29 Facts About Bobby Driscoll

Robert Cletus Driscoll was an American actor who performed on film and television from 1943 to 1960.

Bobby Driscoll starred in some of the Walt Disney Studios' best-known live-action pictures of that period: Song of the South, So Dear to My Heart, and Treasure Island, as well as RKO's The Window.

Bobby Driscoll served as the animation model and provided the voice for the title role in Peter Pan.

Bobby Driscoll received an Academy Juvenile Award for outstanding performances in So Dear to My Heart and The Window.

Bobby Driscoll became addicted to narcotics, and was sentenced to prison for illicit drug use.

Bobby Driscoll was born Robert Cletus Driscoll in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the only child of Cletus, an insulation salesman, and Isabelle, a former schoolteacher.

Bobby Driscoll's parents were encouraged to help their son become a child performer in films.

Bobby Driscoll then played the lead character in Song of the South, which introduced live action into the producer's films in conjunction with extensive animated footage.

Bobby Driscoll played Eddie Cantor's screen son in the RKO Studios musical comedy If You Knew Susie, in which he teamed with former Our Gang member Margaret Kerry.

Bobby Driscoll was lent to RKO to star in The Window, based on Cornell Woolrich's short story "The Boy Cried Murder".

The striking force and terrifying impact of this RKO melodrama is chiefly due to Bobby Driscoll's brilliant acting, for the whole effect would have been lost were there any suspicion of doubt about the credibility of this pivotal character.

Bobby Driscoll was cast to play Jim Hawkins in Walt Disney's version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, with British actor Robert Newton as Long John Silver, the studio's first all-live-action picture.

Treasure Island was an international hit, and several other film projects involving Bobby Driscoll were under discussion, but none materialized.

Bobby Driscoll was at the perfect age for the role, but because of a story rights ownership dispute with Hollywood producer David O Selznick, who had previously produced the property in 1938, Disney ultimately had to cancel the entire project.

Bobby Driscoll was scheduled to portray a youthful follower of Robin Hood following Treasure Island, again with Robert Newton, who would play Friar Tuck, but Bobby Driscoll's run-in with British immigration made this impossible.

Bobby Driscoll was cast with Disney's "Little British Lady" Kathryn Beaumont, who was in the role of Wendy Darling; 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 motion.

In some special star-focusing series, Bobby Driscoll appeared with Loretta Young, Gloria Swanson, and Jane Wyman.

Bobby Driscoll would have nothing to do with his three children for the rest of his life due to his drug addiction.

Bobby Driscoll landed two final screen roles: with Cornel Wilde in The Scarlet Coat and opposite Mark Damon, Connie Stevens, and Frances Farmer in The Party Crashers.

Bobby Driscoll was charged with disturbing the peace and assault with a deadly weapon after two hecklers made insulting remarks while he was washing a girlfriend's car and he hit one with a pistol, but the charges were dropped.

Bobby Driscoll's last known appearances on TV were small roles in two single-season series: The Best of the Post, a syndicated anthology series adapted from stories published in The Saturday Evening Post magazine, and The Brothers Brannagan, an unsuccessful crime series starring Stephen Dunne and Mark Roberts.

When Bobby Driscoll left Chino in early 1962, he was unable to find acting work.

Bobby Driscoll became part of Andy Warhol's Greenwich Village art community known as the Factory, where he began focusing on his artistic talents.

Bobby Driscoll had previously been encouraged to do so by artist and poet Wallace Berman, whom he had befriended after joining Berman's art circle in Los Angeles in 1956.

In 1965, early in his tenure at the Factory, Bobby Driscoll gave his last known film performance, in experimental filmmaker Piero Heliczer's underground movie Dirt.

On March 30,1968, two boys playing in a deserted East Village tenement at 371 East 10th Street found Bobby Driscoll's corpse lying on a cot, with two empty beer bottles and religious pamphlets scattered on the ground.

Late in 1969, Bobby Driscoll's mother sought the help of officials at Disney studios to contact him, for a hoped-for reunion with his father, who was nearing death.

Bobby Driscoll received an Academy Juvenile Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the 22nd Academy Awards presentation in 1950.

Bobby Driscoll received the Milky Way Gold Star Award in 1954 for his work on television and radio.