This Basic Disney Little one Star Disappeared for Tragic Causes

It is March of 1968, and two youngsters come throughout the body of a young man on a cot in an deserted condo constructing. No proof of violence, no identification, simply empty beer bottles amidst scattered spiritual pamphlets. He was an unknown, with no subsequent of kin, and the reason for loss of life was ascribed to the consequences of longtime heroin abuse. His physique was unceremoniously dumped in an unmarked pauper’s grave on New York’s Hart Island. If solely that they had recognized that the person was a one-time Oscar winner, and the voice behind one in all Walt Disney‘s most beloved animated characters, they may have given him the dignity of a correct burial, with a headstone that reads “Right here Lies Bobby Driscoll, Famed Little one Actor.” How did the one-time little one star find yourself as an unknown, completely damaged younger man? It is a tragic story from Hollywood’s darkish historical past.

Bobby Driscoll, From a Barber Store to Neverland

Per the beforehand cited Leisure Weekly, Driscoll was 5 when a barber in Pasadena, whose son was within the films, urged that he must be too, an all-American child with a cute nostril and freckles. Driscoll was arrange with the son’s agent, who landed him a bit half in 1943’s Misplaced Angel. Over the subsequent three years, Driscoll would make 9 movies earlier than catching the eye of Walt Disney, who had Driscoll and fellow little one actor Luana Patten put beneath contract with Disney, the primary ever actors to take action.

The pair, often called Disney’s “sweetheart team,” had been solid in Song of the South, with Driscoll as Johnny, the 7-year-old grandson who visits his grandfather’s plantation, and Patten as Ginny Favers, a poor white lady. They had been then solid in Disney’s So Dear to My Heart, their final look collectively on movie. That very same 12 months, Driscoll can be loaned out to RKO Photos for The Window. His efficiency in each movies earned Driscoll the Juvenile Academy Award in 1950. Then Walt Disney greenlit a live-action model of Treasure Island, that includes his “favourite little one star,” now fourteen, as Jim Hawkins. That may be adopted up with what can be Driscoll’s most famed contribution to Disney’s legacy, as voice actor and character mannequin for “The Boy Who By no means Grew Up” in 1953’s Peter Pan.

Bobby Driscoll Is Shut out of Neverland

Driscoll was 16 when he voiced Peter Pan, and, like several 16-year-old, was coping with the adjustments that accompany puberty. However the regular 16-year-old does not make a profession off of their boyish seems to be, and the onset of bad acne and a deepened voice was catastrophic for the actor. Biographer Marc Eliot, per EW, explains: “When Howard Hughes purchased RKO, he, in impact, turned the proprietor of the Disney studio. He managed the cash and he hated Bobby Driscoll. He hated Hollywood children. He did not need Bobby Driscoll to be with Disney anymore.” It led to Bobby Driscoll being launched from his contract, however the method wherein it occurred is Hollywood at its most shameful.

As recounted by fellow little one actor and good friend Billy Grey, “He [Driscoll] got here to the lot someday, and so they wouldn’t let him in on the gate. They informed him he was now not in a position to come to the studio. That’s how he found out he was fired. He was devastated.” Along with being fired from his Disney household, Driscoll struggled to slot in at college with children who bullied him for his profession, and all of it turned an excessive amount of for the younger man to cope with. Regardless of taking small roles on TV exhibits, he was repeatedly arrested for drug possession, assault, and housebreaking, and in the end discovered consolation with heroin. His legal report made finding work extremely difficult, and, finally, Driscoll would discover himself taking his final breaths on a cot in an deserted constructing.

Per Fox Information, Driscoll’s mom solely came upon about his loss of life two years after it occurred, and the general public one other two years after that, when Tune of the South was re-released in 1972. And when Disney+ launched Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers in 2022, the reveal of Peter Pan, aka “Candy Pete” because the villain, who turned to crime after being fired by the studio when he received too previous, Disney was heavily criticized for the tone-deaf characterization, seen as making gentle of a tragedy of their very own making. However maybe essentially the most tragic piece of the story is how Driscoll by no means received to look again on his little one stardom fondly, saying: “Reminiscences are usually not very helpful. I used to be carried on a silver platter after which dumped into the rubbish can.”

Peter Pan is out there to stream within the U.S. on Disney+

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