Nearly fifty years after he hit the big time with his first smash single, "Splish Splash", Bobby Darin is cool.
Even outside of his retro appeal, he is damned appealing when taken in context. He's the subject of a lovingly crafted biopic, Beyond The Sea, which opens in December and stars Academy Award winner Kevin Spacey in the title role. His extensive recording career includes the aforementioned reworking of "La Mer", but also the legendary finger-popper "Mack The Knife", and the ever-soulful "Dream Lover". He introduced the world to Wayne Newton and nearly ruined Sandra Dee.
For one of biggest nightclub cats on the planet, he ran with a much wilder bunch than you would expect. He was friends with Robert Kennedy, Sammy Davis Jr. , Roger McGuinn from the Byrds, and even the man himself, Elvis Presley. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in Captain Newman, M.D. and was billed second only under Steve McQueen in Hell Is For Heroes.
He was mentored by George Burns, allowed a young Richard Pryor to open for him in Vegas, and chose Dusty Springfield to duet with on television. In his later years, he covered a rich array of artists including Bob Dylan, Ray Charles and Otis Redding.
Today, his compositions and recordings are inexorably intertwined with the fabric of American life. He lives forever as a member of the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame.
It's a hell of a legacy for a guy who dropped dead before he was forty.
He wasn't even supposed to see age 15. Born Walden Robert Cassato on May 14, 1936, the future Bobby Darin struggled with severe bouts of rheumatic fever, resulting in a damaged heart and chronic health problems he battled for the rest of his life. Growing up in the song-rich streets of the Bronx, the child grew to love music and taught himself to play drums, piano and guitar.
After graduating from high school but before dropping out of college, Darin started out as a demo singer at the famous Brill Building in New York City, where he plied his trade alongside other stars-to-be Connie Francis and rock producer Don Kirshner. In 1957, he was signed to Atco Records, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records, where a little ditty he dashed off in 20 minutes struck a chord with the newly rock 'n' roll-crazed youth of America. "Splish-Splash" sold 100,000 copies in three weeks.
Darin expanded his fame with appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and American Bandstand, where he made friends with host Dick Clark, one of the most influential people in music at the time. Oddly enough, Clark, worried about Darin's reputation, tried to talk him out of recording his biggest hit, "Mack the Knife," from Brecht-Weill's The Threepenny Opera. Darin's persistence in recording the song gave him nine weeks at the top of Billboard's single chart and two Grammy awards.
His manager, Steve Blauner, kick-started his nightclub career, booking the young singer into the country's biggest nightclubs, including the Flamingo in Las Vegas, the Cloister in L.A., and the Copacabana in New York. In May of 1959 he played Harrah's in Tahoe with George Burns, who became a lifelong friend.
"Some people would say to me, 'You found Bobby Darin,'" Burns remembered. "I had as much to do with finding Bobby Darin as the man in the moon. You find nobody, 'cause they're on the stage for twenty minutes by themselves. They're on their own feet. It would be impossible to stop Bobby Darin from being a star because he had nothing to do with it. The audience made him."
Audiences loved his audacious style, and even Sammy Davis Jr. cracked "I'm black and he's got the rhythm." By October, Bobby Darin became the youngest artist ever to headline the Sands. He was 23 years old.
"There is a difference between conceit and egotism. Conceit is thinking you're great; egotism is knowing it," Darin told the Saturday Evening Post.
He moved to Hollywood in 1960 to begin an acting career, but it was in Portofino, Italy that he matched wits with Sandra Dee.
"Right after we were introduced, Bobby made an announcement. He said, 'I'm going to marry you someday.' I wanted to die," Sandra Dee told People Magazine in 1991. It was a tumultuous beginning to a relationship that would ultimately shatter them both.
The film Come September put Bobby up against Rock Hudson, Gina Lollobrigida and Sandra Dee, the 16-year-old teenage model who had risen to movie stardom. The 24-year-old superstar married the 17-year-old actress soon after. Their affair is well documented in a 1994 memoir, Dream Lovers, by their son Dodd Darin.
Darin continued to work in films and even received an Oscar nomination for his supporting role in the 1963 film Captain Newman, M.D.
"He has lots of courage, takes chances, gives all of himself. Of course, Bobby comes over sometimes a little brash, a little tough but I think that's a quality that Americans like, especially because Bobby conveys pathos. Bobby, in his work, is touching, he's moving, he's a human being and that's a pretty good combination, I think," said Gregory Peck.
He also starred oppose Sidney Poitier in Pressure Point, and introduced Wayne Newton to the world with "Danke Schoen" in 1963. By the end of 1963, he announced his decision to leave nightclub performing to concentrate more on producing and acting.
Unfortunately, outside of their son, Bobby and Sandra were unable to find common ground. Darin was convinced that he would die young due to his defective heart, and therefore drove himself relentlessly to succeed and gain the worldwide love and popularity he so craved.
"My goal is to be remembered as a human being and as a great performer. Probably epitaph time will come and strike me square between the eyes and I will not have achieved it," Darin predicted.
Bobby's ruthless pursuit of fame and fortune ultimately isolated him from the people who loved him. He threw himself into acting, songwriting and producing while Sandra fought her unhappiness with speed and alcohol.
"Bobby had a cold streak in him. He could turn you off like a light switch," Dee told People. The couple divorced in 1967.
"Genius is close to madness and sometimes, yeah, it got in the way. He was simply one of a kind," Dee said.
He was also obviously feeling some changes. In 1965, Bobby went to Montgomery, Alabama along with Dick Gregory, Harry Belafonte and Peter, Paul and Mary to demonstrate against voter discrimination. By 1966, he had moved into the arena of folk music, recording "If I Were A Carpenter", and appearing at the Flamingo with a ferocious young comic named Richard Pryor.
Kevin Spacey recalled how his appreciation for Darin's journey began to evolve.
"I just thought he was the coolest cat that ever walked the face of the earth," Spacey said. "His style, his attack had certain echoes of Sinatra but it was its own thing. I began to realize the breadth of his musical journey, how he went from rock & roll into pop music, gospel music, folk music, country/western and ultimately into protest songs against the Vietnam War. When you look at that trajectory in the context of his short 15-year career, that's a pretty remarkable road."
Darin also got heavily involved in politics, joining the presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy in 1968 and singing the campaign's theme song, "This Land Is Your Land". He was performing at a new San Francisco supper club when he received news that Kennedy had been shot and killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
Bobby flew immediately to New York to attend the funeral and service at Arlington National Cemetery. It was inarguably the greatest shock of Darin's life. Walking through the public crowd, he stood at the gravesite for almost seven hours and was there when the coffin was lowered. He was the last person to leave the site. Later, he would claim he had a revelation that night. He sold all his possessions and moved into a mobile home in Big Sur, California.
Like Rick Nelson after him, Bobby Darin was suffering the restraints that his reputation as a nightclub performer had placed upon him.
"The public tells you what they want you to do and what they want to see you do and if they would pay to see you. 'Mack' and 'Beyond The Sea' and 'Some of These Days' were done with my treatment of those standards and that was the bag the country had clearly and simply defined for me," Darin said.
He returned to the Copacabana in 1969 with a four-piece rock band. Later, he walked off the set of the Jackie Gleason Show after being told he could not perform "Long Line Rider". By the end of the year, "Bob" Darin—in full moustache—was performing at the Sahara in denim and turning down requests for "Mack The Knife". He covered material by soulful performers like Ray Charles and Otis Redding and composed "Simple Song of Freedom", one of the great protest songs of the period.
He had his first heart operation in February of 1971 and was never the same. Struggling against pain and fatigue, he returned to Las Vegas and did a seven week run of The Bobby Darin Amusement Company for NBC, working alongside old pals like George Burns, fellow stars like Dusty Springfield and Peggy Lee, and other odd sorts including Burt Reynolds and the Smothers Brothers. He also found time to marry legal secretary Andrea Joy Yeager.
He returned to the Las Vegas Hilton for three weeks in July of 1973 and managed to find the energy for the fevered, fire-up performances that marked his glory days.
"Being around Bobby when he's performing is like being in a buzz saw factory because he just has so much energy and excitement that he has to let it out. It's just that infectious," remembered Henry Mancini of Darin's performances.
Nevertheless, time was running out for Bobby Darin. In December, Bobby entered a Los Angeles hospital to repair two artificial heart valves received in a previous operation. He was on the table for eight hours on December 20 when his heart gave way. The brash, fast-talking, absolutely charming Bobby Darin had finally gone silent. He was 37 years old.
Darin's music has continued to affect the world and inspire other entertainers and performers from a wide range of genres.
"I used to be pissed off at Bobby Darin because he changed styles so much. Now I look at him and I think he was a fucking genius," said Neil Young to Rolling Stone in 1988. Darin was elevated into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, introduced by Dick Clark.
Kevin Spacy has been circling around Darin's story since 1986 and writes, produces, directs and stars in Beyond The Sea. The film, opening on December 29, is sure to be— alongside Jamie Foxx's performance in Ray—one of the year's surefire musical hits. Spacey has gathered an extraordinarily rich cast of actors and musicians including John Goodman, Bob Hoskins, Brenda Blethyn and Kate Bosworth as Sandra Dee.
What was at the forefront of my mind was to make an entertaining film about an entertainer," Spacey explained. "A person who walked out there every night and sang his guts out for two hours and created the kind of intimate nightclub world that doesn't really exist anymore."
Phil Ramone, who produced legendary albums including Paul Simon's Graceland and Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, has been working with Spacey to produce the music for Beyond The Sea. He thinks the key to Darin's music is his individuality.
"Like Sinatra, Bobby Darin brought the street to the ballad. The guy did everything. He did blues. He did spirituals. He did folk music. He covered every genre but what he added to all of them was the street. It was extraordinary," Ramone said.
Despite Spacey's natural resemblance to the late singer, some critics have focused on the fact that Spacey is older now than Darin was at the time of his death. The more shocking aspect of the film is that unlike Ray, Spacey is really singing Bobby Darin's songs and has even embarked on a short U.S. singing tour to promote the film. Real-life jazz singer Peter Cincotti has a role in the film and was impressed by the self-styled "song-and-dance man."
"Singing seems like something Kevin really loves but he forgets about whether he loves it or not. He sounds great. The natural response, which everybody had was, 'Wait, is that Bobby? Or is that you singing?' I think that's the biggest compliment one can give," Cincotti said.
Spacey simply wants to give Bobby Darin his due.
"My intention and my hope is that we'll introduce Bobby Darin to a whole generation for whom he isn't known," Spacey explained. "Quite frankly, of all those guys in the sort of Rat Pack revival of the last several years, Bobby's been the forgotten one—and that's a real shame, because he was probably the greatest nightclub entertainer we ever had."
| Check out these Bobby Darin resources and links: |
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Bobby Darin in The MARKET—Our online store offers a great selection of recordings from this legendary artist, including all your favorites sock-hoppin' swingin', and soulful hits. The Legendary Bobby Darin—Port Halcyon's Will Viharo reviews this collection of classics spanning Darin's career. Beyond the Sea—Visit the official website of the upcoming Lions Gate Films release featuring Kevin Spacey as Bobby Darin. Beyond the Sea Soundtrack—Kevin Spacey delivers memorable reniditions of 18 Darin favorites on this excellent soundtrack, available in our online store. |
