March 3 - Bobby Driscoll

On this day, in 1937, Robert Cletus Driscoll was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. When Bobby was five his father, an insulation salesman, began suffering health problems from handling asbestos all the time at work. On a doctor’s recommendation, the family moved to Los Angeles in 1943 to try to alleviate his symptoms. It wasn’t long before people began recommending that Bobby get into movies. The family’s dentist had a son who was a regular on the MGM lot and arranged for Bobby to have an audition. He nailed it and made his first screen appearance in that year’s Lost Angel with Margaret O’Brien. Over the next three years, Bobby appeared in nine more films spread around most of the major studios in town. All that changed in when Bobby came to attention of a struggling animation studio out in Burbank.

Image copyright Disney

In 1946, the Walt Disney Studio was producing a film based on the stories of Joel Chandler Harris that would be a blend of live action storytellers giving a framework to animated stories. Although many of the ‘package films’ the studio had been cobbling together during the lean war years included both live and drawn scenes, Song of the South was the first Disney picture to deliberately meld them together for the story’s sake since the Alice comedies. Impressed with Bobby’s previous work, Walt decided to put him under personal contract with the studio, the first time Disney had done that. His south co-star, Luana Patten, was also put under contract and the two quickly became known as Disney’s Sweetheart Team.

Image copyright Disney

Bobby and Luana were paired again in 1948 for So Dear to My Heart, which also starred Burl Ives. That same year, the Sweethearts teamed up with Roy Rogers for the live action part of the Pecos Bill segment in Melody Time. Bobby was loaned out to Disney’s distributor, RKO Pictures, for two movies, If You Knew Susie with Eddie Cantor and The Window. Howard Hughes, RKO’s new owner, didn’t think much of Bobby’s acting skills, but not only was The Window a surprise hit, that film, combined with his performance in Heart, earned him a special Juvenile Academy Award in 1950.

Image copyright Disney

Walt then cast Bobby as Jim Hawkins in the studio’s first fully live action picture, Treasure Island. In order to utilize money made in England during the war, the film’s production had to occur in that country. Unfortunately, someone dropped the ball when it came to everyone’s paperwork. Partway into filming, it was discovered that Bobby didn’t have a valid work visa and was ordered out of the British Empire. During the six weeks the studio was given to prepare an appeal, all of Bobby’s close-up scenes were quickly filmed before he had to return to the States. The long shots were then completed with a British stand in and the film was completed satisfactorily.

Image copyright Disney

Bobby’s final role with Disney was as the title character in 1953’s Peter Pan. Not only did he voice the boy who never grew up, he was the live action model for the animators as well. Following the release of Pan, Bobby’s contract could have been extended another two years. But Bobby had hit that age that all child star’s get to eventually. He was no longer the cute younger brother type. Even though he’d been a perennial favorite of Walt’s, even the studio head felt the only parts in Bobby’s foreseeable future were bullies and the decision was made to let him go. Bobby, like so many kids before and since, never recovered from the blow.

Image courtesy famous-celebrity-autographs.cm

The other studios in town didn’t show much interest in one of Disney’s prodigies. The chance for even cameo roles virtually disappeared as Bobby struggled to finish high school. Before graduating he turned to drugs, mostly heroin, to fill the gap his defunct career left in his life. For the rest of the Fifties, Bobby (now using the name Robert in a bid to reinvent himself) only managed to scrape up occasional appearances on one the ubiquitous anthology television series. He married his longtime girlfriend and had three kids, but the relationship fell apart by 1960. With his drug habit escalating, he was arrested as an addict in 1961 and sentenced to the Narcotic Rehabilitation Center in Chino, California. After his release a year later, he discovered his career was really over; no studio would touch him.

Image courtesy twitter.com

Once he’d finished serving his parole, Bobby moved to New York City in 1965 to try a career on Broadway. It never materialized but he did become part of Andy Warhol’s Factory. He displayed some talent as an artist, working mostly in collage, and even had some work exhibited at the Santa Monica Museum of Art once. His art did not bring in much money, however. By early 1968, Bobby left the Factory, with hardly a dime to his name, and disappeared into the wilds of New York. On March 30, 1968, kids found his body in an abandoned tenement in the East Village, dead from heart failure brought on by extended drug use. With no identification, he was buried in the Potter’s Field on Hart Island. It wasn’t until a year and a half later, when his mother contacted the Disney studio in an attempt to locate him (his father’s health was rapidly declining) that a search was made and his fingerprints help identify his final resting place. His name was added to his father’s headstone, but the former star’s remains are still on Hart Island. At the end, he was only 31.