It all happened one Sunday evening....I was in my study, reading. The doorbell rang. I thought to myself: "It can't be a friend," because I discourage all my friends from visiting me Sundays. More about this later. I figured it must be a telegram from Western Union.
I went to the door, opened it, and there stood Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin, laughing and jumping like two kids.
"Guess what, Ross!" Sandy said.
Bobby didn't give me time to guess. "We just bought the house next door!"
I was delighted, of course. After all, I'd kind of raised Sandy ever since she first arrived in Hollywood. I told them how delighted I was. At least, I had started to when Sandy took my right hand, Bobby my left and they bodily dragged me out the doorway, across the lawn and over to the place they would soon call home.
It's a large house, a lovely house. Modern. Built around a swimming pool. With exceptionally pretty gardens. And, like my place, overlooks a magnificent view of Los Angeles.
In those next few minutes Sandy and Bobby breathlessly told me their plans. I can't, of course, remember everything they said. In fact, it was a little hard even at the time to hear them since they were both talking at once. But I do remember Bobby's voice rising above the din at one point and saying:
"And this is going to be our projection room, Ross, our own little theater where we can watch movies at home."
"Going pretty Hollywood, eh?" I kidded him.
"Well," Bobby said, "more important than that, we can stay home with the baby at night instead of leaving him with baby-sitters, and all that stuff."
Too, I remember Sandy saying at one point:
"And we're going to do the entire house in shades of black and white and gray, Ross. With the furniture in brighter colors. A little red here, for instance. Some blue here. Yellow there. Mauve over there."
When Sandy was through talking, I said to her, "All this is going to cost you a pretty penny, by the time you're finished with it. You know that, Sandy, don't you?"
Whereupon she nodded, "Oh sure," she said, and she laughed and said, "Sure. I guess so. But what else can we do if we want our home to look like the set of a Ross Hunter movie?"
Actually, about a year has passed since that night we all stood in those vacant rooms together. And the truth of the matter is that Sandy and Bobby have spent about as much time on an actual Ross Hunter set as they've spent in their new home.
You see, we three recently made a picture called If A Man Answers. Now, I don't want to bore you with the problems of movie making. But when we started the picture it did present a problem.
First of all, Sandy hadn't made a picture in about nine months, due to her pregnancy, and she was a little nervous about getting back to work.
Second, this was Bobby's first real starring role. The script was for a high comedy. And, as usual, there were those skeptics around who would say, "But Ross, how can you trust a newcomer with lines and situations like these?"
Well, as I knew all along, it turned out that there'd been nothing to worry about. If Sandy had been nervous, she didn't show it a minute after she arrived on the set that first day and realized that she was being welcomed back with the full star treatment. She had her own special dressing room. She would wear 32 gorgeous ensembles and about a million dollars' worth of jewels. She knew that first day, walking onto the set, realizing all this, that she'd "arrived" as a Hollywood star. And that, believe me, squelched any jitters Sandy might have had.
As for Bobby, from that day, he did his scenes with perfect comedy timing (after all, he's a singer and if there's one thing a good singer knows it's timing). And so that problem was solved.
Those next few months working on the picture were a ball. For everyone.
I had an awful lot of fun, too--something producers rarely have, by the way. But I must say that the greatest sources of my pleasure were Sandy and Bobby themselves. Not the way he'd burst into song from time to time. Or the way she'd be clowning at times, breaking everyone up. But rather from observing them as a working team. As actors. As professionals. They showed, for one thing, absolutely no temperament. They did something that few co-stars do--they rehearsed together when there was a break in the shooting. And, best of all, they were so much in love that the beauty of it came across in the playing of their roles together.
Now, please understand one thing about Sandy and Bobby. They are not the type of Young-Marrieds who advertise their love like two neon signs on opposite sides of Times Square, winking and blinking away at one another 24 hours a day.
But sometimes even in public this love of theirs will out, so to speak.
Like the time at the end of the picture, at the huge cast party. Bobby really endeared himself to everyone by putting on a show called The Rushes Were Great (a take-off on me, who'd run onto the set late every afternoon and, having just seen the previous day's shooting, would shout, "I just saw the rushes. They're great. Great!").
Well, my point is that the show Bobby put on that last day was really something spectacular. He sang. He danced. He joked. He sang some more. The applause was deafening. It was by far the best cast party any of us had ever attended. And during it, Sandy--who was seated beside me--glowed with pride.
At one point during the show she took my arm and she said to me, "Ross--" "Yes?" I said. "My husband--isn't he wonderful?" she said, very softly. And I felt that their whole love story, their whole private love story, was contained in those few whispered words of Sandy's....
I was the first person who knew anything about Bobby and Sandy being in love.
She phoned me from Rome, I remember. Where they were making Come September. About two years ago, it was.
"Hello? Mr. Hunter?" she said. Mr. Hunter! I knew something was up. "Hi, Sandy," I said. "How are you?" There was a very short pause. Then: "I'm engaged." "Wonderful," I said. All the way from Rome, I could hear the gasp. "But you're kidding," she said. "You don't even know to whom." "I know you must love him, whoever he is," I said.
And she said, "It's Bobby. Bobby Darin." "Wonderful," I said again. Another gasp. "But you don't even know him," Sandy said. "You know him," I said, "and that's all that's important."
Then I said: "Now look, Sandy. I want you to do me just one favor. I want you to enjoy this courtship of yours. I know it's been very sudden. And I know you haven't had much experience with boys. Well, have a fine time with this boy you love. You understand? I want you to start dating him. Go out. Be with him as much as you can. I want you to see, know what it's like to have a boy friend. I even want you to start necking in cars with him."
Sandy laughed a little after that. Then she cried a little. "Oh, Ross," she kept saying over and over (she was calling me by my first name again, finally), "oh, Ross--"
"At twenty dollars a minute," I teased her, "I think you'd better hang up, Sandy, and write me the rest."
"Oh, Ross--" she said. "Just one more thing. I'm so grateful to you for not being against us. I'm so honestly and sincerely grateful .... "
It's true, though. I was never against Sandy's decision to marry Bobby. Though some other people were. I guess they felt that he was too much of a character, a risk. And that Sandy was much too young.
Well, yes. Sandy was only 17. But one thing Sandy had always had were two feet planted squarely on the ground. Her biggest aim in life was to search for contentment. And love.
I remember the first time I saw her, the little movie star-to-be. It was five years ago. I was looking for a girl to play the ingenue in my first picture, The Restless Years. I became determined to build my own star. I tested 500 girls, I remember. A lot of them were good. Tuesday Weld and Sandra Church were among those I tested, among those who've made it since. But none of them had the particular quality I was looking for at the time. Then in New York one day I was walking down Park Avenue when I saw her. She was standing in front of an office building. She was a little blonde girl. She was wearing too much makeup. Her eyes were red from crying--I learned later that her stepfather, whom she adored, had just died. She was only 14. I asked her her name. "Sandra," she said.
I introduced myself and asked her to come read for me. She said, "Only if I can study the script first." I liked this in her. It showed an intelligence that I liked. I watched her very carefully those first few days we worked and tested together. And I could see right off that she was a very fine young girl, brought up to do the nicest things. She represented, in fact, the kind of kid I might want to have as a daughter someday.
As for her roles as wife and mother. She's the best in both categories, I feel.
Her love for her husband, very simple, consists of the fact that she loves him. Adores him. It's that simple. She loves him so much, in fact, that she's even learning how to cook for him--something she frankly was never interested in before, and something that perhaps she should have remained uninterested in. She's learning to cook Italian food. As she says, "When you're married to an Italian, what else do you do?" So there she is in the kitchen with the lasagnas, the antipastos, the scallopines, all the thisses and thattas that you can think of. But let's face it. She's not the best of cooks. Not Sandy. (And when you read this, Mrs. Darin, don't sit there and gasp. You know it's true. Anyway, you're too busy with that baby of yours to be able to spend more than five minutes at a time in any kitchen!)
That baby! And that mother. And that father, too, while we're at it. You've never seen anything like it in your life. They absolutely worship one another. If the kid should be crying and there seems to be no other way to stop it, all they have to do is put a Bobby Darin record on the phonograph. And the kid begins to goo and gurgle.
Which brings me to the subject of the baby's daddy. Everyone else has had his say about Bobby Darin. And now I'd like to get in my two cents' worth.
I'm very fond of Bobby. First of all, he's a kind person. He's kind to his wife. He treats her with love and respect, and he's always giving her the most beautiful presents. He's kind to his family. I mean, to the sister who helped raise him, her husband and their three children. He's always bringing them out here from New Jersey, where they live. When they come, he puts them on an absolute pedestal. There's nothing too good for them when they come.
So much is written about Bobby's arrogance. Well, the little that's in him is brought out, it seems to me, by a great desire to be liked, and a fear that he won't be. But isn't this true of most people? I walk into a party and I get butterflies in my stomach. Still. And I'm supposed to be a sophisticated man.
Sandy and Bobby are the best kind of neighbors. They respect the word privacy.
Up until a year and a half ago--long before the Darins moved to Rising Glen Road, things were a little different. My house used to be like Coney Island. Especially on Sundays. Everybody dropped in. I finally had a sign put up on the lawn, reading: "Have you phoned?" For those who insisted on coming I'd say, "The food's in the freezer, the pool is filled. Enjoy yourselves. But just leave me alone."
You see, I work hard all week. I'm out socially most every night, part for pleasure, part for business. But weekends come, I don't answer the phone, I don't do anything but read and relax and think. These are my lazy days, the days I can sit back and take a little bit of myself into account. I don't see anybody these days. I don't want to see anybody these days.
Though I must admit that recently I have begun to see two people. Two very special people. On Sunday mornings, for breakfast usually. The people? Sandy and Bobby.
I can go over to their house. Or they might come over to mine. We'll have breakfast together. We'll play with the baby. Bobby may sing. Sandra may even whip up one of those Italian Sunday morning specialties of hers.
And I'll look down at the dish and make a face. And we'll all laugh suddenly.
And everything is a little better then, for a while, for the laughter which we share, Sandy, Bobby and I.
The second article, By Jim Williams
"Those 'let's make up and not quarrel anymore' presents Bobby has been showering on Sandy lately may soon bankrupt him. There just isn't enough loot in the world to smooth over all the tiffs those two have!"
So spake, candidly, a close friend of the couple.
"In fact," he went on, "the biggest trouble in the Darin household is money. Yes, you hear me--money. Too much and too little.
"Like when they first got married. They had their hearts set on a mansion in Bel Air -- you know the type, where even the butler has his own mink-lined swimming pool. A place like that would have cost them close to a quarter, maybe a half million. So they settled for a mere $200,000 home. Second-best, as might be said in high society.
"Oh, Bobby pulls in his million or so a year, and Sandy herself makes quite a bundle. But Bobby's old-fashioned enough to insist they make do on his income. Sandy banks or invests every cent she makes, as per Bobby's instructions.
"Sandy is a woman, and women are sometimes fickle. When she first laid eyes on the little house in Beverly Hills, she said 'It's perfect as it is, I won't change a thing.' Nonetheless, a few changes have been made--a projection room, a nurse's room, private quarters for the maid, a 'his' den, a separate 'hers' den, a bright blue nursery with gold cherubs hanging from the ceiling, and an extra lot adjoining theirs for baby's play- ground--complete with built-in basketball court where Bobby wants someday to shoot baskets with his son. A few minor alterations. Nothing expensive.
"Then, of course, there are the gifts. Most of them are of the 'let's make up' variety--others are no-occasion gifts and special occasion gifts like his Mother's Day present to her--a huge baguette-shaped diamond ring."
Another close friend of the Darins made the following comments:
"I'm sure," she said, "the Darin marriage is rocky, and I feel certain Sandy's mother is at the root of the trouble. Not that Mary wants anything but the best for her daughter, but it's just that she was mother-father-sister to Sandy for so long, she can't face the fact she isn't needed as much as before.
"Take what happened in Rome. Sandra became acquainted with a girl there, a young actress named Ronnie Haran. Well, Ronnie and Sandy became close, close friends. Sandy confessed this was her first real friendship with a girl since childhood. She and Ronnie went everywhere together.
"Then Sandy's mother figured that she was being pushed out of the picture and she and her daughter quarreled bitterly. Sandy was forced into the impossible position of having to choose between the first real friend she'd had and her own mother. Fortunately, Bobby came along and the ties between Ronnie and Sandy loosened of their own accord as she spent more and more time with Bobby.
"Bobby was stronger than Sandra's mother, and he took Mrs. Douvan's daughter away and married her. But after the birth of Sandra and Bobby's baby, Mary popped back into the picture.
"When Bobby went on the road to do his night club act and concert tour with Count Basie, Sandy suddenly felt she just couldn't stay home alone without him and insisted on going along. Bobby didn't know how to say no to his wife, so he hired a nurse for the baby.
"That's when Mama Douvan got into the act. She tagged along too. Not that Mary likes to interfere; it's just that she's held on to Sandy so long she doesn't know how to let go."
We sought out another one of Bobby and Sandy's old friends, showed him an item in Dorothy Kilgallen's column, and asked him to comment on it. The item read: "Universal will spend a mint ballyhooing Sandra Dee and her role in If A Man Answers, they're so convinced they have a gold mine in the blonde beauty. The studio executives also will try to keep her glued martially (this is a revealing slip, of course: the word should be "maritally") to Bobby Darin--to preserve the image until after the film is released."
He said immediately, "It doesn't surprise me in the least. Maybe I'm prejudiced because I'm really one of their ex-friends, but I'm convinced, like Kilgallen, that this marriage is heading right for the rocks and only a miracle can save it.
"It's a darned shame, of course. You never saw anyone so deliriously happy as Bobby was right after he got married. He told George Burns that he felt so high in the clouds he couldn't see straight.
"But he soon came down to earth. The tension in the Darin home was so fierce that you could feel it even before the front door opened.
"What was happening? Well, Sandra--out of jealousy perhaps--I don't know what--wouldn't share her husband with anyone.
"Sandy's insistence on keeping Bobby to herself and not sharing him with anybody extends even to his business associates. One evening Bobby had to record for Capitol at night. Sandra was angry that Bobby left her; she was even angrier when he had to work overtime and came home late.
"The next morning when Capitol's A & R man phoned, she took it out on him. Icily, she announced that Bobby was still sleeping and had left word that he wasn't to be disturbed by anyone. And she didn't even tell her husband that the man had called.
"Later, when the record company representative asked why he hadn't phoned back, Bobby just stood open-mouthed, not knowing what to say. And when he found out the truth from Sandy, he flipped.
"Or take what happened the time that Bobby, Sandy, Bobby's publicity agent, Dave Gershenson, and his fiancee, and Bobby's manager, Steve Blauner, were out on the town. It was 3 a.m., time to go home, but then someone had the idea that it would be a good joke to pay an unannounced visit to the home of publicity man Guy McElwaine and his wife and wake them up.
"Sandra thought this would be great fun, and soon they were all at Guy's door ringing the bell. Guy and his wife came sleepy-eyed to the door and let their unexpected guests in. But instead of being mad, they were good sports. Guy's wife made coffee, and soon they all were laughing and chatting together. All, that is, except Sandy. Suddenly the whole thing was a drag, and she got up to go.
"Bobby went after her and asked what was the matter. 'I'm tired,' she complained, 'I want to go home.' Soothingly, he replied, 'But you can't. They've made coffee, and everyone's having fun.' Sandy retorted. 'You stay. I'll take the car.' Bobby said, 'But that's not fair. There's only one car..No one else has one tonight.' She snapped back, 'I don't care. Let them call a cab.'
"Bobby wavered a moment on the doorstep, and then followed after her.
"It's almost as if Bobby is everything in Sandy's life, and she can't bear to have him pay even the slightest attention to anyone else. He's more important to her than her mother, her baby, or anything.
"The baby, little Dodd, whom Sandy calls 'the kid.' Before Dodd was born, Sandy said she wanted a baby more than anything else in the world. But with her own break-neck schedule and with Bobby's night-and-day, work-work-work career, she has very little time to spend with either her husband or her child. There are only the few hours she can devote to either, so she seems to feel she has to choose between them. She loves Dodd; she loves Bobby; but when it comes to a choice, she goes with Bobby.
"She's discovered Dodd is not a doll, something you cuddle, dress, and put it in a corner. He demands time and attention, and she just doesn't have the time.
"Besides, pampered by the studio and spoiled by her mother, Sandy is like a child herself. Her home is usually a mess and looks like a tornado hit it. Bobby does much of the cooking. True, she tries to act like a grown woman, a glamorous movie star, by smoking too much and driving too fast, but underneath it all, she's still a child letting a nurse take care of her baby, and Bobby and Mary take care of her."
There was a final person who gave us her impressions and opinions of Bobby and Sandy. This informant's reactions, too, were triggered by a column item, this one by Sheilah Graham:
"In spite of being married and in spite of co-starring, both Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin shuddered at the suggestion they go on the road together to publicize their movie, If A Man Answers. The last time they duetted on the road, the disharmony was hard on neighboring ears. This time they will make their tours separately."
She smiled and said, "I guess that's a hifalutin' way to say that they are regularly at odds with one another. True. They tiff in their home, and in hotel rooms where the whole floor can hear them squabbling.
"What do they disagree about? Everything.
"It all adds up to a classic case of incompatibility. If Bobby likes someone, Sandy automatically dislikes that person. If he wants to go to Palm Springs, she wants to stay home with her mother. If he suggests that they drop into a night club and listen to some music, she says she wants to take in a movie. When they do manage to agree on where they want to go then one or the other doesn't enjoy it anyhow.
"Let's face it. Bobby can't be easy to live with. He's a trigger-tempered, pop-off guy. But he is trying to make this marriage work. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Sandy's trying too. But it's as if she's immersed in a whirlpool of pressures, forces and feelings that she can't handle. She loves Bobby and he loves her. But love can't flourish in an atmosphere of tension and conflict. It must be nourished by mutual care, concern and compassion.
"In time Sandy may really grow up and Bobby may really understand her and learn the secret of how to live happily with her. But then again, for the Darins, time may be running out."
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