Bobby Driscoll and Shirley Temple, One A Great Actor;  The Other A Cute Child

Bobby Driscoll was an Oscar-winning child star. His tragic life is one of Hollywood's saddest stories. "I was carried on a satin cushion and then dropped into the garbage can," Driscoll said of his rise and fall in the movie industry. Driscoll was born in Cedar Rapids, the son of Cletus Driscoll, who was in the insulation business, and Isabelle Kretz Driscoll, who had taught school. They moved to Des Moines when the boy was a few months old, living in an apartment in the 4000 block of University Avenue. In 1943, when Bobby was 5, they moved to Los Angeles, where a barber urged the Iowans to get their son into the movies. The boy made his acting debut in 1944 in "Lost Angel." Driscoll was in "The Sullivans," also in 1944. For Disney studios he played Jim Hawkins in "Treasure Island" in 1950 and was the voice of Peter Pan in the 1953 animated feature.

At the Academy Awards ceremony in 1950, the 12-year-old received a special award for performances in two films: Disney's "So Dear to My Heart," about a boy who wants to raise a black sheep for the fair, and the film noir thriller "The Window," about a boy who witnesses a murder. As he matured, Driscoll was plagued by acne. From 1954 to 1957 most of his work was in TV. When parts became scarce he turned to odd jobs. Driscoll married Marilyn Jean Rush in December 1956 against the wishes of their parents. He fathered three children. Drugs proved Driscoll's downfall. He had turned to marijuana at 17 and later to heroin, and he had several brushes with the law. After serving a term in California's Chino State Penitentiary for drug addiction, he dropped out of sight in 1965. His death of hardening of the arteries came in a trash-filled, deserted tenement building in New York. Children found his body, which was later buried in a pauper's grave. A year later, his mother enlisted the FBI and Disney studios to find him. Fingerprints that had been taken from the corpse by the New York police solved the mystery.

A personal note, the actual cause of Bobby's death was a heart attack.There has been a story in the press for the last 34 years  that Walt Disney paid to have Bobby's remains brought home to his family. That is not true. In fact, Bobby is still buried in a pauper's grave on Hart Island in New York.

Bobby's Headstone, in the family plot:

Remember Me... Remember me with smiles and laughter, Because that is the way I will remember you all. If you can only remember me with tears, Then don't remember me at all. An Irish Poem of Remembrance