`SEA' DIVES BELOW THE SURFACE.

Byline: - Fred Shuster

``My goal is to be remembered as a human being and as a great performer,'' Bobby Darin once said.

Mission accomplished.

One of the most popular rock 'n' roll teen idols of the late '50s, Darin is today considered among the best pop performers and nightclub stylists of all time - if you know anything about him.

Here are the facts, some of which are not covered in Kevin Spacey's ``Beyond the Sea.''

Born Robert Walden Cassotto in the Bronx on May 14, 1936, Darin was a sickly child, suffering from rheumatic fever at age 8. The disease left him with a weakened heart and great discomfort the rest of his life.

Torn between acting and singing ambitions in college, he auditioned for stage shows with little success. Knowing he would have to change his ethnic last name to be accepted in the entertainment industry, the name Darin was plucked from the phone book.

The Atlantic Records subsidiary Atco inked Darin as an arranger, songwriter and, lastly, singer. Three platters bombed until a final Atco effort, ``Splish Splash,'' hit the jackpot, selling a million copies. Two follow-ups, ``Queen of the Hop'' and ``Plain Jane,'' also were hits.

The enduring ``Dream Lover,'' issued in '59, revealed Darin's ability to handle complex material and melodies. A glitzy big-band ``Mack the Knife,'' borrowing from the showy vocal inflections of Frank Sinatra (the outspoken Darin once predicted he'd be ``bigger than Sinatra''), topped the charts for months. The song won a Grammy Award as record of the year while Darin was voted best new artist.

Hollywood beckoned. Darin made 13 movies, including his first starring role in 1960 with ``Come September.'' During filming, he met and would eventually marry his teen leading lady, Sandra Dee. Three years later, Darin got an Oscar nod for his work in the 1963 film ``Capt. Newman, M.D.'' In 1962, he won the Golden Globe for most promising male newcomer for his role in ``Pressure Point.''

A few years later, after seeing his string of hits dry up, Darin embraced folk-rock, enjoying a Top 10 cover of Tim Hardin's ``If I Were a Carpenter.''

In 1967, after Darin and Dee divorced, the crooner returned to Las Vegas and TV. In 1965, he participated in a civil rights march in Alabama and stumped for Robert Kennedy during his doomed 1968 presidential campaign.

After Kennedy's funeral, Darin insisted he'd had a mystical revelation and immediately quit working, sold his possessions and moved to a mobile home at Big Sur. A year later, he surfaced in jeans and mustache to start his own Direction record label and wrote the classic ``Simple Song of Freedom.''

Around this time, as ``Beyond the Sea'' dramatizes, Darin discovered that Polly, the woman he always assumed was his mother, was actually his grandmother, and that his ``sister'' Nina was actually his mother. In 1972, he married for a second time.

Darin died during surgery to repair a faulty heart valve on Dec. 20, 1973. His body was donated to the UCLA Medical Center for research purposes.

Darin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

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Photo:

The real Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, who met on a film set in 1960, were married seven years.