- About The Movie
- Cast Biographies
Bobby Driscoll as Johnny
If it wasn't for the sinus problems of Bobby's father, the silver screen would have most likely never discovered him. According to the 1946 Song of the South campaign book, the Driscoll family settled in Pasadena, CA in an effort to relieve Cletus Driscoll (Bobby's father) of sinus conditions. Through the son of their barber, William Kadel, Bobby was brought to a mass interview at the MGM studios and found himself with a small, uncredited role in Lost Angel (1943).
Up until 1946 Bobby Driscoll had been playing minor roles in various films, but Song of the South was his big break. Playing the plantation boy who clung onto every word Uncle Remus spoke, Bobby delivered his role flawlessly and it was clear to see Walt Disney had picked a winner. He was the first actor to be under a personal contract with the Walt Disney studio.
Bobby went on to play notable performances in Disney movies such as Melody Time (1948), Pecos Bill (1948), So Dear To My Heart (1949), Treasure Island (1950), and the voice of Peter Pan in Peter Pan (1953), his last production with Disney. He separated from Disney in 1953. Bobby was hired as a child actor, and when he was no longer a child, it was difficult for him to find work. He appeared on several TV shows and radio programs throughout the 1950s. He married Marilyn Jean Rush in early 1957 and had three children (two daughters and one son). They divorced in 1960.
Sadly, Bobby became a drug addict. He had several run-ins with the law, and was incarcerated in 1961. In 1962, referring to his childhood fame, he was quoted as saying: "I was carried on a silver platter—and then dumped into the garbage." In 1965, he moved to New York in an unsuccessful attempt to reboot his career on Broadway. He then joined Andy Warhol's Greenwich Village art community known as The Factory. In late 1967 or early 1968, he left, penniless. On March 30, 1968, his body was discovered on a cot by two children playing in an abandoned East Village tenement in New York. It was determined that he had died from heart failure due to drug abuse. Unidentified, he was buried in a potter's field (unmarked grave) on Hart Island.
In late 1969, Bobby's mother contacted Walt Disney Studios in the hopes of finding him for a reunion with his ailing father. It was then that his remains were identified through fingerprints. While still interred at Hart Island, his name appears as a cenotaph on his father's gravestone at Eternal Hills Memorial Park in Oceanside, California.
According to a 1946 Song of the South radio interview, his childhood goal was to become a sergeant in the U.S. Marines. Bobby has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 1560 Vine Street.
