Sandra Dee Movies

Sandra Dee in 1959’s Gidget

Want to know the best Sandra Dee movies?  How about the worst Sandra Dee movies?  Curious about Sandra Dee box office grosses or which Sandra Dee movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Sandra Dee movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which ones got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place…. because we have all of that information and much more.

Sandra Dee (1942-2005) was an American actress who became a star in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  From 1959 to 1963 she was voted one of the most popular movie stars by Quigley Publications annual survey.  That included 4 straight years as a Top 10 star.  By the late 1960s, her career had started to decline.  Her last movie appearance was before she turned 30.

Her IMDb page shows 33 acting credits from 1932-1963. This page will rank 21 Sandra Dee movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.  Television appearances and movies not released in North America were not included in the rankings.

Bobby Darin, Sandra Dee, Rock Hudson & Gina Lollobrigida in 1961’s Come September

Sandra Dee Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Sandra Dee movies by co-stars of her movies
  • Sort Sandra Dee movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Sandra Dee movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Sandra Dee movies by how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Sandra Dee movie received.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® wins each Sandra Dee movie received.
  • Sort Sandra Dee movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score.  UMR puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
  • Use the sort and search buttons to make this table very interactive.

Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Sandra Dee Table

  1. Four Sandra Dee movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark.  That is a percentage of 19.04% of her movies listed. Imitation of Life (1959) was her biggest box office hit.
  2. An average Sandra Dee movie grosses $126.70 million in adjusted box office gross.
  3. Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter.  14 Sandra Dee movies are rated as good movies…or 66.66% of her movies.  Imitation of Life (1959) was her highest rated movie while A Man Could Get Killed (1966) was her lowest rated movie.
  4. One Sandra Dee movie received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 4.76% of her movies.
  5. Zero Sandra Dee movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 0.00% of her movies.
  6. An average Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 40.00.  8 Sandra Dee movies scored higher that average….or 38.09% of her movies.  Imitation of Life (1959 )got the the highest UMR Movie Score while A Man Could Get Killed (1966) got the lowest UMR Movie Score.

Lana Turner and Sandra Dee in 1959’s Imitation of Life

Possibly Interesting Facts About Sandra Dee

1. Alexandra Cymboliak Zuck was born in  in Bayonne, New Jersey in 1942.

2. Universal Studios concocted the name ‘Sandra Dee’ for her by shortening her first name and by using her stepfather’s surname initial “D” to sign vouchers.

3.  Sandra Dee earned a Golden Globe Award® as one of the year’s most promising newcomers for her performance in 1958’s Until They Sail.

4.  Sandra Dee’s big break came when producer Ross Hunter, balking at Natalie Wood’s lofty salary demands, decided to use Dee as Lana Turner’s daughter in 1959’s Imitation of Life.

5.  The success of Imitation of Life and Gidget turned Sandra Dee into a household name.

6.  Sandra Dee’s Top Quigley Box Office Rankings:  16th in 1959, 7th in 1960, 6th in 1961, 9th in 1962 and 8th in 1963.

7.  Sandra Dee was married one time and had one son.  Dee and Bobby Darin were married from 1960 to 1967.

8.  In 1994, Sandra Dee’s son, Dodd Mitchell, wrote Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee.

9.  Sandra Dee is immortalized in the popular song “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee” from 1978’s Grease. The song mocked her squeaky-clean image but Dee reportedly said in a statement that she did not mind, and always had a big laugh about it.

10. Check out Sandra Dee’s movie career compared to current and classic stars on our Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time page.

21 thoughts on “Sandra Dee Movies

  1. Back to Sandra: sadly she died in 2005 at the relatively young age of 62 and her final years were not happy ones as she was dogged by ill health throughout them and in fact became a recluse. Given that she did not have a “peaches and cream” ending in real life the mocking of her in Grease seems in retrospect a little unkind.

    However Grease of course also mocked my Doris as a screen sexual “puritan” but great survivor that she was she lived until 97 and died just last year.

    However I always though that whilst the “good girl next door” tag reflected most of her early career IT WAS PARTIAL MISNOMER BECAUSE her final decade centred largely around what the critics called “sex comedies” “with racy titles such as Pillow Talk/Move Over darling and The Spy in the Lace Panties [aka The Glass Bottom Boat].

    Indeed in Lover Come Back she accidentally journeys through pregnancy out of wedlock and birth is fully legitimised only by Rock RE-marrying her just minutes before the baby is born. However as they said in Liberty Valance “When the legend’s more exciting than the truth print the legend.” and I’m just about to watch a TV documentary about Doris called “Doris Day: Virgin Territory” first aired in 2007

  2. Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info, trivia, song lyrics and Cthulhu references, much appreciated. Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.

    Sandra Dee was definitely cute. I’ve only seen 2 of her movies – The Dunwich Horror and A Summer Place, but I wouldn’t mind seeing more of her, nudge nudge wink wink. But her more playful films rarely turn up on TV.

    The highest rated film she’s appeared in is ‘Imitation of Life’ and it’s the one I’m least interested in. Gidget and Come September look like fun, and maybe ‘A Man Could Get Killed’ with James Garner.

    Sandra Dee – “I think male nudity is wonderful.”

    I haven’t seen ‘Beyond the Sea’ which features Kevin Spacey as Bobby Darin and Kate Bosworth as Sandra Dee, it might be worth a look. According to IMDB Spacey was 44 years old when he played young Bobby. Darin married Dee when he was 24 and died aged 37 after open heart surgery.

    1. HI STEVE: Thanks for the feedback and your own further thoughts on Sandra. I agree that she was very cute.

      1959’s Imitation of Life along with 1966’s Madam X constituted the heart of Lana Turner’s “mush” period. Imitation of Life was a big hit everywhere and its Cogerson adjusted US gross is $280 million and review rating an excellent 80%; but Madam X was a flop in the US and I haven’t seen worldwide grosses for it. WH gives it a miserable adjusted US gross of $21 million but a fine 74% review rating.

      BOTH movies drew huge crowds in Belfast though – with large queues and women coming out of the cinemas afterwards weeping bucketfulls and indeed the pundits labelled both of them “tear jerkers”.

      Normally I would have been weeping with the women but for some reason neither appealed to me the way the two Hudson/Wyman classics did; so it seems that for once you and I are in agreement about a weepie – somebody should be writing that down!

  3. BEST 10 STILLS – actually 8 entries but 10 stills /lobby cards – all splendid.
    1/Sandra with George Hamilton
    2/Her with Tony Franciosa
    3/and with John Saxon
    4/Take Her She’s Mine – a token of the onset of Stewart’s decline.
    5/two for saucy Gidget
    6/two raunchy ones for A Summer Place.
    7/Come September-Rock’s last mega hit [Cogerson adjusted US gross of $230 million] Rock’s career started to go downhill after that with a few more modest hits but most of his subsequent movies were flops.
    8/Closing one of lovely Sandra in her youth-
    “Youth is everything Dorian. I’d do anything to get it back – except rise early and take up exercise!” Lord Henry Wotton in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.”

    “Hey! Look at me I’m Sandra Dee
    Lousy with vi****ity
    Won’t go to bed till I’m legally wed
    I can’t- I’m Sandra Dee!

    I don’t drink or swear
    I don’t rat my hair
    I get ill from one cigarette you bet.
    And as for you Troy Donahue
    I know what YOU wanna do”

    Elvis, Elvis, let me be!
    Keep that pelvis far from me!
    Just keep your cool
    Now your starting to drool but
    Hey you fool , I’m Sandra Dee! [From Grease 1978]

  4. I rated the selected 10s below 99.2% on average. My personal satisfaction overall rating back in Aug 2017 was 95% for the whole video. Indeed when I see how wonderful this video is in its entirety I am surprised that I didn’t initially give it more than a 95% rating as my opinion today is that it’s one of your best. I can only suppose that I penalised it for its brevity which I wouldn’t do today given its very high quality. Definitely worth getting reacquainted with.

    TOP 10 POSTER SETS IN DEE VIDEO
    1/Stranger in my Arms
    2/The Wild and The Innocent
    3/first one for Tammy
    4/The Reluctant Debutante
    5/Portrait in Black.
    6/The Dunwich Horror – enter Cthulhu stage left!
    7/A Man Could Get Killed-theme tune Strangers in the Night put to words with Sinatra’s voice.
    8/two for Take Her She’s Mine
    9/The Restless years
    10/tied two for A [saucy] Summer Place/Tammy and the Doctor

    I hear the cottonwoods whisperin’ above
    “Tammy, Tammy, Tammy’s in love”
    The ole hooty-owl hooty-hoos to the dove
    “Tammy, Tammy, Tammy’s in love.

    Whippoorwill, whippoorwill, you and I know
    Tammy, Tammy can’t let him go
    The breeze from the bayou keeps murmuring low
    “Tammy, Tammy, you love him so” [originally sung by Debbie Reynolds]

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