The Late, Great Bobby Darin

From an early age, Bobby Darin knew his days were numbered...

Raised on Home Relief in The Bronx during the Great Depression, as a child he suffered from multiple bouts of rheumatic fever, which seriously weakened his heart; in fact, he wasn't supposed to live past the age of 16.

Yet not only did he outlive his diagnosis by 20 years, he packed those years with hit records, movie roles, and nightclub appearances a-plenty. His is a story of the power of art in the life of an artist; self-medicated by his capacious creativity, he lived his career with a single-mindedness rare among young talent, especially these days. The charisma he oozed onstage, though, often belied the bellicose douchebaggery for which he became known in his private life.

For all that he must have been aware he was living on borrowed time, onstage Bobby Darin was a paragon of cool; he never could even play flustered successfully, let alone be it, though he often tried, to great comic effect.

Bobby Darin died on this day in 1973.

Bobby Darin has been memorably portrayed on film by Kevin Spacey, who mastered Darin's delivery so as to sing all his own songs, in the film Beyond The Sea (2004).
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