GOODBYE PETER PAN
Bobby, Walt Disney, and Riker's Island
Second star to the right
Straight on until morning, my little friend
There's an island called Never Land
Where childhood dreams never end.
-- "Farewell, Never, Never Land"
Tom Russell
On March 30, 1968, two kids were playing in an abandoned apartment building in New York's Greenwich Village and peaked in a room. There they saw a man stretched out on a small army cot, two empty beer bottles lying beside him and religious pamphlets strewn about. The man was dead. No one knew who he was. He was without identification and obviously penniless. The track marks in his arms showed extensive drug use. The medical examiner listed the cause of death as heart failure. After taking his fingerprints for possible future identification, the unclaimed corpse was carted off to a pauper's grave in the city cemetery near Riker's Island.
Almost two years later, a grieving mother would furnish proof that the unmarked grave contained the body of 31-year-old Bobby Driscoll. You might know him better as Peter Pan.
When I was 5 years old, I watched a NBC television live production of Peter Pan starring a 47-year-old Mary Martin in the title role. She flew! I was mesmerized. I was hooked (Reader alert: Intentional pun)! The freedom and fun Peter enjoyed was my guide. My poor brother often became my stand-in for the villainous Captain Hook, whom I would confront with my cardboard sword. My mom then took me to see the Disney animated version which cemented my passion.
Later, I would learn the voice of Peter Pan in that film was provided by Bobby Driscoll, a 15-year-old boy and veteran of many Disney films including Song of the South and Treasure Island. In 1946, he became the first live actor to be signed by Walt Disney. Bobby was a natural, even winning an honorary Academy Award in 1949 for his role in The Window. A few months after the release of Peter Pan in 1953, Walt called Bobby into his office to tell him he was fired, too old for Disney pictures. "You can't fire Peter Pan!" Bobby allegedly yelled. His downward spiral was Promethean.
The author of the original book Peter Pan was J.M. Barre, who presented a much darker Peter Pan back in 1904. Refusing to grow-up, Peter Pan stayed in a perpetual fantasy land of Indians, mermaids and pirates. This Peter also had a dark and violent side to him. Later scholarship on the author would show possible sinister motives and themes, but there is no doubt the sanitized Disney version -- with its focus on imagination and joys of childhood, and featuring the brilliant voice work of Bobby Driscoll -- is what stayed in the public eye.
When I was a little boy, I had an assortment of pictures in my room. Directly over my bed were Micky Mantle and Whitey Ford. By my desk was Lawrence of Arabia, and on another wall was an illustration of Davy Crockett. As I grew, I slowly learned these heroes of my boyhood were flawed human beings who struggled with addictions, fame and depression. Your youth can seem effervescent, a shimmering highly edited myth that takes out all the darkness and pain and focuses on the wonder and the magic. That is what Disney did so effectively in films like Peter Pan -- it gave us a past that had been mostly scrubbed of boredom, routine and brutality, and instead shined a light on the best parts. Memories sometimes become a greatest hits video we tenderly watch and re-edit on every viewing, forgetting we will never be younger than we are this present day.
Virginia Woolf once wrote, "Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others." As children, when we start to figure out our parents aren't perfect and our heroes have flaws, the world can come crashing in on us -- Hollywood had no use for an adult Bobby Driscoll. Sometimes, we can value our past more than the present. The secret is not to retreat into childhood like Peter or try to keep our children or memories as perpetual captives to that age. Nor should we ban imagination and magic in our minds as adults. We can grow up and still want to fly. Still dream.
Goodnight, Bobby.
NAN Our Town on 09/27/2018