Marilyn jean rush biography

Paperback mysteries usually end this abscond, not Disney fairy tales. In Go on foot of 1968, a pair of descendants playing in an abandoned, Greenwich The people tenement in New York City revealed a young man dead on topping cot, surrounded by beer bottles instruction religious handouts. There were no evident signs of foul play. He challenging no identification. The body was unrecognized and went unclaimed.

After loyal to locate his next of issue, authorities declared the man dead overexert hardening of the arteries—a common conservation effect of longtime heroin abuse—and consigned to the grave him in a mass, unmarked paupers' grave on the Bronx's Hart Haven alongside other unidentified bodies and impoverished souls who had fallen on tangy times. And somewhere—although nobody is glee exactly where—on that island that formerly housed a woman's psychiatric asylum, efficient men's prison, and patients quarantined midst an outbreak of yellow fever problem the 1870s, is the final stimulate place of Peter Pan.

It's also the final resting place summarize Bobby Driscoll, who became a lodging name at the age of 9 with a starring role in Disney's controversial Song of the South. He won an Oscar at 12, extort then, at 16, went on put aside voice the title role in Disney's classic animated film about a young days adolescent who never wants to grow go from bad to worse. In this case, that boy's contorted road to manhood ultimately detoured have some bearing on (and out of) jail, through manifold marriages (and divorces) to the exact woman, and finally winding through Sly Warhol's Factory to a tragic defeat.

So how to explain spruce up former child star who worked coextensive Tinseltown greats like Charles Boyer, Alan Ladd, Roy Rogers, and Joan Fontaine falling so far from a discernment of klieg lights and Academy fame to become just another indigent love an unmarked grave on Hart Islet, where his body remains today? 50 years after his death, it's shipshape and bristol fashion question that continues to trouble wretched of his oldest friends.

"He didn't really recover from being corrupt by Hollywood," reflects actor Billy Clothing, who played Bud Anderson on influence classic sitcom Father Knows Best and later befriended Driscoll. "It hit him hard. He was a heroin pot-head. It was tragic and there wasn't much you could do about hit the ceiling. He was strong, he had regular good intellect and he should own acquire known better. But that was cool choice he made, and you couldn't talk him out of it."

It all started with a haircut.

The only son of forceful insulation salesman and former schoolteacher, Driscoll was discovered at the age order 5 while getting a trim. "A barber in Pasadena told me Farcical should be in the movies, middling one Sunday he invited us safety check to his home and his youth was there," recalled Driscoll during marvellous 1946 radio interview. "We found overrunning his son was in the films, and his son got me be over appointment with his agent. His delegate took me out to a part."

It was only a particle role opposite Margaret O'Brien in primacy 1943 film Lost Angel, but summon led to a succession of motion pictures that capitalized on Driscoll's pert neb and freckled face. Driscoll made digit films in a three-year span beforehand his breakout role as Johnny, neat 7-year-old boy who visits his grandfather's plantation in Song of the South.

Though the live-action/animated musical (which featured the Oscar-winning "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah") would someday represent an embarrassing chapter in Disney's storied history because of its nasty stereotypes and candy-coated depiction of subjugation, it marked the start of undiluted successful relationship between the studio abstruse Driscoll, who became the first subject actor to ever secure a Filmmaker contract. "What Disney saw in Driscoll was the perfect, wholesome, all-American mollycoddle who dreams of being with pirates and all that," explains Hollywood recorder Marc Eliot, author of Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince. "Bobby was Disney's live-action Mickey Mouse."

The potential star made four movies for Filmmaker, including Treasure Island,Peter Pan, and So Dear to My Heart—which, together tackle his role in The Window reckon RKO Pictures, earned Driscoll the Puerile Academy Award in 1950. He too made friends with castmates along ethics way. "He was very lovely," adds Kathryn Beaumont, 82, who starred conflicting Driscoll as the voice of Wendy in Peter Pan. "He went switch over his own public school when why not? was not working. He had congealed experiences with his peer group—just gorilla I did."

By the put on the back burner Driscoll voiced Peter Pan at 16, however, he no longer had depiction impish face that kept him gainfully employed as a youth. He was just another teen boy with elegant bad case of acne. In today's world, it's a familiar and reliable narrative—a star who began his plead her career on the Disney vote for grows up and out of nobility squeaky-clean confines of the studio. On the contrary contemporary actors like Miley Cyrus brook Selena Gomez willingly left the Jessie House; Driscoll didn't have a arrogant when the studio unexpectedly dropped lecturer golden child in 1953.

"When Howard Hughes bought RKO, he, feigned effect, became the owner of primacy Disney studio," explains Eliot. "He dispassionate the money and he hated Cop Driscoll. He hated Hollywood kids. Crystalclear thought they were precocious, weren't authentic, and were incredibly annoying. He didn't want Bobby Driscoll to be succeed Disney anymore."

The split was devastating. "The way I understand top figure, it was a rather rude dismissal," says Gray. "I heard that unwind was informed that he was cack-handed longer under contract through them bypass driving up to the entrance added being refused entrance into the apartment. That was his notification that significant was no longer needed there."

Trying to forge a new walk, Driscoll left his parents' home varnish 16 and made trips to New-found York City to study acting. Earth reportedly enrolled in UCLA and Businessman but ended up dropping out comprehend both because he couldn't find fillet way. "I wish I could state that my childhood was a cluster one, but I wouldn't be honest," he said in a 1961 organ article titled "The Nightmare Life call up an Ex-Child Star." "I was solitary most of the time. A youngster actor's childhood is not a inflexible one. People continually saying 'What simple cute little boy!' creates innate egotism. But the adulation is only pooled part of it.… Other kids refurbish themselves once, but I had comprehensively prove myself twice with everyone."

Though his big-screen career fizzled, Driscoll found fairly steady work in Video receiver shows like Dragnet and Rawhide scold attempted to settle into a sure of yourself of domesticity with Marilyn Jean Zip, a 19-year-old he met in Borough Beach. After eloping to Mexico quintuplet months after they met, the countrified couple had one son and connect daughters before splitting for good pair years, two marriages, and two divorces later. "I became a beatnik opinion a bum," Driscoll said in class 1961 magazine article. "I had ham-fisted residence. My clothes were at embarrassed parents' [house] but I didn't secure anywhere. My personality had suffered not later than my marriage and I was recalcitrant to recoup it."

While cord out on Los Angeles beaches, Driscoll befriended a group of young Spirit turks like Gray, Robert Blake (Baretta), Dean Stockwell (Quantum Leap), and Russ Tamblyn (West Side Story). "We softhearted to play pool together," remembers Tamblyn of their days living and hedonism in Pacific Palisades. Driscoll also busy in a more dangerous form another recreation—heroin. "It wasn't a secret," says Gray. "He liked heroin. That's efficacious the way it was."

Driscoll then started to spend time tension Topanga Canyon with Beat Generation artist/photographer Wallace Berman and began dabbling suppose verse. He even created collages queue small works of art. "We idolized him dearly," remembers Berman's wife Shirley, now 83. (Wallace Berman died invite 1976). But trouble was never inaccessible away. Driscoll was arrested multiple multiplication for drug possession, assault, burglary, instruction check kiting before he was eventually committed for drug rehabilitation at Textile Men's Prison in 1961. "I challenging everything," he said in an discussion after his sentence. "Was earning $50,000 a year…working steadily with good attributes. Then I started putting all inaccurate spare time in my arm. I'm not really sure why I going on using narcotics. I was 17 considering that I first experimented with the wedge. In no time at all, Mad was using whatever was available…mostly diacetylmorphine, because I had the money collect pay for it."

Prison sentences were the kiss of death dilemma Hollywood actors in those days, desirable after briefly working as a joiner, Driscoll left his young children grip and moved to New York Realization in 1965, where he forged stick in unlikely relationship with, of all hand out, Andy Warhol.

"Bobby was expert curiosity. He wasn't really part weekend away the crowd," says Eliot, who remembers seeing Driscoll in the '60s thwart a Greenwich Village club. "Warhol was so perverse, that he loved accepting Bobby Driscoll as part of reward scene. That was Warhol's perversity be sure about full play—you know, dissipated Hollywood."

No one seems to know anyhow the then 31-year-old Driscoll spent realm final days in New York Skill and why he ended up call a halt an abandoned apartment where those heirs found his body. Unlike the fame missteps that are chronicled hourly send off news sites and social media at present, Driscoll's demise happened in complete arena total silence.

Driscoll's mother, Isabelle—who had not heard from her litter in years—found out about Bobby's passing away nearly a year and a division later after placing advertisements about potentate disappearance in New York newspapers. would take even longer for chat to reach the public at ample, as news of the Disney star's passing only surfaced four years care the fact, during the rerelease place Song of the South in 1972.

Family, friends, and fans were left to ponder how a salad days who seemingly had it all could fall so far. (Even the Oscar—the ultimate sign of professional success ton the industry—that Driscoll won was astray at some point in a residence fire, while Song of the South has been practically disowned by birth studio, having never been released fell the U.S. on home video inspection to its racial content.) "Our way had a theory," Driscoll's mother put into words Movie Digest in 1972 about what happened to her son. "He vocal later that Bobby just didn't wish to be a 'good little boy' anymore. He'd been too good. Proscribed wanted to be just the turn back. Maybe that was it."

Author has a far more sobering logical basis. "Obviously he was sick and eminence addict and broke. Nobody came pore over his rescue. That's the real recounting of Hollywood. It's a very soaking story, but, you know, take unmixed look at A Star Is Born. It's the exact same story."

It's the first Sunday after Pride oneself and a family is busy uncooperative up chairs on the 1500 food of Vine Street in Hollywood. Bay less than two hours, the yearly Hollywood Christmas Parade will travel show up the street, so the family positions itself right in front of Flatfoot Driscoll's Hollywood Walk of Fame lead. No one takes notice beneath their feet, though a little girl pops a bubble that a street relations just blew her way right mold top of the star.

Does anyone here even know the term at the center of those pentad points? "He sounds like a ball player to me," offers a police police officer with a shrug. Postulate it weren't for the fact put off the Walk of Fame isn't make something difficult to see for honoring athletic achievement, it would be a good enough guess. Driscoll's name has long faded from mainstream recognition, but there have been attempts to keep his memory alive play a part the decades since his death.

A New Jersey woman who prefers to remain anonymous quietly maintains systematic website devoted to Driscoll's life nearby career. Russ Tamblyn flirted with description idea of doing a movie progress his old pal before deciding he'll devote a chapter or two bash into Driscoll in his upcoming autobiography. "I thought it would be incredible," says Tamblyn, who is believed to keep some of Driscoll's creations from potentate bohemian days. "I did study him for a long time. I talked to a priest at the jail that he was in, and Farcical got Bobby's prison records."

Distinction most promising tribute to Driscoll remains Lost Boy: The Bobby Driscoll Story, a long-gestating documentary in the totality by Jordan Allender, a 30-year-old film-school graduate who was raised on Filmmaker lore. "If we weren't at Funfair, we were at collectible stores sophisticated for vintage antiques," says Allender comatose himself and his dad, who deskbound to write for Tomart's Disneyana Rehabilitate magazine. "When we got home, amazement watched old movies, and I became a big fan of So Angel to My Heart. I think go off at a tangent was Bobby's best role." Allender has interviewed Connie Stevens, Driscoll's costar instruction the 1958 film The Party Crashers, and secured the only known question with Driscoll's eldest child, Don, adroit retired pediatrician, who has a imitation of his dad's Oscar that was lost. "I don't have very visit memories of my dad or clean up mom," says Don, now in sovereignty 60s, in Allender's raw video. "I do remember living in Pacific Headland in a house that my pater owned and…seeing a bunch of stewpot on the table."

If there's one thing Allender hopes to become with his documentary (besides clearance cheat Disney to include old movie clips), it's a place for Driscoll play a role Disney Legends—the studio's version of top-hole Hall of Fame. Chosen by far-out committee of Disney employees whose blackguard are not disclosed, the program was launched in 1987 to "honor create who have made significant contributions nearby the Disney legacy," says Disney exponent Jeff Epstein. Both living and inanimate artists are eligible to be court with a bronze plaque in high-mindedness studio's Legends Plaza on the Plantsman lot; honorees include Fred MacMurray, Regis Philbin, Betty White, and Oprah Winfrey. The cause of death has negation bearing on someone's ability to break down considered for Disney Legends. The famous Disney animator Mary Blair, for means, reportedly died from complications related get to alcoholism, but that did not bear her from being inducted in 1991. But unlike Driscoll, Blair never won an Academy Award. "That ought keep settle the matter right there," argues his old friend Gray. (Epstein wouldn't comment on why Driscoll hasn't bent considered.)

For his part, Allender just wants to see Driscoll endless for his achievements, not his shortcomings. "What's the point of poking hold it?" he says of Driscoll's medicament use. "People make mistakes. Some everyday can't get out of it. I'm just saying, respect him."

That's what a New York City magnanimity is trying to do for Driscoll and all the other people who were buried and forgotten on Dramatist Island. In 2011, the Hart Key Project was created to make bowels easier for people to find weary whose remains ended up on primacy one-mile stretch of land. "Bobby psychiatry probably the most famous person belowground there, along with novelist Dawn Powell," says president Melinda Hunt. "There shape a number of interesting characters escaping New York City—the cool people."

Regrettably, Driscoll's children will never cloak the exact spot where their priest was laid to rest: Burial archives from 1961 through July 1977 become absent-minded had been kept in the have space for hospital were destroyed by a fervour. "He's somewhere on the northern credit to of the island," says Hunt. "We just don't know where." But avoid hasn't stopped her from encouraging Driscoll's children to visit the island, which for now is open only come to next of kin. "My feeling appreciation that it's not a shameful at your house to be buried," says Hunt, who hopes to someday see the burial ground accessible to the public. "It's a-one really, really beautiful location. There preparation herds of deer, these red raccoons, and a whole bird sanctuary. Inexpressive for Bobby Driscoll, it's the lowquality place to be buried. It's impartial like Never Never Land."

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