BOBBY DARIN Secrets & Heartbreak

TOLD HE WOULD NEVER REACH OLD AGE, THE PERFORMER WORKED TIRELESSLY TO MAKE THE MOST OF LIFE

- LOUISE A. BARILE

At age 11, Dodd Darin hit four home runs in a single Little League game. “On the fourth one, I’m trotting around the bases in all my glory and I hear, ‘Run those bases, kid, hustle it! Move that you-know what!’” he recalls. The voice belonged to Dodd’s father, singer Bobby Darin, cheering him on from the sidelines. “That was him, always driven and always wanting to make it,” says Dodd.

Few performers shined brighter than Bobby in the late 1950s and early 1960s. “He had incredible gifts. He was a songwriter, actor, singer, musician. He played seven instruments. He was a terrific dancer, comedian and impressionist,” says David Evanier, author of Roman Candle: The Life of Bobby Darin. “He did it all.” The performer’s accomplishments are even more impressive due to the poor health, poverty, emotional betrayal and tumultuous marriage that Bobby overcame on his climb to the top.

He always knew his life would be short, so Bobby never stopped moving. “At age 7, he got rheumatic fever, which damaged the heart valves,” explains Dodd, author of a biography of his famous parents, Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee. “He overheard a conversation with his mother and the doctor saying even with good care, [he would] not live past 16 years old.”

A bright child, Bobby was a pupil at the prestigious Bronx High School of Science. “He was the smartest man I ever met,” singer Connie Francis, his first love, tells Closer. “He could talk about anything; poetry, philosophy, politics, history — anything, you name it!”