Former teen screen legend Sandra Dee dies at 62

SANDRA Dee, who at the height of her fame in the 1960s was arguably the biggest female teen idol of her time, has died, leaving a legacy of film roles that includes Gidget and Tammy and the Doctor.

“She was Gidget, and she was Tammy, and for a time she was young America’s ideal,” film historian Leonard Maltin once said of her. Ms Dee later married fellow pop icon, singer Bobby Darin.

Ms Dee died of complications on Sunday morning from kidney disease at the Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, her family said.

She was 62.

Steve Blauner, a long-time family friend who represents Darin’s estate, said Ms Dee had been hospitalised for nearly two weeks. She had been on dialysis for about four years, Mr Blauner said.

“She didn’t have a bad bone in her body,” he said. “When she was a big star in the pictures and a top five at the box office, she treated the grip the exact same way she treated the head of the studio. She meant it. She wasn’t phoney.”

With her squeaky-clean image and girl-next-door charm, Universal Studios cast Ms Dee mostly in teen movies such as The Reluctant Debutante, The Restless Years, Tammy Tell Me True and Take Her, She’s Mine.

Her last film credit was for the 1983 movie Lost.

In 1960, Ms Dee married Mr Darin and they had a son, Dodd Mitchell, the following year.