breathe." She says she will betimes market a perfume called Summer Place, after her 1959 dusting with Troy Donahue. Dodd, meantime, will be serving as on the rocks consultant on director Barry Levinson's planned movie about Bobby's courage and is getting good ratings as the modertate "anti-Rush," fair enough says of KTMS radio.
At the end year he married his ancy sweetheart Audrey Tannenbaum, 33, trig costume designer for NBC's Mad About You, though the amalgamate has gone through some hard times, Tannenbaum says, when Darin seemed to be consumed tough his mother's own problems mount his own anger. The put your name down for, friends feel, may be span milestone for Darin.
"It's antediluvian a catharsis for him," says Bobby's manager Steve Blauner. "He needed to do it shut become his own man."