Bobby Darin
Walden Robert Cassotto, known by the stage name Bobby Darin, was an American singer, songwriter, and actor who performed pop, swing, folk, rock and roll and country music.
Darin started his career as a songwriter for Connie Francis. In 1958, Darin co-wrote and recorded his first million-selling single, "Splish Splash", which was followed by Darin's own song "Dream Lover", then his covers of "Mack the Knife" and "Beyond the Sea", which brought him worldwide fame. In 1959, Darin was the inaugural winner of the Grammy Award for Best New Artist and also won a Record of the Year for "Mack the Knife" at the 2nd Annual Grammy Awards. Three years later, Darin won a Golden Globe Award for his first film, Come September, co-starring his first wife, actress Sandra Dee.
In the 1960s, Darin became more politically active and worked on Robert F. Kennedy's Democratic presidential campaign. Darin was present at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles at the time of Robert Kennedy's assassination in June 1968. That same year, Darin discovered the woman who had raised him was his grandmother, not his mother as he thought, while also learning that the woman who he thought was his sister was actually his mother. Those events deeply affected Darin and sent him into a long period of seclusion.
Although Darin made a successful comeback in television in the early 1970s, his health was beginning to fail due to a weak heart; Darin's knowledge of his vulnerability had always spurred him on to use his musical talent while still young. Darin died in 1973 at age 37 in a hospital recovery room after having open heart surgery in Los Angeles.
Early life
Darin was born Walden Robert Cassotto in East Harlem in Manhattan on May 14, 1936, to Vanina Juliette "Nina" Cassotto. Because his mother was only 18 at the time of his birth, Darin was raised to believe his maternal grandmother was his mother and Nina was his older sister.Darin's maternal grandmother, Vivian "Polly" Fern Walden, was of English, Danish, and Norwegian ancestry and had been a vaudeville singer before Darin's birth. His maternal grandfather, Saverio Antonio "Big Sam Curly" Cassotto, was of Italian descent. He had been a made man and "soldier" in the Genovese Crime Family, as well as a close associate of Frank Costello's. Sam Cassotto died from pneumonia in late 1935 while in prison, less than a year before Darin was born.
In 1968, when Darin was 32 and considering entering politics, Nina told him the truth, devastating Darin. She refused to reveal the identity of his biological father and took that secret to her grave when she died in 1983. The father's identity remained unknown until 2020. In April 2020, Emilio "Milton" LePore was traced, through genealogical DNA, as being Darin's biological father.
Emilio LePore was the son of Italian immigrants and the oldest of five children. He went by the name Milton, rather than his formal name, Emilio. LePore was the brother of the actor Richard LePore. The LePore brothers shared the actor Anthony Franciosa as their first cousin. Franciosa and Sandra Dee co-starred in the 1966 movie A Man Could Get Killed. Franciosa and Dee had no knowledge they were in-laws. Details about Milton LePore and Nina Cassotto's courtship are scarce. They met in the Spring or Summer of 1935. In August of 1935, Miss Cassotto became pregnant with Darin. Soon after, Cassotto ended the relationship. Details of why and how she ended it are not known. What is known about LePore, is that by the end of the 1930s, he was institutionalized for schizophrenia. The 1940 Census listed LePore as an inmate of Rockland State Hospital, where he remained until his death in 1965.
Darin moved to the Bronx early in his life and graduated from the prestigious Bronx High School of Science. In later years, Darin attributed his arrogance to his experiences there, where Darin was surrounded by brighter students who teased him. Darin then enrolled at Hunter College and soon gravitated to the drama department. After only two semesters, he dropped out to pursue an acting career. Darin was an ambitious young adult and aspired to be an actor, go on Broadway, and become a recording artist.
By the time he was a teenager, Darin could play several instruments including piano, drums, and guitar. He later added harmonica and xylophone. Darin took his stage name, Bobby Darin, when he began recording. One version of how Darin got the name is that the first three letters on a Mandarin Chinese restaurant were burned out. According to another version, he adapted it from the first name of actor Darren McGavin, TV's Mike Hammer. Darin said: "My legal name will remain Cassotto. Cassotto was my mother's name, and it will be my children's name."
Music career
1950s
Darin's career took off with a songwriting partnership, formed in 1955 with Don Kirshner, whom he met at a candy store in Washington Heights. They wrote jingles and songs, beginning with "Bubblegum Pop". In 1956, Darin's agent negotiated a contract with Decca Records. The songs recorded at Decca had minimal commercial success.A member of the Brill Building gang of struggling songwriters, Darin was introduced to singer Connie Francis, with whom he helped write several songs. They developed a romantic interest, but her father was not fond of Darin and did not approve of the relationship, and the couple split up. At one point, Darin wanted to elope immediately; Francis has said that not marrying Darin was the biggest mistake of her life.
Darin left Decca to sign with Atlantic Records' Atco subsidiary, where he wrote and arranged music for himself and others. Guided by Atlantic's star-maker Ahmet Ertegun, Darin's career finally took off in 1958 when he recorded "Splish Splash". Darin co-wrote the song with radio DJ Murray Kaufman after a phone call from Kaufman's mother, Jean, a frustrated songwriter. Her latest song idea was: "Splish, Splash, Take a Bath". Both Kaufman and Darin felt the title was lackluster, but Darin, with few options, said: "I could write a song with that title." Within an hour, Darin had written "Splish Splash". The single, Darin's first successful foray into the rock-and-roll genre, sold over a million copies. His partnership with Kirshner, who was not involved in the writing of that song, ended at that time. Darin made another recording in 1958 for Brunswick Records with a band called the Ding Dongs. With the success of "Splish Splash", the single was re-released by Atco Records as "Early in the Morning" with the band renamed as the Rinky Dinks. It charted, and made it to number 24 in the United States.
In 1959, Darin recorded the self-penned "Dream Lover", a ballad that became a multimillion seller. With it came financial success and the ability to demand more creative control of his career; Darin meant for his That's All album to show that he could sing more than rock and roll as a result. Darin's next single, "Mack the Knife", the standard from Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, was given a vamping jazz-pop interpretation. Although Darin was initially opposed to releasing it as a single, the song went to number one on the chart for nine weeks, sold two million copies, and won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1960. He was also voted the Grammy Award for Best New Artist that year, and "Mack the Knife" has since been honored with a Grammy Hall of Fame Award.
Darin followed "Mack" with "Beyond the Sea", a jazzy English-language version of Charles Trenet's French hit song "La Mer". Both tracks were produced by Atlantic founders Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun with staff producer Jerry Wexler, and they featured arrangements by Richard Wess. The late-1950s success included Darin setting the all-time attendance record at the Copacabana nightclub in Manhattan and headlining at the major casinos in Las Vegas.
1960s
Darin's 1960 recording of "Artificial Flowers", a song by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock from the Broadway musical Tenderloin about the death of a child laborer, featured a jazzy, big band arrangement by Richard Behrke, that was in sharp contrast to its tragic lyrics.In 1962, Darin began writing and singing country music, with hit songs including "Things" , "You're the Reason I'm Living", and "18 Yellow Roses". The latter two were recorded by Capitol Records, which he joined in 1962, before returning to Atlantic three years later. Darin left Capitol in 1964. Two years later, he had his final UK hit single, with a version of Tim Hardin's "If I Were A Carpenter", which peaked at number 9. Darin performed the opening and closing songs on the soundtrack of the 1965 Walt Disney film That Darn Cat!. "Things" was sung by Dean Martin in the 1967 TV special Movin' With Nancy, starring Nancy Sinatra.
In 1963, through his office in New York's Brill Building, Darin employed future The Byrds leader Roger McGuinn and singer-songwriter Frank Gari as songwriters. McGuinn was "instructed to listen to the radio and to emulate the songs he heard". McGuinn and Gari brought Darin a song called "Beach Ball" and Darin booked recording time in the Brill Building demo studio where the three recorded the song with Darin on drums, Gari on piano and McGuinn on guitar and all three on vocals. The song was subsequently recorded by Australian varity show presenter Jimmy Hannan, with backing by the Bee Gees. Darin, McGuinn and Gari's recording was issued in 1963 by Capitol Records under the name The City Surfers. A second City Surfers single was issued the same year, again with writers under Darin's employ providing the songs. Darin's T. M. Music/T. M. Productions produced both singles, but details of the second City Surfers single session are lost, though Darin does appear to feature prominently as vocalist on the second City Surfers single.
Acting career
In the fall of 1959, Darin played Honeyboy Jones in an early episode of Jackie Cooper's CBS military sitcom/drama Hennesey. Darin's first major film, Come September, was a teenager-oriented romantic comedy with Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida, and featuring 18-year-old actress Sandra Dee. They met during the production of the film, and they soon married on December 1, 1960. Dee gave birth to a son, Dodd Mitchell Darin on December 16, 1961. Dee and Darin made a few films together with moderate success, such as If a Man Answers and That Funny Feeling.In 1961, Darin starred as a struggling jazz musician in Too Late Blues, John Cassavetes' first film for a major Hollywood studio. Writing in 2012, Los Angeles Times critic Dennis Lim observed that Darin was "a surprise in his first nonsinging role, willing to appear both arrogant and weak". In 1962, Darin won the Golden Globe Award for "New Star of the Year – Actor" for his role in Come September. The following year he was nominated for a Best Actor Golden Globe for Pressure Point.
In 1963, Darin was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a shell-shocked soldier in Captain Newman, M.D. Throughout his acting career, Darin appeared alongside a series of Hollywood leading men: Sidney Poitier, Steve McQueen, and Gregory Peck. In October 1964, Darin appeared as a wounded ex-convict who is befriended by an orphan girl in "The John Gillman Story" episode of NBC's Wagon Train Western television series.