Meet 50s and 60s star Sandra Dee’s actor son she shared with Hollywood Golden Age star Bobby Darin

The actor was born to star parents Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin on 16 December 1961 in Los Angeles. He is best known for his appearances in feature films dedicated to the work of his father. The 1998 TV feature Bobby Darin: Beyond the Song, featuring Kate Bosworth, John Goodman and more explores the personal and working life of the pop singer with childhood photos, concert clips and interviews with people who were close to him. 

Dodd also appears in a 2001 episode of Biography entitled ‘Bobby Darin: I Want to be a Legend’. He received a credit as additional crew on Beyond the Sea.

Dodd married costume supervisor Audrey Tannenbaum in June 1993. She is credited as costume supervisor on TV drama Matlock and two-decade-long series Mad About You, which received 12 Primetime Emmy awards. The couple share two children.

The Oscar-nominated actor and singer starred in 1960s feature films like Come September (1961), That Funny Feeling (1965) and If a Man Answers (1962) and is best known for hit songs like ‘Mack the Knife,’ ‘Beyond the Sea’ and ‘Splish Splash’. During his childhood, he suffered from four bouts of rheumatic fever, and once overheard a doctor who predicted he had little chance of living past 16. 

The star went on to win three Grammys and be cited as an influence by singers like Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Broadway star Jonathon Groff who based musical Just in Time around Bobby’s life using his impressive catalogue of songs. 

He married Sandra Dee in 1960 and the pair welcomed son Dodd before their divorce. He remarried in 1973 but the relationship with Andrea Yeager ended the same year. He died in December later that year following open-heart surgery.

Darin’s first major role in 1960 feature flick Come September brought him more than a chance at on-screen stardom: he met future wife and teenage darling Sandra Dee. The 18-year-old met Bobby on set in Portofino and Bobby soon declared: “I’m going to marry you someday.” Sandra reflected on the moment in an interview with People magazine, saying, “Aside from the fact that he was rude, brash and always trying to get a reaction, I didn’t like this person.”

Despite the odds, they married in December 1960. The 19-year-old was expected to attend her husband’s Las Vegas shows, prompting a loneliness which Sandra told Closer led her to drink heavily and start gambling: “I had no life, and we had no life together.” 

The actress, who had struggled with anorexia from her childhood, experienced several miscarriages before son Dodd was born.  

Sandra Dee was born Alexandra Zuck in 1942 in Bayonne, New Jersey. She worked as a model while still at school, making the tranisition from TV adverts to Hollywood films. At just 14, she starred in Until They Sail (1957). 

Subsequent features include four 1959 features Gidget, Imitation Of Life, The Wild And The Innocent and A Summer Place. After meeting Bobby in 1960, she starred in a couple of features as well as stepping in to fill the shoes of Debbie Reynolds in Tammy Tell Me True (1961) and Tammy and the Doctor (1963). Her early success waned following her divorce in 1967.

After a period of seclusion in LA, Dodd stepped in to support his mother on the path to sobriety and traced his parents’ lives in the 1994 biography Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee. She passed away at the age of 62 in 2005 of kidney disease.