Bobby dodd darin biography
Dodd Darin
Some people with unconventional and unabridged memories may recollect a golden moment at Los Angeles's Cocoanut Grove nightclub overload 1966; with his wife Sandra Dee beaming in the anterior row, headliner Bobby Darin hoisted their son Dodd, 5, onstage for a hug.
The youngster, clad in a tiny tuxedo, said into the mike "I love you, Dad." The consultation sighed, then cheered this complete show biz family: the slick scrappy crooner; the blonde onetime star who had starred walk heavily the original Gidget -- celebrated their adorable only child. In all events could their life not affront perfectly fabulous?
(NOTE: Work up about that Cocoanut Grove carrying out is here at the Flavor Backstage page. Also, here authenticate some photos that appeared suspend Motion Picture Magazine of Dodd and Sandra from that evening.)
It wasn't perfectly fabulous -- and the family's painful anterior still resonates today. Bobby Darin, who died of heart illness in 1973 at 37, was by many accounts a persecute and a womanizer: his wedlock ended only a year later that appearance at the Coconut Grove.
Today, Dee, 50, who last appeared on the sketchy screen in The Dunwich Horror (1970), talks about a return of sorts but continues object to struggle with alcoholism and anorexia. According to Dodd, now 32 and real estate broker careful radio talk show host send out L.A. , the 5'6 contestant currently weighs 95 lbs. Darin can look back on historical with his mother and unburden, "She has put me keep from everyone around me through specified hell."
The story of their complicated relationship -- and what it was like growing release 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," high-mindedness book plays a harsh shine on the lives of justness two stars, particularly Bobby. Nobleness younger Darin, who was 12 when his father died, supplemented his memories by interviewing, plea bargain co-author Maxine Paetro, his father's friends and family. He describes Bobby as "an egomaniac" who verbally abused his wife primate groupie-groping "swinger" who, before illegal wed Dee, participated in menages a trois with his aside stepfather.
Yet Dodd also apophthegm Bobby's vulnerability.
His heart weakend by rheumatic fever as tidy child, "My father knew no problem wouldn't live long," Darin says. "He was trying to concise a lifetime of ambition be selected for what little time he had." And, his son reveals, Fuzz learned a devastating secret slate age 32: his 49-year-old "sister" was actually his mother. Numb by this, his son suggests, Bobby tried -- despite jurisdiction career, the divorce and coronate egotism -- to be authentic attentive father.
Behind his father's "coarser sides," Dodd says proscribed saw "his love for unkind shining through."
His mother's life -- and their connection -- Dodd admits, is ending often stalled work-in-progess.
"I adoration my mother," he writes. "But I am angry at her."
While owning up in representation book to his own immature bout with booze and dimwit, he says he is "furious" about having to deal, cheer the years, with Dee's repudiation, relapses, and need for shared attention. He does say, notwithstanding that, that he softened certain passages about his mother after "she pointed out that she was taking the brunt of position criticism, and I realized she was right."
Darin traces Dee's ills to her early life, adding texture to revelations she first made in People Monthly three years ago.
Dee was a top model by normal 10, but growing up include Long Island and Manhattan was misery. Her stepfather molested see daily. Her mother, Mary Douvan was obsessive about food. She often spoon fed her colleen a soup of oatmeal, egg and meat, doubtless she was contributing to Dee's eating chaos.
Dodd says his mother's alcoholism started after she reduction Bobby Darin on the harden of Come September in 1960.
The Bronx-bred Bobby was facetious, inquisitive, charming. When they get married that December, Dee hoped ultimately to have a real descent life. But when he wasn't touring, Darin hung out jar his musician pals. Feeling unheeded, Dee, says Darin, "fell living apart from the stress. Her brick mechanism was alcohol."
Dee, who says she has been teetotal for the past year president is dealing with her anoxeria with psychotherapy, admits that "reading the book was very unbroken -- but he told significance truth.
It's exactly what Dodd and I wanted. The spot on is done and out consequential -- and I can breathe." She says she will presently market a perfume called Summer Place, after her 1959 integument with Troy Donahue. Dodd, in the meanwhile, will be serving as keen consultant on director Barry Levinson's planned movie about Bobby's assured and is getting good ratings as the modertate "anti-Rush," significant says of KTMS radio.
Surname year he married his minority sweetheart Audrey Tannenbaum, 33, fastidious costume designer for NBC's Mad About You, though the twosome has gone through some devastating times, Tannenbaum says, when Darin seemed to be consumed incite his mother's own problems very last his own anger. The whole, friends feel, may be top-notch milestone for Darin.
"It's back number a catharsis for him," says Bobby's manager Steve Blauner. "He needed to do it tutorial become his own man."