Trivia About Bobby

Let me preface this by saying, this info is mostly acquired on the Bobby Driscoll Yahoo Group, which has now slowed to a snail’s pace, but has some incredible archives to look through.  I’ve taken some of the articles I’ve read there and comments posted by Brian Keith O’Hara, would-be-biographer of Bobby (and a very reliable source!) and comprised this list of “the little things” about him.

Enjoy!

This image came from the group as well, I do not own it.

Bobby liked….

Marilyn Monroe
Being barefoot
Animals
The movie Operation Mad BallThe Platters (his favorite song was their version of Earth Angel)
Cars
Camping
Being in the mountains
Writing poetry

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When he “grew up”, Bobby always said as a child he would like to maybe be…

A G-man (FBI)

A marine
A veterinarian
An engineer
A graduate of Occidental College
A rancher

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Other than acting, he kept busy as a kid…

Playing with other kids
Building forts 
Playing football and baseball
Being a Boy Scout 
Playing practical jokes

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People who knew Bobby used these words to describe him…

Gentle
Friendly
Sensitive
Good-spirited
Religious
Befriending the underdog
Active
Smart (he could memorize pages of movie lines, yet be flexible for change when it was asked of him)
Deep-thinking

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And because we ladies especially always "gotta know", here are the romantic connections he had that I could find...

Patricia Nolan
Marilyn Jean Rush (married)
Susan Strasberg
Suzanne Stansbury
Sharon “DiDi” Morrill
Louise Kane

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My own deductions…

From what I’ve read, Bobby seems to have been pretty forthcoming and honest about who he was, what he was doing, and how he felt about things.  He did have good sense regarding overshare, however, and was smart enough not to share where and when his wedding ceremony was going to be.

As far as his faith was concerned, Bobby was likely to have been Presbyterian.  He wanted to attend what was framed as “his church’s college,” Occidental College, which is of Presbyterian roots.  He also gave two years in a row to Annual United Appeal, which best I can find is a Presbyterian mission fund.  His mother cited him as having been very attentive to sermons in church, which the family attended faithfully… and he sculpted a bust of Jesus when he was 17 years old.  I believe Bobby was at peace with God when he died, due to the faith-based pamphlets and brochures he had been reading.  

I also believe Bobby was a romantic soul.  You can tell this by reading the letters he had sent to his teen girlfriend, Pat Nolan, while he was away camping one summer.  As old as he was able to, he married Marilyn Jean Rush, and had three children.  I did read somewhere that Bobby was incredibly proud of them when they were born, so by all accounts, he might have been a tremendous family man had the drugs not intervened in that.

Just a few things to throw in there!

Beginnings

Bobby Driscoll is someone special to me.

From the minute I first saw him hopping across couches on the Disney Christmas Show of 1951, holding his arms up in bravado and giving Peter Pan’s signature crow, I knew there was something there.

But it wasn’t until February of this year that he crossed my mind again, and I decided I wanted to learn his story.

What I learned has caused me to sob big tears… to giggle like a schoolgirl… to clench my fists in anger… but, mostly, to pray – thanksgiving for his brief life and for who he was, and for the family he left behind.

There’s still so much about Bobby we don’t know.  Most of the people who knew him back then are gone now.  Footage has been destroyed, magazines gone out-of-print, and radio shows silenced.  We don’t really have a great picture of what he looked like in color but for the unrealistic technicolor methods used in Treasure Island.  He seems to remain, forever, trapped inside the herky-jerky black-and-white motions we can sometimes capture on YouTube or in DVD’s/VHS’s we manage to find on ebay for unprecedented amounts.

But he’s very much alive in my mind and in my heart, and I believe he is very much alive in heaven.  However, since I can’t be there to talk about what I see, I will use this blog instead to talk about what I see in what was left behind.

I hope I get people to follow me, and most of all, dialogue with me about Bobby.  His fanbase seems to be either shrinking or silent.  But I guess more than anything, I’m doing this for me, for my own tribute to the larger than life spirit that was Bobby Driscoll’s.