Bobby Darin was a major pop star … a singer, dancer, musician, and an Oscar nominee. He was the entertainer who did it all, except Broadway. Until now!
Tony Award-winner Jonathan Groff (“Merrily We Roll Along”) plays the icon of the late 1950s and ’60s in the musical “Just in Time.” “He was at the height of his powers, when he was on the floor of a nightclub with the audience in the palm of his hand,” said Groff.
For Darin, a live audience was oxygen. So, too, for Groff: “You can feel this vibration between performer and audience member. [It’s], to me, the most essential thing to ignite in the telling of his story.”
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It’s taken seven years and a whole lot of sweat to bring the show to Broadway. The casting of Groff – beloved for his roles on stage, and as Kristoff in the “Frozen” movies – might not seem obvious. Groff grew up on a horse farm in Pennsylvania Mennonite country; Darin was a scrappy Italian kid from the Bronx.
I asked Groff to whom he liked listening when he was growing up. “I am in fourth or fifth grade, on the computer or Nintendo in the basement, blasting Ethel Merman, ‘Annie Get Your Gun,'” he laughed.
“So, this is the 1990s, probably? And you’re playing something from the 1940s?”
“Exactly!”
Likewise, Bobby Darin was an old soul, says his son, Dodd Darin. “He admired, he loved, he respected the old timers. He loved that era of show business. That’s what he related to.”
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That may have had something to do with the woman who raised him: “Polly, his mother, was an old vaudevillian,” said Dodd. “And she nurtured him and said, ‘You can’t play stickball in the street. And you can’t roughhouse with kids’ (’cause he was frail and sickly). ‘But you can learn to sing. You can learn to dance. You can learn to play piano.’ And it opened a whole world.”
“Frail and sickly” was no exaggeration. Born Walden Robert Cassotto, Darin suffered several bouts of rheumatic fever as a child, permanently damaging his heart. When he was a boy, he overheard a family doctor say that he wouldn’t live beyond his teenage years. “Put yourself in that position,” said Dodd. “So, he was ambitious. He was driven. He was always on the go. He was trying to jam it all in, ’cause he knew he didn’t have time.”
With no time to waste, he began writing songs, and at 22, Bobby Darin made waves with a recording of “Splish Splash.”
Bobby Darin performs “Splish Splash” (1958):
Not one to play it safe, for his second album, in 1959, Darin took a dark ballad from the German “Threepenny Opera” and made it swing. “When my dad took ‘Mack the Knife’ before it was released and had Dick Clark listen to it, he said, ‘Why are you doing this? This is gonna bomb!'” Dodd said.
It won the Grammy for record of the year, and became the biggest hit of Darin’s career.
The next year, he was on his way to Italy to make his motion picture debut opposite America’s sweetheart, Sandra Dee. “We hit it right off,” Darin said. “She hated me and I loved her, and that was it.”
The teen idol married the teen movie star in December of 1960, and welcomed their son, Dodd, a year later. Dodd would later write, “My father made his destiny. Destiny made my mother.”
What did he mean by that? “Well, my mom went through a lot,” he said. “Never really wanted fame. She really didn’t crave it. It just sort of happened. Unlike my dad, who loved performing, loved show business.”
Dee was looking for a home life, said Dodd, but Bobby Darin wasn’t ready to slow down. The marriage ended after six years. Darin never stopped playing the clubs.
Sammy Davis Jr. once said that Bobby Darin was the one person he wouldn’t want to have to follow. “Absolutely true,” said Dodd. “My dad idolized Sammy.”
The feeling was mutual, as seen in a 1959 broadcast of “This Is Your Life”:
Also featured during the episode was Nina, the woman Darin thought was his sister. But almost a decade later he would learn a long-held family secret: Nina was in fact Bobby’s mother, having given birth to him out of wedlock as a teenager. Which made Polly, the woman he thought was his mother, his grandmother. “He was never the same,” said Dodd. “He said that his whole life was a lie; he was, like, a fraud. It’s just devastating. There’s no sugarcoating it.”
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Looking at that tape today, says Dodd, it all seems obvious. “That’s a mother’s love,” he said. “That’s not a sister, okay? That’s the adulation of, ‘This is my son,’ but you can’t say it.”
Dodd, who was seven years old when his father found out, remembers a change in your father from that time: “I’m not gonna say it’s directly attributed to that incident; I’m sure that’s part of it. But he got into the Bob Darin stage, you know? He took off his toupee. No more tuxedo. Started doing folk music, protest music, writing music, and dropped out of show business for a while.
“And that was some of the best times I had with him. He was a regular dude. We were up in Big Sur in a trailer, hanging out. And yeah, he let his hair down, if you will. It was good times.”
Bobby Darin performs “Simple Song of Freedom” (1970):
In December of 1973, Bobby Darin’s heart finally gave out. He was 37. Dodd had just turned 12. Now 63, Dodd Darin is grateful that, with the new Broadway show, a new generation can learn the story of his father.
“It’s so beautiful that all these years later – he’s been gone over 50 years – we’re here talking about him. We’re remembering him,” said Dodd. “He did something right.”
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Watch an extended interview with Dodd Darin
You can stream the album “The Ultimate Bobby Darin” by clicking on the embed below (Free Spotify registration required to hear the tracks in full):
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Story produced by Kay Lim. Editor: Lauren Barnello.
Watch Jonathan Groff perform “Dream Lover” for the cast album recording of “Just in Time”: