Disney’s treatment of Bobby Driscoll
I am absolutely seething about what Disney just did to Bobby Driscoll again 54 years after he was buried a John Doe (his corpse was found by two children playing an abandoned tenement building–his death date is actually unknown and the date given is the day he was instead found) in an unmarked mass grave in Hart Island’s potters field (not identified for a year until his mother pressured Roy O. Disney to make the NYPD care enough to match his fingerprints) where he still is surrounded by prisoners and unidentified vagrants (literally referred to as the “poor, unable and unwanted” on a sign)…
And 69 years after they fired him by letting him read it in a gossip column. Walt had his secretary call security on him and he was thrown out of the building crying at 16 years old (near his birthday–he was 14-15 during Peter Pan’s production). The film was #1 at the box office and in release for two weeks when he was fired. There’s also a rumor that Howard Hughes was also pressuring the firing, as he absolutely loathed child actors in general, and was in charge of RKO.
Bobby was the voice and rotoscoped character model for the titular Peter Pan. He was also in Song of the South, Melody Time, So Dear to My Heart and Treasure Island. His live-action movies literally saved the Disney company from total bankruptcy in the ‘40s. He was the very first actor ever signed to the company. He was only one of twelve child actors to ever receive a Juvenile Oscar (with such company as Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Shirley Temple, Margaret O'Brien and Hayley Mills) for his performances in 1948/9’s The Window and So Dear to My Heart. And for the record, Walt didn’t treat Adriana Caselotti (Snow White) much better, to the point where he denied her the ability to ever get work with her voice ever again. It’s just that Bobby is possibly the most horrific ending of a child actor ever in Disney’s history (there are many).
Disney just made Peter Pan the villain in the new Chip ‘n Dale abortion that gives the animated character Bobby’s actual backstory (this is not an evil Peter Pan take based on the book and not in any way comparable to Once Upon a Time!) of being an actor fired for hitting puberty and having acne. That’s not Peter’s backstory; that’s Bobby’s. And it’s too specific to be a coincidence. They drew a character, who was drawn unmistakably with the actor’s real features and acting performance, as a middle-aged, fat man, despite the fact that he died at 31 and Peter’s voice basically was his post-pubescent adult voice. They made him a hideous monster aged far past an age he ever reached.
The film also ends with the character incarcerated, which happens to be yet another thing from the man’s real life. By his own words, he was raped in prison. His spiral on drugs sent him to Chino, which didn’t happen until he was bullied mercilessly in public school after being pulled from the actor kids’ school (he also had stage parents who beat him and locked him in a closet to the point that Disney had earlier stepped in to send him to live with costar Luana Patten’s family as a child–there are also allegations he was molested while working at Disney) when Disney basically ended any chance of steady work. He was a straight-A student prior.
I’ve been telling this story every chance I’ve gotten for nearly two decades. Few today know who he is, because Disney does everything to keep the story hidden and him forgotten. Bobby is not a Disney Legend, despite fans lobbying for decades. The Peter Pan DVD/Blu-ray avoids mentioning him as much as they can. Another one of his films is de facto banned.
That Disney just pulled this with a disgusting, sick joke that laughs at his backstory and misfortune, then turns him into an irredeemable villain in a plot that essentially turns themselves into the victims of copyright theft (they’re responsible for lobbying to get copyright law extended indefinitely). So, in other words, Disney has framed themselves as the victim of a heartlessly-fired child actor who died tragically instead of the villain and framed themselves as the victim yet again.
If there’s any silver lining, it’s that Twitter and social media just learned about him for the first time because of outrage over Disney spitting on this dead man’s unmarked grave yet again. I knew this story decades ago (I had a Peter Pan obsession). Undoubtedly, nobody working on this stupid film was with the company 70 years ago and most were likely not even alive when he died, but somebody there had the bright idea to put the biographical data of a person Disney has spent decades trying to make everyone forget as a villain origin story.
“I have found that memories are not very useful. I was carried on a silver platter and then dumped into the garbage can.” -Bobby Driscoll
