Research Guru
Posted:
Mar 31, 2008, 5:53 PM
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40 years (and more) without Bobby Driscoll
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Forty years ago yesterday (on March 30, 1968), Bobby Driscoll was found dead in a New York tenement building. He was buried in Potter's Field.
A year later, due to a chance checking of fingerprints, it was found that the unknown man buried was Bobby Driscoll, 30 (born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on May 3, 1937).
The first child actor put under an exclusive contract to Disney, Driscoll was Johnny (in live action) in 1946's partly animated Song Of The South. He had the title role in Peter Pan (1953) -- the first time that Peter Pan was portrayed by a male.
In other partly animated films, he appeared in live action, portraying himself in Melody Time (1948) and Jerry Kincaid in So Dear To My Heart (1949).
He voiced Goofy Junior in the Goofy shorts Fathers Are People (1951) and Father's Lion (1952).
Live-action roles included Jim Hawkins in Disney's Treasure Island (for which he received his star on the Walk of Fame) and Tommy in The Window (for which he received a special Oscar).
Driscoll was dropped by the Disney studios and found him unable to obtain work.
He moved to New York to try stage work, but turned to alcohol and drugs. His last film role was in an Andy Warhol art film in which he was dressed as a nun.
Toward the end, Driscoll made the occasional phone call to his parents, but stopped writing them, determined to make it on his own.
On March 30, 1968, two playing children found his dead body in an abandoned East Village tenement at 371 East 10th Street.
Nineteen months later, Bobby Driscoll's father became seriously ill, and his mother attempted to get in touch with her son by placing ads in New York newspapers. He didn't answer. Merv Griffin, with whom he had once appeared on a telethon, agreed to try and locate him, and officials at Disney were asked to help. But he had simply disappeared without a trace.
Two weeks after Bobby's father passed away in late 1969, Mrs. Driscoll received a letter from the county clerk's office in New York asking her to confirm Bobby's death. She learned of it a year and a half after it occurred. He was identified through a fingerprint match.
Finally, a cenotaph to Bobby Driscoll was erected, etched with his father's gravestone, located near the family home in San Diego.
"I had everything. I was earning more than $50,000 a year, working steadily with good parts. Then I started putting all my spare time in my arm. I'm not really sure why I started using narcotics. I was 17 when I first experimented with the stuff. In no time at all I was using whatever was available, mostly heroin, because I had the money to pay for it." --Bobby Driscoll, 1960
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