Bobby Driscoll: The forgotten two-time Oscar winner who tragically died destitute
Fame is a terrible thing to do to a human, let alone a young child. The endowment of a million prying eyes at the price of privacy and peace can be torturous—the tragic tale of Bobby Driscoll is a forgotten testimony of this. The star sadly went from winning the Academy Juvenile Award to dying destitute in an East Village tenement with beer bottles and religious pamphlets scattered around his cold corpse.
It’s an ending hard to reconcile with the joyous beginning of his life. Born in 1937, Robert Driscoll’s working-class upbringing was like any other kid’s. Then in 1943, a doctor told his father to move to California where the climate might be kinder on his lungs which he detected were riddled with asbestos. So, they headed for Los Angeles which came with the added family bonus that charming young Robert might become a child star.
In no time he became Bobby, a future hero of the silver screen. A steady stream of bit-part roles followed. By 1946 he was the lead actor in the Disney film Song of the South. Along with his co-star Luana Patten, he became known as one half of Walt Disney’s new ‘Sweetheart Team’. By 1949, he was awarded his first Academy Juvenile Award for his role in So Dear to My Heart.
The award was first fashioned in 1934 to honour Shirley Temple’s contribution to cinema. Thereafter, it was given out intermittently for outstanding performances by an actor under the age of 18 up until 1960. Driscoll won two—his second for The Window, a film revered as a classic that pulled him away from the twee world of Disney and into the noir realm with taglines like: “Terror his only companion at… the WINDOW.” This dexterity earmarked Driscoll as a future star, not just a child sensation.
His career blossomed after that, attracting huge roles like Peter Pan in 1953. And then it rather suddenly stopped. He now found himself in the unfortunate realm of being tainted as a mere child star but sadly he was no longer a child. It is an impossibly tragic catch-22 that simply can’t be overcome without either a time machine or a sudden wellspring of opportunities to prove yourself—neither of which were forthcoming.
All the while, the alternative of a life without fame was equally isolating. As he would later bemoan of his troubled school days: “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.”
Now, he was lonely, bewildered and rich—a very dangerous triumvirate for a young man in Los Angeles. “I was 17 when I first experimented with the stuff. In no time I was using whatever was available,” he recalled, “mostly heroin because I had the money to pay for it.”
Standing before a judge that same year, he would regale a similar tale. “I had everything,” he said in a court transcript. “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.”
And while he failed to offer a reason for his burgeoning addictions at the time, he would soon reflect on the life that led him towards it. “I wish I could say that my childhood was a happy one,” he sadly mused, “but I wouldn’t be honest. I was lonely most of the time. A child actor’s childhood is not a normal one. People continually saying ‘What a cute little boy!’ creates innate conceit. But the adulation is only one part of it … Other kids prove themselves once, but I had to prove myself twice with everyone.”
By the 1960s his brief three-year marriage was over and he was a beatnik trying to bolster his steadily dwindling funds with a few TV roles. In 1965, ventured over to New York trying to reinvent himself on Broadway, but sadly he was drawn into the dark underbelly of the counterculture scene there. Strung out, floating around Andy Warhol’s Factory, his heroin addiction mounted to dangerous new heights, signposted by the dichotomy between his final film and his first.
His last role was in 1965’s Dirt, a dinghy underground production with the following seedy synopsis: “Two nuns take a bath, then meet a sailor on the Staten Island ferry.” That might convey next to nothing, but you get the impression that what happens next in the Piero Heliczer short that also starred John Cale is far from a wholesome vignette. Driscoll himself is simply credited as ‘Unknown’.
He never secured another screen role and in 1968 he died destitute. His bedraggled body was discovered by two boys playing in an abandoned building—a building that looked across at the bloc where this all started—the place where The Window was set. Driscoll died of heart failure induced by his drug use. He carried no identification and asking the locals to identify him yielded no results, so he was buried in a pauper’s grave.
He was only subsequently identified a year later when his mother, who had lost contact with him, sought Disney’s help to reach him so that he could see his ailing father before he passed away. It was then through fingerprinting that she learnt that sadly her son had already passed away.
His tale serves as a dark portent about the dangers of subjecting children to fame. While such a trapping is inevitable in the film industry, a culture of fun and experience must be instilled over success. If we do things for the enjoyment of them alone then excelling is simply secondary, and the richness of the experience holds value if the luck of achievement is never bestowed. The happiness Driscoll evidently displays in his early movies is testimony to this and that’s a lesson we’d all do well to remember.
