Sandy knew she had to grow up to make her marriage work and grow up she did. You'd hardly recognize her now that she has done such a complete about--face.

In I'd Rather Be Rich, Sandra Dee plays the richest girl in the world and looks it ... soft yellow leather coat trimmed in white fox, soft yellow leather pants, soft yellow leather shoes ... just back from a daytime date with Andy Williams and there is Robert Goulet waiting to take her in his arms, in the most beautiful formal foyer of the most beautiful home any girl ever had. Then suddenly, the director yells "Cut," "Take"; there is a change in the smooth sweet face, the big brown eyes register a new emotion and Sandy dashes for the nearest phone.

"Please--take the spaghetti sauce out of the freezer!" she cries. "Bobby's coming home early for dinner and I've promised him spaghetti but I made the sauce Sunday and froze it ... Good. Oh, and when the upholsterer calls tell him I want the ocelot throw pillows. They'll look absolutely divine on the brown velvet couches. And tell him we're moving Monday; I just found out I'll have most of the day off. That's great because the movers promised that the stuff from the Palm Springs house would be here by then. I'll be home at six and I'll have time to bathe Dodd before I make his dinner. Not pork, that takes too long. Thaw out a steak. Okay?"

Then bang goes the receiver, the yellow leather coat dashes back to Goulet's arms and as soon as that scene is shot Sandy and I hurry across the lot to her dressing room for lunch. No need to ask her if she's happy. The brown eyes which were blank with misery when last we met—she was then shooting Take Her, She's Mine and Bobby was 3,000 miles away—are bright, vivacious and full of warmth. But I did ask her if she felt she had changed. Sandy was well aware that she had never really grown up. She knew that if anything was ever to be done about this marriage, she would have to do it. But how do you change? That's not so easy.

"Have I grown up?" she asked in reply to my question. "Listen! I've done a complete turn-about-face. In all ways. I not only have finally accepted some responsibility, I think I've accepted all of them: running my own house, raising my own child for the first time—the nurse used to do that--entertaining, moving, furnishing a new big house and being what I was supposed to be in the first place, Mrs. Darin.

"You know the best thing that ever happened to me? You won't believe it. Our separation. I'm sure I didn't realize it then, but now I can look back and say with all my heart I'm glad it happened. I think that after the initial shock, I almost enjoyed it, finding out that I could stand on my own feet. I mean, that I wasn't absolutely helpless, that I didn't have to lean all over someone as I'd leaned on my mother and then on Bobby. You get a terrible feeling if you think you're leaning on someone. I didn't have to decide to change. When Bobby left, I had to. I was hurt and angry and I knew I loved Bobby. But, above everything, I had to cope with each day myself something I'd never done and it was thrilling to find I could. I wasn't helpless!

"Being a woman is a responsibility . . . running a house, taking care of a child, cooking, and not expecting each day to be on some kind of crazy pinnacle. And you know what? I feel needed. It's great. My baby's never been so close to me. He's my son now. He used to be the nurse's. She was a registered nurse and she took over and told me what to do. I found myself not wanting to go home. I hated to leave the studio.  Well, I not only finally told that nurse what to do, I now have switched the housekeeper over and she is the one responsible for Dodd when I'm not here. But the whole relationship is different. The housekeeper adores Dodd but she also has children of her own. She doesn't need to make my baby hers. I'm the mother. I say what he should have to eat and when she should give him an aspirin. I find myself bathing him when I come home, feeding him, putting him to bed.

"This is such a baby! He is so bright you can't believe it. He's a noisy little roughneck at home but when we take him out—you can take him anywhere—he behaves like a lamb. And music, he loves music; he's a real chip off the old block. You should see him, my son, sitting in the room with Bobby, listening to music, and if Bobby's head starts moving, the baby's will too. He climbs up on the piano bench next to him or sits on the floor beside him, playing right along. This is one thing that has changed. We're not just play parents. I'm mother and Bobby's the father and our son knows it. You should have seen him last night. I'm feeding him steak and he's eating and suddenly I see this little smile and Dodd spits. That's one thing I won't stand. I never spank him—not because I have qualms about it, he just never needs it—but last night I spanked him right on his bottom. Then I sat him down and he ate that steak so fast you wouldn't believe it.

"I'm very patient now. I never thought that was in me. But you learn patience with a baby. You learn patience, period."

Patience. Not that the Darins' life is dull. It's never that. Right now everything is extremely hectic because of the new house they bought. That they'd get rid of the old one was one of the first things they discussed. This was the house Bobby had bought when Sandy was pregnant, the house he had furnished, the house she had moved into virtually a guest and a house she had never really liked because it was too modern and didn't feel homey. They discussed this in New York when they were first back together again. Bobby felt they should live in New York because his music business is there. They would find a Manhattan apartment ...

But the day they came back to the Coast to put the first house on the market and to straighten out affairs here, Bobby knew he couldn't live in New York. He loves the West Coast, Sandy loves it, and it's a great place for the baby. Before they'd left the airport, Bobby had reversed his decision. He faced the fact that he really didn't want to live in New York and he had plenty of help in that direction from his wife who was bugging him to stay here. They talked it all out and decided that he could keep the business functioning smoothly by going East for about two weeks every three months. When Sandy isn't working, she'll go with him.

At home, they sat down at the desk to go through stacks of accumulated mail. They'd been in New York for two months; Sandy had been traveling on personal appearances for two months before that. So there was the mail and at the very bottom of the pile—"I swear to you," Sandy says, "on the very bottom''—was this sales brochure about a house with a lake. The minute he read about it, Bobby was starry-eyed and wanted to see it.

"Bobby, when you walk in, promise me you won't love everything on sight, love every stick of furniture. You do that, you know, and then the price jumps."

Sandy talking—practical talk!  Bobby looked at her amazed.

"Just don't say anything, honey. Just look at the house."

She went to the studio to work with the publicity department and he went to look at the house. Two hours later, he phoned.

"You're not going to believe the lake!" he said, all excited. "I'm not going to say a thing about it, Sandy. You have to make up your own mind, but I love it."

Promptly at noon, he ushered Sandy in the front door of the house.  It was an absolutely lovely house, big, roomy, Spanish; homey with lots of windows. One level is patio; second level, the pool: third level, the lake. Sandy loved it on sight just as he had. It took five minutes. At 12:05pm Bobby asked the price of the house and before the man had the amount spelled out, he was crying, "I'll take it!'''

"No kidding,"' Sandra said. We were in her pink and white dressing room and she was fussing with her tiny toy Pomeranian, trying to get a pill down his throat. "This husband of mine is so funny. The man is asking a certain price but you know how it is in real estate. Everyone who ever puts a price on a house expects a counter offer, expects to take less than they ask, but this Bobby ... I'm jabbing him and he's yelling, I'll take it." and when we get outside he says, 'Sandy, you wouldn't go to Saks and haggle about the price of a coat would you?" But I'm not sure. If it was a $10,000 coat, I'd be crazy not to.

"And that's not all. Today, this morning, we were talking about the furniture and stuff I've ordered.  I'm doing this all myself, no decorator. So I said, 'Now in the entrance hall, where that sconce is on the wall,' and Bobby said. 'Oh, they're taking that sconce with them. It's been in the family a hundred years.' Then I mentioned the mirror with the huge antique clock and it turned out that the mirror didn't go with the house or the clock either—they're heirlooms. And to top it all, I discover that my husband had just bought the washer and dryer again. He'd already bought them with the house! But he won't haggle. Not Bobby.'

She'd gotten the pill down Cinnamon's throat and patted the little character that looks exactly like a small-sized teddy bear. "Bobby named him Cinnamon. He's really not mine, he belongs to my mother." And she laughed; she's already attached to the little pet. I had thought Bobby had lowered the boom on pets, but I guess he's given in a little. I remember when they were first married how appalled he was to find Clementine and September sleeping in their bedroom, on their bed.

"You should see our bedroom now," said Sandy. "Dodd goes to sleep with us, plus three dogs—this little character and September, the toy poodle Bobby gave me and Clementine, my ugly little toy Yorkshire that I bought when I was so lonely living at the Drake in New York. The two other dogs hate this new one and in the morning they bark like crazy, and Dodd is screaming, 'Ma!" and the bird down in the kitchen is screaming, "Whee.' ''

The mynah bird is a story in itself. While separated from Bobby. Sandy look care of a mynah named Marilyn for a friend of hers. She had the bird for about three months and came to love it. She was really sad when the owner came and took it back. Bobby had met Marilyn when he visited. Now he knows how much Sandra likes pets—better than jewelry, better than furs. So for Christmas he was determined to find her a substitute for Marilyn. He did, too, such a good substitute that Sandy thought at first it was Marilyn.

"Marilyn, oh you've come back!" she cried when Bobby took her to the kitchen to see her present. He had to explain that it was not Marilyn, only a look-alike, as Sandy herself discovered soon enough. For someone has taught this mynah a string of language that is strictly wild.

Sandy's gift to Bobby was a boat for the new lake. She thought of the boat at the studio one day, looked through the yellow pages, found a listing for sailboats and phoned. She asked if they had any rowboats. The man said no, but he did have something that could be used on a small lake, a sailboat.

"How big?" asked Sandy.

"Twelve feet," he said.

''Can you wrap It up?"

Silence. "Lady'" he said. "Have you ever tried to wrap a boat?"

It was delivered, secreted in the garage, and Sandra went to see it and was appalled because it looked so little. "I guess I expected it to look like a yacht." So she rushed out and got a motor scooter exactly the same bright red as his car. That took care of Christmas. Almost.

On Christmas morning, Sandy usually is up at five o'clock, dying to open presents, shaking Bobby awake, impatient as a child. Last Christmas was different. She wakened at ten o'clock, couldn't bear to wake Bobby, and quietly trolled down to the kitchen to see how their holiday dinner was progressing. To her dismay, she found the maid drunk. Yesterday's Sandy would have cried and run to Bobby. Today's Sandy told the maid to get out and saw to it she did—pronto. Then she went back to Bobby and said very calmly,''I have bad news." He knew exactly what it was. "Not today!" he said. But today it was and now Sandy has hired a very capable couple who are already installed at the new house and supervising the repainting.

With competent help, she's been enjoying her first entertaining. Before the separation, they didn't entertain. She was still a little girl expecting to be taken places, entertained, dated.  Now they have friends in to dinner and on New Year's Eve Sandy tossed her first big party—for over a hundred people. They had started out to host a party for, say, thirty, but Bobby just kept asking everybody he knew and they brought friends along from other parties. People who hadn't spoken to each other in years found themselves laughing together and enjoying the beautiful buffet Sandy had ordered. The last guest left at eight in the morning and Sandra in her black velvet and spun gold hostess gown not only had fun but a sense of victory. She had proved she could be a successful hostess and hold her own in any society.

As soon as they're safely in the new house, she's going to throw another party, a housewarming this time. She's not going to wait for the furniture.  That will take some time. She's having everything made to order and she's dreamed up the whole decorative scheme herself, the living room in brown velvet with ocelot throw pillows, mustard color chairs and bits of turquoise, lamps, etc., to add a pick-up.

"Everyone thinks of me as pink and white but I'm not." Sandy says. "I have rather masculine tastes, actually. Or maybe my taste is conditioned by the fact that I keep seeing it all not as my house but as our house, Bobby's and mine.

"You know what has changed? Marriage is comfortable now. Not in the ugly sense of the word. Good heavens, I still regard marriage as romantic. My marriage is, anyway. But in the beginning everything was a fairy tale and I expected some big climactic chapter like a continued story every day. You had to do something spectacular every day. It was pretty uncomfortable. Now I don't expect anything. We're at ease together. We can be open and honest and not put on a performance for each other. We're friends. That's what's wonderful.

"On weekends, I don't even look at my face. We don't go out of the house. We're totally relaxed, Bobby, the baby and me. I don't have to put on a glamour act and Bobby couldn't care less.

"And when I say we're relaxed together, I mean relaxed. We can argue or disagree all day but it's not a fight. We haven't had a fight in five months. We argue and make up in five minutes. We're not a bit careful with each other. We didn't ever separate because of arguments!  Our problem was never what we said but what we didn't say. Our problem was that I wasn't grown up."

Bobby's decision not to travel any more makes building a life that much easier. But his decision, Sandy said, had nothing to do with her. It was a decision he made for himself some years ago that as soon as his career reached a certain height, he'd quit the night club circuit. He never liked it; it's a rough routine, playing to rooms filled with people who are drinking, who are inattentive and who are sometimes loaded. The last trip to Las Vegas settled the matter. Bobby was miserable. He neither gambles nor drinks and just didn't know what to do with himself. Sandra helped him find a solution. She rented a movie projector, sent back to Hollywood for old pictures and they had themselves a ball. They ran Humphrey Bogart movies, they ran "Gilda" and other Rita Hayworth pictures and they never went outside the Flamingo except two nights to have dinner. They stayed "home" in Vegas and were a family. They ate their dinner on trays and watched their own late-late show. That's the pattern.

"I can't even dream up a problem at this point," laughed Sandy. "I've just gotten older, gotten caught up with my years, I guess. I have this husband who sees the changes and likes what he sees. I have this little boy who's so cuddly and close to me. I have this lovely new house to make a home. I have myself and it's a self to depend on, which is more than I could ever say before. I'm not clingingly dependent on any human being in this world. I can love my husband and enjoy him.

"I've learned not to be competitive. Take fishing, for example. Last time out we went to June Lake with my friend Betty and her boy friend and tried for trout. Now for trout you can't be noisy, so the boys wouldn't fish with us; they went their own way and left me with Betty—me who can't even thread a pole or bait a hook. Luckily, Betty's dad fishes so she did know that, but she is shushing me to be quiet and I'm paying no attention and getting my line caught in the trees and every time I think to look at my crazy line, I've got a fish. Four of them to be exact. You should have seen the boys' faces!  They hadn't caught a thing and here I am, without even a creel, the big fisherman of the day. They wouldn't even talk to me. The second day I didn't go fishing at all. The third day, Bobby insisted and insisted, so finally I went and caught six fish. But I think when we move on our own little lake, I'm going to let my husband do the fishing. Who needs it?

"Above all, I've learned not to worry about what outsiders think, I used to worry. For example, when Bobby and I were apart and he'd come to visit and take us to the ball game, I'd think, what will people think? It doesn't matter what they think. This is our life.  And I've learned to say 'no' very beautifully. No, I cannot go here or cannot go there or cannot do this or cannot do that—all things I've done in the past because I thought I'd hurt someone's feelings. There are things I don't want to do, shouldn't do, the time belongs to Bobby and Dodd and to me. So I say 'no.' Right now, I'd say no to anything. This is Friday and all I can think of is that lovely weekend coming up, my fella, my son, the dogs, the bird ..."

This is the new Mrs. Darin talking and I must confess, I like her! What's more important—Bobby likes her (as well as loves her) and she likes herself.

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