Beyond Cool: The Acting Career of Bobby Darin

by Dwayne Epstein
This article originally appeared in the April/June & June/July 2005 issues of Filmfax Magazine and is reprinted here by permission of the author.
	Imagine for a moment if Fabian, Frankie Avalon, Paul Anka or even Pat Boone—all of whom had successful film and musical careers—made the kind of films Bobby Darin chose to make. It seems impossible to picture any of Darin’s perceived contemporaries being involved with such maverick filmmakers as John Cassavetes, Don Siegel, Stanley Kramer, or Richard Brooks, and yet Bobby Darin sought out just such controversial filmmakers for his movie projects. He also co-starred along with such film icons as Sidney Poitier, Gregory Peck, and Steve McQueen, even earning a Golden Globe Award and later an Academy Award nomination along the way. Not even Elvis could lay claim to such an impressive résumé!
Although Darin’s cool, finger-snapping musical contribution to popular culture has been heralded for some time (he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990), his impressive contribution to film has been sadly overlooked. The recent release of Kevin Spacey’s Beyond the Sea (2004)—his personal tribute to the life and career of Bobby Darin—has brought long overdue attention to the multi-talented artist who left us at the age of 37. Spacey himself is on record as having said, "My true hope and desire in doing this entire thing is to introduce him to a generation that didn't know him, and to reintroduce him to those that did." For both of those generations, a re-evaluation of Bobby Darin’s acting career will be an eye-opening experience. Bobby Darin was more than just cool; he was an amazingly courageous and underrated actor.
Gregory Peck and Bobby Darin in "Captain Newman M.D." (1963)
Darin was born Robert Walden Cassotto in Harlem, New York on May 14, 1936 under circumstances not unlike a Harold Robbins novel. His pregnant mother, Nina, was unmarried and on her way to the hospital with her mother, Polly, when she accidentally met the baby’s father briefly at the bus stop. She had not seen the man since their fateful meeting nine months before and managed to conceal her pregnancy from him while they made small talk. That would be the closest Bobby Darin would ever come to having actual contact with his real father. His identity remains a mystery. Following his birth, young Bobby was taken home by his mother and grandmother who made a decisive agreement concerning the boy’s parentage. Since Polly’s husband Sam Cassotto was a small-time hood who died in prison and Nina was unwed, it was decided that Bobby would be raised to believe that Polly was his mother, the deceased Sam was his father, and teenaged Nina was his much older sister. It was an agreement kept in confidence that lasted much of Darin’s life. Nina began dating a local sanitation worker named Charlie Maffia, they eventually married, and the entire brood of Nina, Polly, Charlie and Bobby moved to a low-income neighborhood in the Bronx. The boy was very sickly throughout most of his childhood but was spoiled and fussed over incessantly by his family. Charlie and Nina Maffia had several more children but Bobby remained the center of everyone’s attention.
	From an early age, Bobby Darin wanted to be in show business, first as a comedian, then as an actor. When he was not bedridden with one ailment or another, he loved going to the movies, his favorite film being Pride of the Yankees (1942) with Gary Cooper as the doomed baseball legend Lou Gehrig. He idolized song-and-dance man Donald O’Connor and hoped to some day have a similar career. The impetus to sing was instilled by ex-showgirl Polly. Bobby was the child on which she pinned all her dreams of show business success. In return for her devotion, Bobby amazed her and the family with his precocious ways and proved to be quite the little hustler when it came to using charm to get what he wanted.
His first taste of performing was not from the singing that would eventually make him a star, but by acting in his fourth grade Christmas pageant. He was chosen to play Santa, but the morning of the show he woke up in excruciating pain. It proved to be the onset of Rheumatic Fever, a life-threatening disease that affected his joints and would eventually scar his heart valves. It not only kept him out of the school pageant; he overheard the doctor tell his family that, even if he survived the bout, he would probably not live past the age of 20. Dealing with the illness was extremely difficult for all concerned. Everyone in the family sacrificed greatly for the boy, but it was Polly who inspired young Bobby to strive for greatness. In 1960, he told an interviewer about Polly: "My mom was a very powerful influence because, when I was born, I was born different from anybody else, as far as she was concerned. I was a very sickly individual, and because it was hours and hours without sleep to take care of me, she just accepted the fact that God wouldn’t do that to her or to me without making up for it later." With Polly pushing him, and Nina and Charlie there to provide any support they could, Bobby entered the prestigious Bronx High School of Science. In 1951, at the age of 16, he and several friends started a band that eventually played some gigs in the Catskills during the summer, with Bobby on drums. Bobby Darin’s love of music kicked into full swing, momentarily overriding both comedy and acting. As band member and lifelong friend Dick Behrke remembers, "Bobby had the desire to be a star in some area... His first love was acting... It just happened to click for Bobby that he was a singer. It could have clicked someplace else. If it had clicked in acting, I think he would have been happier."
	Even though he had taught himself to play several instruments, Bobby Darin’s inability to read music made it impossible to get into the musician’s union. At 17, he enrolled at Hunter College as a theater major, auditioning for the lead in every play. Billed as Walden Roberts, he played the male lead in Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler his first semester and every play after that. The next semester his drama teacher asked him not to try out for the leads so as to give other students a chance. He was asked to work on the lights or paint scenery. Knowing his time was short to gain real success in show business, Darin’s agenda made him realize that academics was not the way to succeed, and he quit school shortly thereafter.
After Hunter College, he moved into an apartment with Dick Behrke in Manhattan where, among other things, he briefly found work with a children’s theater company. It was around this time that, after experimenting with several name changes (Walden Roberts, Bobby Walden, Bobby Titan, etc.), he permanently settled on Bobby Darin. Some sources claim he picked it out of a phone book, while others say the inspiration hit him when passing a Chinese restaurant with appropriately burned out neon on the word M-A-N-D-A-R-I-N. Whatever inspired him, he took his new name, had professional headshots taken, and made the rounds of casting agents and directors on Broadway. Being a short, prematurely balding (due to his illness), Italian-looking New Yorker had yet to be in vogue in the early ‘50s, so Darin channeled his considerable energy into music. As his son Dodd later wrote, "He still wanted to be an actor but the country was on the verge of rock n’ roll and my father felt that singing was his best shot. He reasoned that his voice might be the battering ram he needed to do pictures." First he tried songwriting with partner Don Kirshner, and when that failed to garner the necessary attention, he tried singing professionally. A song demo he performed landed him a record contract and a shot on national television. Through this entire period and the remainder of his life, Darin never stopped believing he could make it as actor. His publicist and devout lifelong supporter Harriet Wasser recalled, "I remember him saying, ‘I’m wonderful. I’m a great actor,’ and I’d say, ‘How do you know?' and he’d say, ‘I can feel it.’ And I never would deny it, because I felt he was a natural born actor. If he had lived and kept making movies, I think today he would be a monster actor. He had a natural gift, and that’s why I fell for him."
By getting such a strong support team around him as Wasser, and later his agent Steve Blauner, Darin marshaled his forces for success. Unfortunately, his TV appearance on Jackie Gleason’s summer show, Stage Show—hosted by the Dorsey Brothers—was a flop. This was partly due to nervousness that had him trying to read the hand-scribbled lyrics to "Rock Island Line" off of his sweaty palms for all of America to see. The bigger reason for his failure was having the bad luck to be scheduled between two appearances of another up-and-comer making his TV debut the week before and the week after—Elvis Presley. Depressed but undaunted, he continued on. Touring with other early rock performers—such as Connie Francis, with whom he had a torrid but short-lived romance—Bobby Darin finally made his mark in show business by recording and sometimes writing such songs as "Splish Splash," "Queen Of The Hop," "Plain Jane" and "Dream Lover." As great as this success as a teen rock idol was, he clearly wanted much more. When another tour was announced in which Darin would have to appear with other teen idols, Steve Blauner proved his mettle by securing Darin an appearance in Las Vegas as George Burns’ opening act. The pay was smaller, but the prestige was much greater. "I had a choice," he said years later. "I could either go to England for $1,900 a week, or I could go to Las Vegas for a considerable amount less, and my choice was to go to Las Vegas." The choice became the foundation for the performer Darin would be most remembered as—the self-assured, cocky Vegas nightclub singer. For Bobby Darin, this would prove to be his greatest acting performance: "My assurance lasts from the time I walk on the floor to the time I walk out. I don’t know anybody who works as assuredly as I work. With those lights off and the music out, I’m a different person."
	Part of Darin's recording success can be traced back to a play he saw in 1958. He had gone to a theater in Greenwich Village to see a revival of Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. The song "Mack The Knife" was a perennial favorite in the show and Darin added it to his repertoire with very little fanfare. When he recorded his first album of standards a year later, a revamped arrangement of the song and a self-assured performance catapulted Darin out of the realm of teen idol and into the stratosphere of mainstream pop singer. Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records recalled, "We knew as we were cutting it. We were jumping up and down. After the first take, I said, ‘You’ve got it! That’s it!’"
As Darin’s musical career ascended, agent Steve Blauner never stopped hunting for the right project for Darin to make his acting debut. He fought hard for Darin to possibly have his own TV series, star in the film version of the Broadway hit Blue Denim, or in The Gene Krupa Story. The TV series deal never materialized and both films were made in 1959 without Darin’s presence. Blauner did secure Darin the gig in Vegas with George Burns, as well as a successful screen test. Darin’s portrayal of James Dean’s character from East Of Eden was so impressive he was offered a role in the upcoming Glenn Ford service comedy Cry for Happy. A previous commitment with George Burns meant foregoing the film, since Darin’s loyalty was legendary among his friends, and he considered Burns his mentor and surrogate father. Ironically, the part in Cry for Happy (1961) went to his childhood hero, Donald O’Connor. Darin remained fatalistic about his lost film role, stating at the time, "Had it been meant to happen, then it would have." In spite of his musical success, he was anxious to launch a film career that would be based on pure ability, and not one that capitalized on his teen idol status as other performers had done before him. The fact that Polly Cassotto died in 1959 and never got to see Bobby on the big screen also weighed heavily on him. His screen debut finally came about the next year in one of Hollywood’s overblown spectaculars entitled Pepe (1960), which boasted over 30 stars and was meant to launch the Hollywood career of Mexican film comedian Cantinflas. The brainchild of Hollywood musical director George Sidney, Pepe was promoted with big success in mind. Sydney said in classic ballyhoo style of the day, "Pepe is a vehicle I worked on for 3 years and it was molded, fashioned, and formed with one purpose: to best display the remarkable talents of Cantinflas... PEPE—the most exciting four letter word in the history of entertainment."(!)
One sequence in the overproduced film has Cantinflas wandering into a Beatnik coffeehouse on the Sunset Strip in time to hear the headlining performers for the evening. Andre Previn tinkles the piano keys and out strolls an electric blue sharkskin-suited Bobby Darin. Crooning to the camera but addressing the house, he informs the patrons, "Now put your drinks on the table, while I spin you a fable, to ill-ustrate my... point!" The last word kicks in the band for a raucous, hip Previn tune entitled "That’s How It Went, All Right." The song is a typical Darin uptempo tale of love and violence, not unlike "Mack The Knife." Darin slides across the soundstage with ease and grace, at one point casually hanging by one arm from a balcony. It proved to be the highlight of an otherwise lackluster movie. Amazingly, Pepe went on to receive seven Oscar nominations but, less amazingly, lost in every category. Darin had finally made his first film, but was yet to be seen as an actor. That finally came about in a light comedy that had greater significance for him personally than it ever could professionally. The film was called Come September (1961), a frothy generation gap ("Teenagers are like Hydrogen bombs. When they go off, it’s best to observe it from a distance.") battle of the sexes ("Women are like buildings. The older they get the more paint they need.") romp that toplined Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida. In supporting romantic roles were Bobby Darin and his future wife, Sandra Dee.
"My mom remembers the first time she saw my father," wrote Dodd Darin in his book Dream Lovers. "He was standing on the shore wearing a yellow suit and she was in a boat just pulling in to dock. ‘Will you marry me?’ he called out to her. ‘Not today,’ she said. So he asked her again, every day, until she finally said yes." Her reticence was understandable considering that, at the time they met on the set of the film, Sandra Dee was the biggest star in Hollywood and Bobby Darin was the entertainment industry’s biggest upstart. He was famous in the Hollywood columns for such statements as, "I want to be a legend by the time I’m 25," and "There is a difference between conceit and egotism. Conceit is thinking you’re great; egotism is knowing it." These statements did not always endear him to the show business community, but his inner circle certainly understood him. According to Harriet Wasser, "My feeling is that he knew he wasn’t going to live long, it was more important to him to make his statement as an artist than a diplomat." His lack of diplomacy angered some, including co-star Sandra Dee, who did not see his cocky swagger as a cloak worn to cover his fear of an early death and true insecurity about himself. As he once said to friend and agent Steve Blauner about his own looks, "When I wake up in the morning, you know what I see in the mirror? I see an ugly, short, balding, double-chinned Italian with a big nose and puffy eyes. But when I go out the door, I put my game face on. I look like Rock Hudson."
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