Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee: Beyond a White, Teen Icon

Frontiers, 2001

Yet what is also striking is the number of articles that suggest that Dee was a femme fatale of sorts. In 1957, when she was only thirteen years old, she was described by one newspaper as possessing "that super femininity that some call sex appeal." Accounts of romances with a number of her leading men and other teen heartthrobs were published simultaneously with the articles portraying her as the dateless wonder. She was linked with such stars as Sal Mineo, Rock Hudson, Troy Donahue (all of whom are referenced in the "Look at Me" number from Grease, and all of whom, despite being icons of male sexuality in the fifties, were, in fact, gay), John Saxon, Edd "Kookie" Byrnes, Rick Nelson, Lindsay Crosby, and Rik Von Nutter.(50) Tantalizing articles such as, "Sandra Dee Didn't Break Up My Marriage," "Maybe It's Love," "The Hottest Gal in Town," "Sweet or Sexy: The Gossip about Sandra Dee," and "Saint and Sinner" underscore that Dee could be used to represent both saint and sex kitten.(51) Studio publicity constructed a persona that was alternately shy and withdrawn, yet sexy and popular.

Fan magazine articles made it clear that Dee had an eating disorder, and these same articles point to her serious personal problems, as well. In a 1958 interview, Dee confided:

I guess I'm self-conscious all the time. I hate myself for it. And I haven't overcome it yet.... Mama says I'm a perfectionist. Anyway, I never feel I do well. I have actually gone home from the studio and cried. I can't believe I can be good. I'm never satisfied.(52)

By 1960, one exposé tried to "Blast Those Lies about Sandra Dee" by combating rumors that she was "strange and neurotic," rather than an "All-American girl."(53) The evidence was there all the time for those looking for it, yet in the fifties, the subtext remained hidden, encoded in the narratives of fan magazines.

The construction of the Dee persona in the discourse of fan magazines is schizophrenic at best. She is alternatively shy yet outgoing, bubbly and perky, thoughtful and introspective, lonely yet popular, innocent and naive, yet mature beyond her years -- the same characteristics she would bring to her screen portrayals. For the most part, however, she appears to be a parent's dream of what a typical teenage gift should be: loyal, dutiful, obedient, adorable, virginal, and not at all affected by stardom. Yet, there were clear anxieties lurking below the surface of those fan magazines. Popular fan discourse reveals not only a cultural obsession with appearance, but also with sex. There is also an intense preoccupation with "being normal" and conforming to social prescriptions.

In 1966, Dee told film critic Charles Champlain that she had once told a fan magazine about her interest in the Civil Rights Movement, but Universal went to great lengths to kill the story because it did not fit with her image. She continued, "If I read and believed everything about me growing up, in that darling, pink world, I'd hate me. Or her. Nobody, except a moron, is that good all the time. If that were me, I was a vegetable or a child."(54) That assessment may be a part of both Dee's personal memory and the collective memory of the Dee persona, but it fails to capture the complexities of her most popular film roles of the fifties. In the remainder of this article, I focus on one of her most famous film performances of the fifties, A Summer Place. This performance not only emphasizes her conflicted sexual persona, but also illustrates that the construction of adolescent sexuality was more ambivalent than either conservative or liberal characterizations of the period would have us believe. In many ways A Summer Place exposes the moral facade of the fifties, as well as the hypocrisy surrounding advice to teenagers in general. The film also reveals Dee's body as a façade -- a facade that masks not only her sexuality but also her eating disorder.