Sandra Dee
Nude

The late 1950s and early 1960s were times when Americans liked things to be big, pointy, and protruding, whether it was the tail fins of our automobiles or the breasts of our teen idols. Born in Bayonne, New Jersey, Sandra Dee was discovered by a producer on Park Avenue in New York City when she was just twelve years old. She started modeling and later entered the film world, and the star had many claims to fame. A perky insouciance that was pointless to resist. A face of eager innocence and willingness to please. A work ethic that had her creating post adolescent prototypes at a dazzling rate — one day Gidget, the next day Tammy Tyree. Blondeness, of course. A mane of flaxen tresses never hurts. And to top it off, in her pursuit of national veneration, Sandra Dee has the lung balloons of a full-grown burlesque queen, lurking only a fraction of an inch beneath her mohair cardigan. Oh, how the boys ached imagining the fleshly delights beneath her thick, old-school bra. And how the boys ached when they grew into men, and Sandra became a woman, and all she ever showed was a blink of nipple in the bad lighting of The Dunwich Horror (1970). Who ever thought that Gidget would be a parable of wasted potential? Well, there’s that song that goes, “Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee/ Lousy with virginity/ Won’t go to bed ’til I’m legally wed/ I can’t, I’m Sandra Dee.” That’s a shame.