Whatever Happened to Bobby Driscoll? The Forgotten Tragedy of Disney’s First Child Star

Child actor Bobby Driscoll from Song of the South Collage — Everett Collection

For a time in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Bobby Driscoll was the golden boy of Walt Disney Studios and became one of the most beloved child stars of his generation. Born Robert Cletus Driscoll on March 3, 1937 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he was the only child of Cletus and Isabelle Driscoll. His family moved to Los Angeles and by chance, a barber’s connection to the film industry landed him his first audition. At just five years old, Driscoll was cast in MGM’s Lost Angel, starting a career that would quickly make him a household name.

Driscoll’s early years in Hollywood were a whirlwind. He played the youngest Sullivan brother in The Fighting Sullivans and landed roles alongside stars like Don Ameche and Myrna Loy. In 1946, Disney signed him to a contract, pairing him with Luana Patten in Song of the South. The duo reunited for So Dear to My Heart in 1949, and Driscoll also starred in the suspenseful thriller The Window, which earned him a special Juvenile Academy Award. Disney then cast him as Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island and, most famously, as the voice and animation model for Peter Pan. At his peak, Driscoll was earning $1,750 a week (the equivalent of more than $22,000 a week today).

Bobby Driscoll, who voices teh titular character in Walt Disney's PETER PAN, 1953, appears in a publicty shot promoting a Disney Christmas Show on CBS.

Everett Collection

However, as Driscoll reached his mid-teens, a severe case of acne limited his on-screen opportunities. Disney quietly ended his contract in 1953, just weeks after Peter Pan premiered. He found occasional work on television and radio, but the roles were fewer and farther between. Feeling the sting of rejection, he sadly began experimenting with drugs at seventeen. His personal life soon unraveled, and by the late 1950s, he was struggling with heroin addiction, legal troubles, and a failing marriage that left him estranged from his three children.

Everett Collection

In the early 1960s, Driscoll served time at California’s Narcotic Rehabilitation Center in Chino. When he was released, the acting work had dried up entirely. He moved to New York in 1965 in hopes of restarting his career on Broadway, but success never came. Instead, he immersed himself in the Greenwich Village art scene, spending time at Andy Warhol‘s Factory and creating avant-garde collages. Although some of his work was well-regarded, the recognition he once knew in Hollywood eluded him.

THE PARTY CRASHERS, Bobby Driscoll, 1958

Everett Collection

By the spring of 1968, Driscoll was in poor health, broke, and largely alone. On March 30, two children playing in an abandoned building in Manhattan’s East Village found his body on a cot, surrounded by empty beer bottles and religious pamphlets. He was just 31 years old. With no identification on him, he was buried in an unmarked grave on Hart Island, New York’s potter’s field. His identity was not confirmed until the following year, when his mother, trying to reconnect him with his dying father, contacted Disney Studios for help. Fingerprints matched the records of the young boy who had once been Disney’s brightest star.