Bobby Driscoll (1937-1968), the child actor who voiced Disney's animated Peter Pan, died sometime in late March 1968 as a result of a heart attack, brought on by his drug addiction, in a derelict tenement in East Village. The authorities were unable to indentify his body so he was given an unmarked "John Doe" burial in a pauper's grave on Hart Island, NY., where he remains. Only much later did his mother back in California find out what had happened via police records of his fingerprints.
Driscoll was a talented boy, a natural actor with a good memory, easy to work with on set and well able to sustain dramatic performances in a number of feature films of the 40s and early 50s (the most important being RKO's crime drama The Window) for which he won a special Academy award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But as soon as he became adolescent and his voice dropped, his attitude changed and (what seems to have been the worst fault) he developed bad facial acne, Disney studios lost interest in him. There are also stories that Driscoll had been abused by Walt Disney, but readers of this website will know to treat these with caution. In Driscoll's own words, he was carried on a satin cushion and dumped into the garbage can. He did not adjust to "ordinary" life, developed a drug addiction and served a drug-related prison sentence. He moved to New York in an attempt to restart his career, but the studios there were wary of an actor with a history of drugs, and his contact with Andy Warhol's Factory increased his feelings of being manipulated. In the period 1960 until his death he only played a few very small parts in TV shows like Rawhide .
I should think GOSH has profited from the Disney film, so please remember this "Lost Boy".
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