Did you know...
Bobby Darin was Italian!
He was born in the Bronx, N.Y. in 1936 and his name was Walden Robert Cassotto. As a child, he was told that he wouldn't live past the age of 16 because he had rheumatic fever. What would you do? He proclaimed that he wanted to be a legend before he was 25 (like Frank Sinatra), and pack as much as possible into his life. Darin did just that. He sang every style, but pop music was his real love. He wrote twenty songs for himself and others - Splish Splash was only one of many hits. He made more than a dozen movies - his role in "Captain Newman MD" earned him an Oscar nomination in 1963.
He got married twice, the first time to a teen movie actress Sandra Dee in 1960 and again in 1968. When Bobby was 32 years old, he learned that the woman he knew as his "mother" was his grandmother and the girl he knew as his "sister" was his mother. His Italian family engineered this farce "to prevent scandal" but unfortunately, no one considered Bobby's feeling when the scheme came out.
Five years later Bobby Darin was dead at 37 years of age. He died of complications after his second open-heart surgery on December 20, 1973 in Los Angeles.