Beatniks...

Happy Belated Father's Day to Bobby -- and of course to any of you who are fathers!

The owner of the Bobby Driscoll website gave us a real treat this month, y'all... 

 

This was a picture circa 1960, taken of Bobby and some friends (or at least a friend) by Edmund Teske.  I love this on so many levels, and here's why:

Notice all the other suit-and-tie combos worn by men in this picture... then look at Bobby.  He was obviously starting to dress as more the 60s artist type by wearing a scarf and sweater -- something not many did in 1960.  Bobby certainly knew how to dress the way convention called for, as he did many times for photo shoots and interviews, but his heart may have really been in picking his own style the whole time.  

By 1960 he and Marilyn had split up (just after or around the time their last baby was born) and he was having trouble "finding himself" as he'd stated in a later interview (Suzanne Stansbury would have come into the picture at some point here). He was already friends with Wallace Berman and spending some time in Topanga Canyon, beginning to form his alternate identity as an artist vs. an actor. I believe it shows just in his clothing choices in this picture.

As an aside, don't you wonder if he wasn't hot?  Especially given that he also brought a coat with him it looks like.  Gosh... and this was Southern California!

I realize some details are lost because the picture is so shadowed.  I did attempt to lighten it up some.  But I also can't help but notice how thick and wiry his hair is. 

What else do you notice that you'd like to remark on?

Two Tidbits Today!

Y'ALL.

A "new" picture of Bobby!  Actually, this has apparently been on Facebook since 2010.  It was posted for public viewing by Bobby's high school friend Sherwood Hilliard, who has unfortunately not been active on Facebook since 2014, and therefore I couldn't figure out how to ask if I could re-post this here.  So let me just say, I do not own it, and if it causes any problem for it to be here (I'm speaking specifically if Mr. Hilliard were ever to see this and take issue), please just let me know and it will come down.

Our boy is there in the middle, and he was about fifteen -- it was taken in 1952.  The third boy pictured is one Dick Glass, and this was in Pacific Palisades, where I believe they all lived at the time.  

That big, fun grin!  From what we ever hear about Bobby from his friends, that expression completely captures his sweet, happy personality.  I'm not sure whose car that was, but it looks like kind of a junker they were maybe hoping to fix up.  We know how Bobby loved his cars.

Gosh, I'm so glad to have finally found something different.  I mean, and this takes work, Guys.  I did a Facebook image search for Bobby Driscoll that yielded this, but you have to be patient and meticulous and make it through ALLLLL the pictures that have anything to do with anybody or anything named "Bobby Driscoll."  That means people who happen to share that name, old pictures of him we've seen recycled again and again, usually posted alongside a sob story about his life, but then occasionally it'll all pay off and you run into THIS -- a gem among the junk and the crystals.  

So this got me excited to see what else is out there all over again -- and trust me, I needed the motivation.  So I went back to archive.org and searched through the text files, and came across something else that came out when he was around that same age.  It was an article from something called The Children's Newspaper from November 15th, 1952.  I'll quote it here:

"Boy film actor Bobby Driscoll is studying engineering as a profession, just in case films no longer need him when he is grown up.

'I've seen a lot of child actors,' Bobby says, 'and I've heard more about them from my mother and dad.  One day your name is up in lights and all the studios are screaming for you.  The next day your voice has broken and parts get fewer and smaller until they come to a dead stop.  If that should ever happen to me Lean always fall_ back (sic) on  my engineering training I hope!'"

(The last sentence must have been mistranslated when digitalized, but I'm sure it meant something like, "I can fall back on my engineering training.")

Let's take a moment here.

I felt profoundly sad upon reading this because we all know that is exactly what happened.  Bobby's firing from Disney was only a few months down the road from this very statement.  But this tells me something -- a few things.

Firstly, Bobby knew this could happen.  He knew he could become not so important an entertainment figure anymore, and he was trying to prepare for that.  He'd said over the years anyway that he didn't necessarily know he wanted to be an actor forever, and had even mentioned civil engineering back when he was younger as a career he'd be interested in pursuing.  So what happened?

Well... I'd imagine that even though he knew in theory he could be bounced from the movie star scene, he probably had no idea it was going to happen as quickly and cruelly as it did when Walt Disney let him go within the next six months.  By all accounts, he was emotionally derailed by the action, and the engineer plans just didn't pan out.  Why not?  Well... being bullied at school, and definitely meeting up with drugs are both things that can take a young person's hopes and dreams and toss them in File Thirteen.  This is evidently what happened to Bobby.  In his later years, he would say to interviewer Fred D. Brown that he'd tried to go to college twice, but lacked focus and motivation to follow through.  I'm sure this, at least, was due to addiction.  

Secondly though, it debunks what everyone has said about Cletus and Isabelle.  They evidently knew Bobby might not always hold onto his stardom, so they did at least try to encourage him to pursue another career.  Now I'm not sure how hard they pushed the engineering, or what their follow-through was like, but anyone who says they didn't even try to equip Bobby for his future isn't entirely right.  The Driscolls knew the hazards of child acting, and there were at least a couple of conversations in this vein had with Bobby -- enough to get him thinking about an alternate plan.

So in light of this, it seems pretty clear that Bobby and his family couldn't have been completely surprised that his star eventually burned out.  I just wonder if it felt like something that might happen only in theory, but they still felt secure enough in his talent to carry him through.  

Bobby was bright enough and resilient enough to have done something different with his life once the emotional trauma of being let go by Disney wore off.  But, yet again, I think that's where the drugs stole that opportunity from him.

But despite how sad it is to think of the things that never were... it makes me smile to imagine them at the same time.  Bobby Driscoll... one-time child star, brilliant engineer who went on to carry his genius into another art... raising children, mentoring young actors, making new connections, sharing his artistic vision with the world by maybe doing artwork on the side, continuing to sign autographs for delighted children and old fans with a crinkle of those impish eyes...

... So much could have been had.  And even though it didn't work out that way in this lifetime, it will be truly exciting to see what has become of him in the next, if you believe in a heaven, a New Earth, and second chances.  People can call me blithely ignorant and superstitious, but I do.  

On a slightly sweeter note, Happy Mother's Day to Marilyn, who bore all three of Bobby's children.  She was young, probably naive about romance and marriage, and as we came to found out later, mentally ill.  Her husband was shackled by addiction.  But I'm sure through all that, she did the best she could at the time.

And it was not in vain.  

Glorious Eighty-three

Happy birthday to the man who...

Taught us to fly.

Taught us to be brave.

Taught us that love works miracles.

Taught us the value of a good story.

Taught us about adventure.

... And taught us about the power of addiction.
Not to be judgmental.
To love those around us as well as we can, because we do not know their struggle.
That goodness lingers underneath the grime.

Thank you, Bobby, for your lessons. We will love you always.

The Benefits of Ancestry.com Free Trials (aka More About Suzanne Stansbury)

Hello All!  I hope everyone's keeping well and enjoyed the holiday season.  Thanksgiving, Christmas and Valentine's can usually either be really good for people or really bad for them, so if it was really bad for you, you are in my prayers.  Spring is just around the corner, y'all!

Okay, first of all:  today, I happened to be knocked flat with an email giving me about ten comments needing approval that some of you submitted as long ago as TWO YEARS.  I just want to say I am so very sorry I didn't receive any notification about these!  I'm not sure why I didn't, but from now on, rest assured I am going to start manually checking my Comments Moderation page instead of waiting for notifications to come to me, because evidently they only do half the time.  I am always looking to dialogue with people on here, so you can imagine my distress at realizing I'd missed out on some great opportunities. If ever you send me a comment and it doesn't appear on this blog within a couple of days, please email me:  jessah82@gmail.com.  Chances are, I just didn't see it.  I obviously don't approve spam or anyone being hateful, rude, or argumentative, so if your comment falls under either of those categories, count this as your reason why it was ignored.  Again, so sorry, Guys...

So, back to it!  I decided to do another ancestry.com free trial, because I am quite the amateur sleuth.  Or so I like to think.  I've continued to be a total zero in regards to finding good stuff about Bobby from people who actually knew him.  In the last few months I've tried to reach out to John Wilder and Robert Paget, two friends of Bobby's from way back (Paget starred with Bobby in The Party Crashers) who have an online presence.  Nil.  I know Dean Stockwell is said to make it a precedent not to talk about Bobby to anyone, but I keep hoping the right time will come and he will want to speak about the things he remembers.  If he does, though, it probably won't be to me, a backwater southern belle with no tangible connection to Bobby and family, who isn't writing a book or making a documentary.  I also have tried to reach out to someone I thought could quite possibly be THE Patricia Nolan (Bobby's teen girlfriend), but haven't scored anything there, either.

It takes money to seriously pursue information about people, mind you.  And connections.  And thick skin.  I have none of that.  I certainly lack the persistence to do hassle people in the name of research, and that's usually what it takes to get the job done.  If someone tells me to leave them alone, I will go out of my way to do so.  Maybe I need to partner my blog with someone who can do my investigations for me.

Anyway, back to Ancestry.

You'd be surprised at just how very little there is about Bobby on there.  The record of his marriage to Marilyn, and the manifest for the ship he and his parents were passengers on, bound to England for the filming of Treasure Island... under which he was listed as "Robbie Driscoll" by the way.  Not sure if that was a mistake or an attempt to keep a low profile.  I did, however, find this!

I'm thinking this about has to be OUR Bobby, because by the end of 1960 I believe he was living in Topanga Canyon around George Herms and the rest of the art scene, and 1960 would have been the first election he could have registered to vote for, as twenty-one was the voting age back then.  This would have been the JFK vs. Richard Nixon election, and I'm just betting Bobby was a JFK man.  Young, full of new ideas, this would have been the candidate I think would have appealed most to him.  Pure conjecture, but pretty good chances at being correct I think.

I love how his party is Declines to State.  Why was this?  Bobby's father was a registered Democrat I discovered, which at the time was the party preference of the working-class man.  The political climate nowadays lends itself to Democrat = liberal and Republican = conservative, but those terms, as such, weren't relevant back then, if those classifications even existed loosely at all.  I'm guessing Bobby didn't want to be labeled.  He wanted to feel free to vote for the candidate, not the cause, perhaps.  All very in keeping with the way he seems to have been feeling about life back then as a young man trying to find himself.

The biggest batch of information I found on Ancestry, though, was about Suzanne Stansbury.  This is a woman we know very little about, either personally or in regards to Bobby, other than that they were arrested together in 1961, and he mentioned her in one of his Chino letters to George Herms and in his 1961 interview.  Bobby had stated there that Suzanne had come over to the U.S. from France with an airman she'd met during the war -- presumably World War II -- and had been abandoned by him.  Given those few details, I managed to find this:

Basically, if you can't read these (tried to make them big enough) we see that Suzanne came over as a war bride just after World War II ended in 1946 -- and just in time for Christmas.  She was a fresh-faced 20-year-old with brown hair (she was blonde out of a bottle by the time she caught Bobby's eye fourteen years later), green eyes, standing just 5'4 and able to read only in French.  It says here the man she married lived in Louisiana, which was where she was bound. It begs asking, how did she manage to get all the way to California in later years?  

(By the way, it's weird to think that Suzanne came to the U.S. as a war bride just a month after the premier for Song of the South.  Bobby was only nine-years-old.)

Her husband was one Martin Stansbury, she had five dollars in her pocket (which would be about $66 in 2020), and she had never been incarcerated.  

Scant details, but it tells me this:  Suzanne was young, probably very in love and optimistic about her future in America.  She had effectively placed her life in her husband's hands -- a husband she might not have known very well.  Thus is the story of so many of the war brides.  It all ended up happily for some of them, but for others, life had to have turned very difficult if true colors were revealed and they were left alone, knowing no one in their new country.  There is no way to know what actually caused the separation between Martin and Suzanne -- whether he did abandon her and their son Nicholas out of sheer neglect... whether he struggled with PTSD and found personal relationships too difficult to sustain after having survived a war... or how much Suzanne herself did or did not contribute to the factors causing the split-up.  But that she eventually found herself across the country, addicted to drugs, raising a son by herself and working as a cocktail waitress testifies to the fact that life must have been tough.  She may have had to resort to making tough and questionable choices just to sustain herself and "Nicky" as he's called later by George Herms in an interview.  This while also having very little command of the English language, probably.  People weren't as kind and judgment-free toward single mothers then as they are now, particularly if she started out in the South.  

In trying to establish what happened to her after she and Bobby split (which I still cannot seem to find any details about), I could find only one thing that told the rest of her story:

She died two days before Christmas in 1973 -- just a few years after Bobby did.  No other details are known, so I'm not sure if her own drug addiction led to her demise, or if there were other factors at hand.  Either way, it's a tragic story.  In trying to find more about Nicky, I could only find that someone who was born around the year he would have been and who lived in Los Angeles had a string of marriages (at least three) starting when he was very young.  I can only guess he was a heartbroken young man, having been dragged around by a heartbroken mother as she tried to do the best she could to ensure their survival, and later went on to search as hard as he could for a sense of home and purpose and love from someone.

So it's not the full story about Suzanne Stansbury, certainly, and I fill in the blanks only with ponderings, conjecture and my own conclusions.  One thing this search yielded for me, though, was way more compassion for Suzanne and women like her, as I reflected a few paragraphs up.  I can be frustrated for how her influence was doubtlessly horrible for Bobby when he was most vulnerable... but she was probably vulnerable, too.  I hope she found a sense of peace before she died, and hate that life dealt her such a raw hand.  She surely made her own bad decisions, maybe even in marrying the wrong person who ended up abandoning her after bringing her home to his family... but how many people make the same kinds of decisions now, and have a chance to redeem part of their lives?  It doesn't look like Suzanne ever had the chance to.

Now that I've thoroughly depressed us, let me just say I'm glad we have far more compassion for people in these situations nowadays, and more understanding for how they find themselves stuck in the mire of bad decisions and hopelessness.

So with that, I say Rest in Peace Suzanne Stansbury.  I bet you had your own blustery, beautiful, devastating story to tell.

A much needed well-check

I made those of us who like cutesy stuff a Valentine's Day background throwing together some of my favorite screenshots.

Yup, I know. How very fifth grade of me, but I felt I should do something, anything, to let y'all know I'm still here and assure you I'm working on some good posts! Valentine's Day is actually my favorite holiday, and there's nothing like anticipating a holiday to take the opportunity to use the heck out of the $55 per year PicsArt subscription I accidentally purchased last March...

I mean, what?

Until it cancels itself out, I'm getting my darn money's worth. The lesson here is, pay attention to when your free trials end!

Also, a good many young girls and women follow me, so here's to them 💗

My next post is going to tell us a little more about Suzanne Stansbury, Bobby's paramour from the early 60's whom he intended to marry at one point, but never actually did. I did some digging and am eager to share a few things I learned about her past and her fate.

It WILL transpire this month sometime.  Thank you for your patience. I've had alot going on. You know, all the things.