Bobby Darin learned at 32 that his sister was really his mother
Bobby Darin grew up believing his grandmother was his mother and his mother was his older sister. The truth reached him in 1968, when he was 32 and weighing a political career, and it sent him into long seclusion. His biological father was identified by DNA only in 2020.
He was born Walden Robert Cassotto in East Harlem on May 14, 1936, to Nina Cassotto, who was just 18. His grandmother had been a vaudeville singer, and his grandfather, who died in prison of pneumonia months before the birth, had been a soldier in the Genovese crime family. Nina refused to name the father and took the secret to her grave in 1983; genealogical DNA later pointed to Milton LePore, a cousin of the actor Anthony Franciosa, who unknowingly co-starred with Darin's wife Sandra Dee in 1966.
Darin went to the Bronx High School of Science, where brighter classmates teased him, and he later blamed the place for his arrogance. He left Hunter College after two semesters to chase acting and could play piano, drums and guitar by his teens. One story says his stage name came from a Mandarin restaurant sign with its first three letters burned out. Songwriting with Don Kirshner and a Decca contract went nowhere, and a romance with Connie Francis ended when her father objected.
Success came at Atco under Ahmet Ertegun. In 1958 he dashed off Splish Splash in about an hour, from a title suggested by a DJ's mother, and it sold a million. Dream Lover followed, then a swinging version of Mack the Knife from The Threepenny Opera that he had not wanted released: it spent nine weeks at number one and sold two million. In 1959 he became the first Grammy winner for Best New Artist and took Record of the Year. He broke the Copacabana's attendance record and headlined in Las Vegas.
He won a Golden Globe for his first film, Come September, moved into country hits such as Things, and in 1968 was at the Ambassador Hotel when Robert F. Kennedy, whose campaign he worked on, was assassinated. Aware of a weak heart since youth, he rushed to use his talent. He died at 37 on December 20, 1973, after open heart surgery.
Source: Bobby Darin
