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.