Bobby Darin grew up believing he had very little time.<\/p>\n
As a child in the Bronx, he suffered several bouts of rheumatic fever that permanently damaged his heart.<\/p>\n
He was often sick and physically fragile.<\/p>\n
Then, when he was still very young, he overheard a doctor give his family a devastating prediction: he might not live past sixteen.<\/p>\n
For most children, hearing something like that might have crushed them.<\/p>\n
For Bobby, it became a reason to live as intensely as possible.<\/p>\n
He learned to play instruments.<\/p>\n
He performed whenever he could.<\/p>\n
And he began chasing the dream of becoming a professional entertainer.<\/p>\n
But there was another secret waiting for him\u2014one that would hurt him in a completely different way.<\/p>\n
Throughout his childhood, Bobby believed the woman raising him, Polly Cassotto, was his mother.<\/p>\n
The woman he believed was his older sister, Nina, was actually his biological mother.<\/p>\n
Polly was really his grandmother.<\/p>\n
Nina had become pregnant as an unmarried teenager, and the family decided that Polly would raise Bobby as her own child.<\/p>\n
Bobby eventually discovered the truth.<\/p>\n
And when he did, the revelation shattered the story he thought he knew about his own life.<\/p>\n
The people he had called his mother and sister suddenly had completely different identities.<\/p>\n
He disappeared from the public eye for a period, struggling to process the truth.<\/p>\n
But eventually, he returned to the thing that had always made sense to him.<\/p>\n
Music.<\/p>\n
Instead of allowing his past to destroy him, Bobby poured his emotions into his performances.<\/p>\n
And audiences noticed.<\/p>\n
In 1958, \u201cSplish Splash\u201d became a major hit.<\/p>\n
Then came \u201cDream Lover.\u201d<\/p>\n
And in 1959, Bobby recorded \u201cMack the Knife.\u201d<\/p>\n
The song became his first No. 1 hit and earned him a Grammy for Record of the Year. He also won the Grammy for Best New Artist.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, the sickly boy who had been warned that he might not live long had become one of America’s biggest entertainers.<\/p>\n
He sang.<\/p>\n
He acted.<\/p>\n
He performed in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
He appeared in films.<\/p>\n
And then Hollywood brought another unexpected chapter into his life.<\/p>\n
While filming Come September<\/em> in 1960, Bobby met actress Sandra Dee.<\/p>\n They married that same year and later had a son, Dodd.<\/p>\n For a while, it seemed as though Bobby had finally outrun the clock.<\/p>\n But his heart never stopped being a threat.<\/p>\n He continued performing despite his health problems.<\/p>\n He continued recording.<\/p>\n He continued reinventing himself as musical tastes changed.<\/p>\n He explored folk music and wrote songs with a more serious, socially conscious edge.<\/p>\n He refused to let the prediction from his childhood determine what he could accomplish.<\/p>\n But eventually, his body caught up with him.<\/p>\n In December 1973, Bobby Darin was hospitalized in Los Angeles for heart problems.<\/p>\n He died on December 20, 1973.<\/p>\n He was only 37 years old<\/strong>.<\/p>\n He had spent his life racing against time.<\/p>\n The doctors had warned him that his heart might not give him many years.<\/p>\n They were right about the danger\u2014but they couldn’t have predicted what he would accomplish before the clock finally ran out.<\/p>\n Bobby Darin didn’t live a long life.<\/p>\n But he packed an extraordinary amount of life into the years he was given.<\/p>\n He became a hitmaker.<\/p>\n An actor.<\/p>\n A husband.<\/p>\n A father.<\/p>\n And one of the most recognizable performers of his generation.<\/p>\n His family secret had once made him question who he was.<\/p>\n His damaged heart had made him question how long he had.<\/p>\n But music gave him something neither of those things could take away:<\/p>\n A reason to keep going.<\/p>\n And decades after his death, people still hear his voice.<\/p>\n The boy who was told he might not make it to sixteen became a star whose music outlived him by generations.<\/p>\n He may have lost the race against time.<\/p>\n But he left something behind that time couldn’t erase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bobby Darin grew up believing he had very little time. As a child in the Bronx, he suffered several bouts of rheumatic fever that permanently damaged his heart. He was … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5277,"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276\/revisions\/5277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storytv9.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}