Bobby Driscoll

Driscoll in The Fighting Sullivans (1944), his debut film.

Driscoll's brief, two-minute debut[4] helped him win the role of young Al Sullivan, the youngest of the five Sullivan brothers, in the 20th Century Fox's World War II drama The Fighting Sullivans (1944) with Thomas Mitchell and Anne Baxter. Additional screen portrayals included the boy who could blow his whistle while standing on his head in Sunday Dinner for a Soldier , the "child brother" of Richard Arlen in The Big Bonanza (both 1944), and young Percy Maxim in So Goes My Love (1946),[5] with Don Ameche and Myrna Loy. He also had smaller roles in movies such as Identity Unknown (1945) and Miss Susie Slagle's, From This Day Forward, and O.S.S. with Alan Ladd (all 1946).

Driscoll in February 1946.

Driscoll and Luana Patten were the first two actors Walt Disney placed under contract.[6] Driscoll then played the lead character in Song of the South (1946), which introduced live action into the producer's films in conjunction with extensive animated footage. The film turned Driscoll and his co-star Luana Patten into child stars, and they were discussed for a special Academy Award as the best child actors of the year but, for the year of its release, it was decided not to present any juvenile awards at all.[7]

Now nicknamed by the American press as Walt Disney's "Sweetheart Team",[8] Driscoll and Patten starred together in So Dear to My Heart (1948) with Burl Ives and Beulah Bondi. It was planned as Disney's first all-live-action movie, with production beginning immediately after Song of the South,[9] but its release was delayed until late 1948 to meet the demands of Disney's co-producer and longtime distributor RKO Radio Pictures for animated content in the film.

Driscoll played Eddie Cantor's screen son in the RKO Studios musical comedy If You Knew Susie (also 1948), in which he teamed with former Our Gang member Margaret Kerry.[10] He and Patten appeared with Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers in the live-action teaser for the Pecos Bill segment of Disney's cartoon compilation Melody Time (also 1948).[11]

Driscoll was loaned to RKO[12] to star in The Window, based on Cornell Woolrich's short story "The Boy Cried Murder." However, Howard Hughes, who had bought RKO the previous year, considered the film unworthy of release and Driscoll not much of an actor and delayed its release. When it was released in May 1949, it became a surprise hit. The New York Times credited Driscoll with the film's success:

"The striking force and terrifying impact of this RKO melodrama is chiefly due to Bobby's brilliant acting, for the whole effect would have been lost were there any suspicion of doubt about the credibility of this pivotal character... The Window is Bobby Driscoll's picture, make no mistake about it."[13]

So Dear to My Heart and The Window earned Driscoll a special Juvenile Academy Award in March 1950 as the outstanding juvenile actor of 1949.[14][15]

Driscoll was cast to play Jim Hawkins in Walt Disney's version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1950), with British actor Robert Newton as Long John Silver, the studio's first all-live-action picture. The feature was filmed in the United Kingdom, and during production it was discovered that Driscoll did not have a valid British work permit, so his family and Disney were fined and ordered to leave the country. They were allowed to remain for six weeks to prepare an appeal, and director Byron Haskin hastily shot all of Driscoll's close-ups,[16] using his British stand-in to film missing location scenes after he and his parents had returned to California.[17]

Treasure Island was an international hit, and there were several other film projects involving Driscoll under discussion, but none materialized. For example, Haskin recalled in his memoirs that Disney, although interested in Robert Louis Stevenson's pirate story as a full-length cartoon, always planned to cast Driscoll as Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer.[18] He 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.[19] Driscoll also was scheduled to portray a youthful follower of Robin Hood following Treasure Island, again with Robert Newton, who would play Friar Tuck,[20] but Driscoll's run-in with British immigration made this impossible.[21]

Driscoll's second long-run Disney contract allowed him to be loaned to independent Horizon Pictures for the double role of Danny/Josh Reed in When I Grow Up (1951). His casting was suggested by screenwriter Michael Kanin.

In addition to his brief guest appearance in Walt Disney's first television Christmas show in 1950, One Hour in Wonderland, Driscoll lent his voice to Goofy, Jr. in the Disney cartoon shorts Fathers are People and Father's Lion, which were released in 1951 and 1952, respectively.

Driscoll portrayed Robert "Bibi" Bonnard in Richard Fleischer's comedy The Happy Time (1952), which was based on a Broadway play of the same name by Samuel A. Taylor. Cast with Charles Boyer, Marsha Hunt, Louis Jourdan, and Kurt Kasznar, he played the juvenile offspring of a patriarch in Quebec of the 1920s, the character upon whom the plot centered.

Driscoll as Peter Pan in The Walt Disney Christmas Show.

Driscoll's last major success, Peter Pan (1953), was produced largely between May 1949 and mid 1951.[22] 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.[23][24] Scenes were played on an almost empty sound stage with only the most essential props, and filmed for use by the animators.

In his biography on Disney, Marc Elliot described Driscoll as the producer's favorite "live action" child star: "Walt often referred to Driscoll with great affection as the living embodiment of his own youth".[25] However, during a project meeting following the completion of Peter Pan, Disney stated that he now saw Driscoll as best suited for roles as a young bully rather than a likeable protagonist. Driscoll's salary at Disney had been raised to $1,750 per week[26] and compared to his salary, Driscoll had little work from 1952 on. In March 1953, the additional two-year option Driscoll had been extended (which would have kept him at Disney into 1956) was canceled, just weeks after Peter Pan was released theatrically. A severe case of acne accompanying the onset of puberty,[27] explaining why it was necessary for Driscoll to use heavy makeup for his performances on dozens of TV shows, was officially provided as the final reason for the termination of his connection with the Disney Studios.

Driscoll encountered increasing indifference from the other Hollywood studios. Still perceived as "Disney's kid actor",[28] he was unable to get movie roles as a serious character actor. Beginning in 1953 and for most of the next three years, the bulk of his work was on television, on such anthology and drama series as Fireside Theater, Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, Front Row Center, Navy Log, TV Reader's Digest, Climax!, Ford Theatre, Studio One, Dragnet, Medic, 'and Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre. On another series, Men of Annapolis, he appeared with John Smith, future second husband of Driscoll's Song of the South co-star, Luana Patten.

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

Between 1948 and 1957, he performed on a number of radio productions, which included a special broadcast version of Treasure Island in January 1951 and of Peter Pan in December 1953. And as it was common practice in this business, Driscoll and Luana Patten did promotional radio gigs (starting in late 1946 for Song of the South) and toured the country for various parades and charity events through the years.[29]

In 1947, he recorded a special version of "So Dear to My Heart" at Capitol Records. In 1954, he was awarded a Milky Way Gold Star Award, chosen in a nationwide poll for his work on television and radio.[30]

After he left the Disney studios, Driscoll's parents withdrew him from the Hollywood Professional School, which served child movie actors,[31][32][33][34] and sent him to the public West Los Angeles University High School instead. There his grades dropped substantially, he was the target of ridicule for his previous film career, and he began to take drugs.[35][36] He said later, "The other kids didn't accept me. They treated me as one apart. I tried desperately to be one of the gang. When they rejected me, I fought back, became belligerent and cocky—and was afraid all the time."[37][38] At his request, Driscoll's parents returned him the next year to Hollywood Professional School, where in May 1955 he graduated.[39]

However, his drug use increased. In an interview years later, he stated, "I was 17 when I first experimented with the stuff. In no time I was using whatever was available... mostly heroin, because I had the money to pay for it."[40] In 1956, he was arrested for the first time for possession of marijuana, but the charge was dismissed.[41] On July 24, 1956, Hedda Hopper wrote in the Los Angeles Times: "This could cost this fine lad and good actor his career."[42] In 1957, he had only two television parts, as the loyal brother of a criminal immigrant in M Squad, a long-running crime series starring Lee Marvin, and as an officer aboard the submarine S-38 in an episode of the World War II docudrama series The Silent Service.

In December 1956, Driscoll and his longtime girlfriend, Marilyn Jean Rush (occasionally misspelled as "Brush"), eloped to Mexico to marry despite their parents' objections. The couple was later rewed in a Los Angeles ceremony that took place in March 1957.[43] They had two daughters and one son, but the relationship did not last. They separated, then divorced in 1960.[44]

Driscoll began using the name "Robert Driscoll"[45] to distance himself from his youthful roles as "Bobby" (since 1951, he had been known to friends and family as "Bob",[46] and in Schlitz Playhouse of Stars – Early Space Conquerors, 1952, was credited as "Bob Driscoll"[47]). He landed two final screen roles: with Cornel Wilde in The Scarlet Coat (1955) and opposite Mark Damon, Connie Stevens, and Frances Farmer in The Party Crashers (1958).[48] In 1957, he appeared in an episode of the television series The Silent Service (S01 E15 "The Ordeal of the S-38").

He was charged with disturbing the peace and assault with a deadly weapon, the latter after hitting with a pistol one of two hecklers who made insulting remarks while he was washing a girlfriend's car; the charges were dropped.[49]

His 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. Both were originally aired on November 5, 1960.

Late in 1961, he was sentenced as a drug addict and imprisoned at the Narcotic Rehabilitation Center of the California Institution for Men in Chino, California. When Driscoll left Chino in early 1962, he was unable to find acting work. Embittered by this, he said, "I have found that memories are not very useful. I was carried on a silver platter—and then dumped into the garbage."[50]

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