Beyond Cool: The Acting Career of Bobby Darin

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	Tompkins, the waistgunner on a B-24, uses bravado as his armor to protect him from dealing with a devastating experience. Through the use of Sodium Pentothol—or Flak Juice, as it’s called in the film—Peck’s character penetrates that armor as Tompkins takes the audience through the experience. As he slips into semi-consciousness, Tompkins begins to reenact his last mission in which his plane shoots down an enemy aircraft ("Fry, you Nazi! Fry!") but is unexpectedly shot down in the crossfire. It is then revealed what Tompkins has been grappling with. After witnessing the death of a crew member ("Oh god, put his head back on!") he rushes from the burning plane only to realize too late that he left his closest friend in the cockpit to be burned alive, and lives with the guilt of his own perceived cowardice.
Even the most seasoned professional would have found such a sequence difficult to film. Darin’s performance was so powerful, co-star Gregory Peck remained speechless after the take while Angie Dickinson broke into tears. Director David Miller had to leave the set to compose himself before complimenting his star on an amazing take. Darin ultimately received rave notices when the film came out and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The only one not impressed was co-star Tony Curtis. "I hated Bobby Darin’s performance," he wrote in his 1993 autobiography. "It was over the top. But everybody carried on about it because he was a rock star and had just started doing pictures." It’s quite possible that he felt that way because many of his best performances, such as Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The Outsider (1961), and The Boston Strangler (1968) were totally ignored by the Academy. The night of the Academy Awards ceremony—April 13, 1964—Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee arrived in full Hollywood glamour and smiled nervously for the flashing paparazzi. When they settled into their seats and Darin’s category was announced, actress Patty Duke uttered the name Melvyn Douglas for his performance in Hud. Darin tried to maintain a brave face but he was inconsolable. The loss of the Oscar was the start of a slow unraveling of his personal and professional life. His music career was no longer the chart topper it had been, and he had stopped performing live at his wife’s request in another attempt to reconcile their marriage. His next film again co-starred Sandra Dee, who convinced the studio to hire him only after Warren Beatty turned it down. This was another factor that did not sit easily with Darin.
Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee in "That Funny Feeling" (1965)
That Funny Feeling (1965) and was the last of the trio of comedies he and his wife made together. Like their previous efforts, he wrote and performed the title song. In this outing Darin played a wealthy businessman involved in a case of mistaken identity with Dee’s maid-for-hire role. The film made money, got decent reviews, and Darin even got to work with his childhood hero Donald O’Connor, but clearly his heart was not in the outdated proceedings. The country and culture were beginning to change away from such mild romantic comedy, and so too was Bobby Darin. In early 1966, Darin appeared on an episode of Ben Gazzara’s TV series Run For Your Life, playing a WWII veteran. There was talk of a possible spin-off show, but nothing came of it. The next year he made his sole foray into the genre of westerns, a forgettable film entitled Gunfight in Abilene (1966). He played an embittered Civil War veteran forced by circumstance to become sheriff. Darin himself jokingly referred to the film as "Gunfight at Shit Creek."
The downhill spiral continued for Bobby Darin when, after several trial separations, Sandra Dee was granted a divorce on March 7, 1967. His career was also at a virtual standstill in spite of his immense talent. He told the Hollywood Reporter that same year, "I thought [Captain Newman] would open up a whole new career as a dramatic actor. Four years later I’m still waiting for another good role." Since the kind of film roles he preferred were never considered mainstream popular culture, he found himself even more at odds as the ‘60s progressed. If anything, he should have been more productive than ever, but instead he chose to raise his own social consciousness and began working earnestly for Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign stating, "My goals have been changed, and what I aspire to now is to make a more meaningful contribution." He became personally involved in Kennedy’s campaign and gave it his full attention and energy. At one point he seriously considered running for public office himself. It was this consideration that forced Nina Maffia to tell him the truth about his parentage. The shocking news caused him to state, "My whole life has been a lie." The relationship that he maintained with his family following his success was always somewhat rocky, but this revelation caused him to reevaluate his feelings for them even more.
	Adding to this shocking revelation was the news of Robert Kennedy’s assassination in June 1968. It proved to be the penultimate moment in Bobby Darin’s life. That same year, Darin made a brief appearance in a poorly received murder mystery entitled Cop Out (aka Stranger in the House). Done in the psychedelic style of such films as Richard Lester’s Petulia (1968), and co-starring James Mason and Geraldine Chaplin, Darin’s character is particularly unsavory as he appears fondling pillows, making out with mannequins, and showing porn films.
After the film’s release, the death of RFK, and the revelation of his parentage, Bobby Darin went into semi-seclusion to the beach community of Big Sur. His search for greater meaning found him looking further within than ever before. He later said of that time, "Life to me is struggles, successes, and failures. Living is what goes on between these things. I have life, but whether or not I’m living is something else." He slowly emerged from his self-imposed exile a different man. When he finally performed again he wore denim clothes, forsook his toupee, and wrote and sang folk songs. This new image met with mixed reviews among his fans, but to the man who was now billed as Bob Darin, being true to himself was what mattered most.
	Darin's next film appearance was in The Happy Ending (1969) directed by Richard Brooks, who had also helmed Blackboard Jungle (1955), In Cold Blood (1967), and others. The film starred Brooks’ wife, Jean Simmons, as a middle-aged woman trying to make sense of her life following the break up of her marriage. Along the way, she encounters an Italian gigolo, played by Darin, who briefly enchants her until he reveals himself to be just another American male on the make. Simmons was Oscar-nominated for her performance and the film did fairly well at the box-office. Many filmgoers were not sure who they were seeing in the role of Franco (billed as Robert Darin), since he had jettisoned his toupee and wore a mustache for the short scene he appeared in.
While filming the movie, Darin let it be known in no uncertain terms that he was enamored with his co-star. He even went so far as to tell both Brooks and Simmons that he was in love. They humored him as best they could, which probably added to his convincing performance of a gigolo infatuated with Simmons. After making the film, Darin decided to make his own movie, and wrote a screenplay based on an idea he had had for some time. It was called The Vendors, and beginning in 1969 and up through 1971, it was the creative project that occupied most of his time. The story concerned a prostitute and her love affair with a drug addict. Darin not only wrote it, he directed, produced, edited and scored it. He cast Mariette Hartley and his high school friend Dick Lord. Darin was genuinely excited about the challenge and called the project, "A small picture, a crude story, told crudely about people. There was a certain adrenaline about the screenplay. It was going to be done despite being turned down for money, actors, etc. I haven’t applied this type of attack to anything in years." The way in which the project was filmed was a different experience for all concerned. Darin had liked the way the overly secretive Brooks had shot scenes in The Happy Ending without allowing the actors to read the full script, and wanted to try the same for his film. The objective was to maintain spontaneity among the players, but according to co-star Dick Lord, "Bobby Darin, as a director, was not Richard Brooks. Maybe he could have been, but at that time I don’t think he was."
Mariette Hartley appeared in Bobby Darin's The Vendors	After completing The Vendors, Darin spent an inordinate amount of time searching for a distributor. The search was in vain and the film was eventually shelved, never to be seen by the moviegoing public. The entire process was considered a learning experience by the film’s creator, who later said, "I was consumed totally by the film. I’m a person obsessed of perfecting whatever it is that I can do. And really I don’t want to waste my time doing a bunch of things that just give me immediate satisfaction but are not sustained. Performing has a sustained feeling for me... that feeling is dynamite." Bobby Darin then pulled his tux and toupee out of retirement and plunged back into the realm for which he was best known—electrifying stage performances given by a consummate professional.
He did not entirely abandon his love of acting, appearing on such TV shows as Ironside and frequent guest appearances on Flip Wilson’s variety show acting in various comedy sketches. On a 1972 episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery entitled "Dead Weight," he played a gangster on the lam who elicits the services of exporter Jack Albertson. Before the last commercial, he ends up as a can of dog food! Having found his stride performing in nightclubs again, Bobby Darin took full advantage of knowing where he excelled, and what the public wanted. He told an interviewer, "The knowledge at 35 years of age that this is what I do best, of all the things that I do, is very recent knowledge... I’ve touched base with film. Some people think I’m a fine actor, and I’m happy about that...but that thing that really is a super-charging energetic source for me is doing nightclub performances." His reinvigorated nightclub shows did return him to his rightful place of prominence, but he was also capable of remarkable acting performances in the most unlikely venues. Appearing on an episode of the 1972 Glenn Ford TV series Cade’s County entitled "A Gun For Billy," Darin was as powerful as ever. Ford played modern-day Sheriff Sam Cade in an unspecified area of the southwest called Madrid County. The offbeat episode had Darin as Billy Dobbs, a war veteran who believes he is the reincarnation of Billy the Kid, and Cade is Sheriff Pat Garrett. Darin is spellbinding in the part, but the short-lived series was canceled after one season, remembered mostly for its opening theme by Henry Mancini. In spite of his increasingly poor health, Darin had agreed to the grueling pace of a weekly NBC variety show in 1972—The Bobby Darin Amusement Company. Onscreen for almost every musical and comedy sketch segment, audiences were able to see Darin’s comedic ability to better advantage than they ever could in the films he made with Sandra Dee. He opened each show with a Groucho Marx impression, and created such regular characters as hippie poet Dusty John Dusty, Brando in drag as The Godmother, and Bronx neighborhood philosopher Angie, who hung out on the stoop with his friend and cured the ills of the world. The show did well in the ratings and ran for two seasons. Its premature cancellation remains a mystery.
	Bobby Darin made one more film appearance, in the 1973 thriller Happy Mother’s Day, Love George, also known as Run Stranger Run. Produced and directed by actor Darren McGavin and written by Enter The Dragon’s (1973) Robert Clouse, this poorly executed thriller could not seem to decide if it wanted to be a character study, whodunit mystery, or a slasher film. Ron Howard starred as a stranger who shows up in a New England fishing town to find out about his past, and shake up the sleepy inhabitants. The film co-starred Cloris Leachman, Patricia Neal, Simon Oakland, and Neal’s daughter Tessa Dahl. Darin had the thankless role of Eddie, a short order cook who beds down Leachman but quickly becomes one of the slasher’s earliest victims. His appearance in the film is alarming, as the effect of his lifelong battle against heart disease had clearly taken its toll.
Bobby Darin passed away on December 20, 1973 at the age of 37. His struggle against the debilitating illness of his childhood allowed him to outlive the doctor’s predictions but could not maintain the hope of a full lifetime. His son Dodd believes that if his father had lived, "Some think he would have gotten involved in producing film or broken through as an actor at last." There are many tragedies concerning the premature death of someone as gifted as Bobby Darin. That he never lived to see his full potential realized may be the greatest tragedy. However, audiences can still savor the amazing performances of this courageous actor for many years to come. While other actors played it safe in mainstream commercial films, Darin sought out and gambled on the riskier projects despite knowing his time was limited. In the parlance of the Vegas performer he was most known for, he played the hand that was dealt him, and played it for all it was worth.
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Reference sources for this article include: "50 Golden Years of Oscar" by Robert Osborne, Biography Resource Center, "Borrowed Time: The 37 Years of Bobby Darin" by Al DiOro, "Captain Newman, M.D." by Leo Rosten, "Cassavetes On Film" Ray Carney (ed), "John Cassavetes: Lifeworks" by Tom Charity, "Tony Curtis: The Autobiography" by Tony Curtis & Barry Paris, "Tony Curtis: The Man & His Movies" by Allan Hunter, "Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee" by Dodd Darin, "Hell Is For Heroes" by Curt Anders, LionsGate.com, "Me and Bobby D. A Memoir" by Steve Karmen, The Official Bobby Darin Website, "The Pocket Essential Steve McQueen" by Richard Luck, RayCarney.com, "Rockerama: 25 Years of Screen Teen Idols" by Rob Burt, "Rock On Film" by David Ehrenstein & Bill Reed, SFweekly.com, "A Siegel Film" by Don Siegel, spaceygenius.com, "Stanley Kramer Film Maker" by Donald Spoto, StellaStevens.biz, "This Life" by Sidney Poitier, "TV Movies" by Leonard Maltin