"So long" to the girl next door...

Sandra Dee died yesterday. She was 63.

For those of us who have been around for a while, she was the consummate ‘girl next door’.



In the 50’s, when it was a virtue in Hollywood to appear sweet and innocent, Sandra filled that bill. And according to most stories I have read about her, she was exactly that...sweet and innocent.

She treated the head of the studio to the stage hands in the same manner. According to a family spokesman, “She didn’t have a bad bone in her body”.

Sandra Dee married Bobby Darin in 1960 and had a son (Dodd Mitchell) a year later. They were divorced in 1965 causing Universal to drop her. Evidently they thought it dampened her teen appeal. Times have changed, haven’t they?

My favorite Sandra Dee movie has always been Gidget. She also starred in such 50’s teenage romance and angst movies as The Reluctant Debutante, The Restless Years, Tammy and the Doctor, Tammy Tell Me True, Take Her She’s Mine, and A Summer Place. The latter with the consummate ‘boy next door’, Troy Donahue.

Her movie career dwindled after the mid-60’s. But she was immortalized in the film Grease in 1968 in the song “Look At Me I’m Sandra Dee” which mocked her squeaky-clean image. She didn't mind the referrence.

She was quite a cutie. A Hollywood starlet. The ‘Girl Next Door’.