Bobby Driscoll

At 31 years old, Bobby Driscoll has this physical status:

Robert Cletus Driscoll (March 3, 1937 – March 30, 1968) was an American child actor and singer best known for a large number of cinema and television appearances from 1943 to 1960.

He appeared in some of the Walt Disney Studios' most popular live action films of the time, including Song of the South (1946), So Dear to My Heart (1949), and Treasure Island (1950).

In Peter Pan (1953), he served as an animation model and gave the voice to the title role.

He was nominated for outstanding contribution to feature films of 1949 for his roles in So Dear to My Heart and The Window, which were both released in 1949. Driscoll's acting career began to decline in the mid-1950s, and he concentrated on guest appearances on anthology television series.

He became addicted to opioid use and was sentenced to jail for unlawful drug use.

Since being released, he honed his attention on the avant-garde art scene.

He died in 1968 in an abandoned building shortly after his 31st birthday, in poor health as a result of heroin use and with his funds depleted.

Early life

He was born Robert Cletus Driscoll, the youngest child of Cletus (1901–1969), an insulation salesman, and Isabelle (née Kratz; 1904–1981), a former schoolteacher. The family moved to Des Moines, where they remained until early 1943, just after his birth. Since a doctor told the father to move to California because he was suffering from asbestos-related work, the family migrated to Los Angeles.

Driscoll's parents were encouraged to assist their son in becoming a child actor in films. Bobby's barber's son, an actor, got a glimpse at MGM for a part in Margaret O'Brien's family romance Lost Angel (1943). Driscoll, five-year-old Driscoll, noticed a mock-up ship and asked where the water was found while on a tour around the studio lot. The boy's curiosity and intelligence were rewarded by the producer's admiration and intelligence, who selected him over 40 applicants.

Source

Career

In the 20th Century Fox's World War II drama The Fighting Sullivans (1944) with Thomas Mitchell and Anne Baxter, Driscoll's brief, two-minute debut helped him win the role of young Al Sullivan, the youngest of the five Sullivan brothers. In Sunday Dinner for a Soldier, Richard Arlen's "child brother," and young Percy Maxim in So Goes My Love (1946), Don Ameche and Myrna Loy, there were additional screen representations including the boy who could blow his whistle while standing on his head. He appeared in films including Identity Unknown (1945) and Miss Susie Slagle's From This Day Forward (1948) and O.S.U.S.A. All 1946. Alan Laddd (all 1946).

Driscoll and Luana Patten were the first two actors Walt Disney brought under employment. Driscoll played the lead role in Song of the South (1946), which included live action in conjunction with a lengthy animated film. Driscoll and his co-star Luana Patten were turned into child stars in the film, but no juvenile awards were given at all during the year.

Driscoll and Patten appeared together in So Dear to My Heart (1948) with Burl Ives and Beulah Bondi, later dubbed by the American press as Walt Disney's "Sweetheart Team." It was planned as Disney's first all-action film, with production starting immediately after Song of the South, but its release was postponed until late 1948 to accommodate Disney's co-producer and longtime distributor RKO Radio Pictures' animated content in the film.

In Eddie Cantor's screen son's film role in RKO Studios' If You Knew Susie (also 1948), in which he collaborated with former Our Gang member Margaret Kerry, he appeared in RKO Studios' If You Knew Susie (also 1948). In the live action teaser for Disney's cartoon collection Melody Time (also 1948), Patten and he appeared alongside Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers.

Driscoll was loaned by RKO to appear in The Window, based on Cornell Woolrich's "The Boy Cried Murder." Howard Hughes, who had purchased RKO earlier this year, found the film unworthy of being released, but Driscoll isn't much of an actor, so it was postponed. It became a surprise hit when it was announced in May 1949. Driscoll was credited by the New York Times with the film's popularity:

So Dear to My Heart and The Window earned Driscoll an honor from the Juvenile Academy in March 1950 as the best juvenile actor of 1949.

Driscoll was cast in Walt Disney's version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1950), starring British actor Robert Newton as Long John Silver, the studio's first all-live action film. Driscoll was found not to have a valid British work permit during filming, so his family and Disney were fined and barred from leaving the country. They were allowed to film all of Driscoll's close-ups for six weeks to prepare an appeal, and director Byron Haskin shot all of Driscoll's close-ups, using his British stand-in to film missing location scenes after his parents' return to California.

Treasure Island was a worldwide success, and several other film projects involving Driscoll were in progress, but no one came out. Haskin, for example, recalls in his memoirs that Disney, although interested in Robert Louis Stevenson's pirate tale as a full-length film, had intended to have Driscoll played as Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer. He was at the right age for the role, but Disney had to scrap the entire scheme due to a story rights ownership dispute with Hollywood actor David O. Selznick, who had previously created the property in 1938. Driscoll was set to play a younger brother of Robin Hood after Treasure Island, as well as Robert Newton, who would appear on Friar Tuck, but Driscoll's journey to British immigration made this impossible.

Driscoll's second long-running Disney contract allowed him to be lent to independent Horizon Pictures for Danny/Josh Reed's double role in When I Grow Up (1951). Michael Kanin, a screenwriter, suggested his casting.

Driscoll lent his voice to Goofy, Jr. and "Father's Lion," two Disney television Christmas shows on television in 1950, respectively.

In Richard Fleischer's comedy The Happy Time (1952), which was based on a Broadway play based on Samuel A. Taylor's name, he portrayed Robert "Bibi" Bonnard. He appeared in Charles Boyer's, Marsha Hunt, Louis Jourdan, and Kurt Kasznar's portrayal of a patriarch in Quebec of the 1920s, the plot centered on.

Peter Pan (1953), Driscoll's last big success, was produced mainly between May 1949 and mid-1951. Driscoll was cast in Disney's "Little British Lady" Kathryn Beaumont; he was used as the reference model for the close-ups and provided Peter Pan's voice; and dancer and choreographer Roland Dupree was the model for the character's movement; Scenes were staged on an almost empty sound stage, with only the most essential props and video footage for use by the animators.

"Driscoll was often regarded as the living embodiment of his own youth" in Marc Elliot's biography on Disney: "Walt often referred to him as the producer's favorite "live action" child actor." Following Peter Pan's death, Disney said that Driscoll was now seen as the most appropriate for young bully rather than a likeable protagonist. Driscoll's salary had been increased to $1,750 a week, but Driscoll had no work from 1952 to 1970. Driscoll's extra two-year contract had been extended (which had kept him at Disney until 1956) in March 1953, only weeks after Peter Pan was announced theatrically. Driscoll's need to use heavy makeup for his appearances on scores of television shows was the underlying reason for his separation from the Disney Studios, in a serious case of acne accompanying puberty.

Driscoll's suspicions of the others Hollywood studios were growing. He was still remembered as "Disney's kid actor" and was unable to find roles as a serious character actor in film. The bulk of his work on television, including Fireside Theater and Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, was concentrated on television for the majority of the next three years, including Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre, starting in 1953 and extending to the next three years. He appeared on another series, Men of Annapolis, alongside John Smith, the upcoming second husband of Dr.S.'s Song of the South co-star Luana Patten.

Driscoll appeared on many special star-focused series, including Loretta Young, Gloria Swanson, and Jane Wyman.

He appeared on a number of radio shows, including a special broadcast version of Treasure Island in January 1951 and Peter Pan in December 1953. Driscoll and Luana Patten also did promotional radio shows (starting in late 1946 for Song of the South) and toured the country for various parades and charity functions over the years as it was normal practice in this industry.

He recorded a special edition of "So Dear to My Heart" at Capitol Records in 1947. In 1954, he was named in a national award for his television and radio work.

Driscoll's parents pulled him from the Hollywood Professional School, which served kid actor actors, and moved him to the public West Los Angeles University High School instead. His grades fell dramatically, he was mocked for his previous film work, and he began to take opium. "The other kids didn't like me," he said later. They treated me as if I were just another. I wanted to be one of the gang but was unable to identify myself. "I fought back, became belligerent and cocky as they turned on me—and was afraid all the time." Dr. Scoll's parents returned him the next year to Hollywood Professional School, where he graduated in May 1955.

His drug use increased in an interview years later; "I was 17 when I first tried with the stuff." I was using whatever was available at the time, mainly heroin, because I had the money to pay for it." He was arrested for the first time for smoking marijuana, but the charge was dismissed. "This could cost this fine lad and good actor his career," Hedda Hopper wrote in the Los Angeles Times on July 24, 1956. In 1957, he appeared in only two television parts as the loyal brother of a criminal immigrant in M Squad, a long-running crime film starring Lee Marvin, and as an officer aboard the submarine S-38.

Driscoll and his longtime girlfriend, Marilyn Jean Rush (occasionally mispelled as "Brush") eloped to Mexico in December 1956, despite their parents' indignation. In a marriage that took place in Los Angeles in March 1957, the two were revived. They had two daughters and one son, but the friendship was not long-term. They separated in 1960 but then divorced in 1960.

Driscoll began using the word "Robert Driscoll" to distance himself from his youthful roles as "Bobby" (since 1951, he had been known as "Bobby" in Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, 1952, "Bob Driscoll" (before 1954). He had two final film roles: Cornel Wilde in The Scarlet Coat (1955), and opposite Mark Damon, Connie Stevens and Frances Farmer in The Party Crashers (1958). In 1957, he appeared in "The Ordeal of the S-38" on television series The Silent Service.

He was charged with disrupting the peace and assault with a deadly weapon, the latter after hitting one of two hecklers with a pistol who had made insulting remarks while he was washing a girlfriend's vehicle; the charges were dismissed.

In two single-season series The Best of the Post, a syndicated anthology collection based on news published in The Saturday Evening Post newspaper, and The Brothers Brannagan, an unsuccessful crime film starring Stephen Dunne and Mark Roberts, were his last known appearances on television. Both were first broadcast on November 5, 1960.

He was released as a heroin user and detained at the California Institution for Men in Chino, California, late in 1961. Driscoll left Chino in early 1962 and was unable to find acting jobs. "I have discovered that memories are not very useful," he said. "I was brought on a silver platter and then dumped into the garbage."

Source