--- name: "Bobby Driscoll" canonical: "https://film.one/person/bobby-driscoll" roles: ["Actor"] born: "3 March 1937" died: "30 March 1968" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 updated: "2026-09-17T06:08:32.244742+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Bobby Driscoll Actor. Born 3 March 1937 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA. Died 30 March 1968. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 3 March 1937, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA - **Died:** 30 March 1968 - **Also known as:** Robert Cletus Driscoll, Robert Driscoll, Bob Driscoll - **Elsewhere:** https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q712955, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0237985/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/50997 ## Streaming the US now - **Disney+:** [*Peter Pan*](https://film.one/film/peter-pan-1953.md) (68) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Bobby Driscoll > Bobby Driscoll was one of Disney's first child actors, a plain American boy who could carry a family picture or a thriller, and the studio finished by turning him into a drawing. The drawing is the one everybody knows, which is hard on him. The first thing most people meet of Bobby Driscoll is a laugh coming through a nursery window. Disney's *Peter Pan* (1953) gives its hero an American swagger and a laugh like a car horn, and both come from a boy who had been the studio's boy for nearly a decade. Driscoll voiced Peter and the animators worked from film of him, so the cocky set of the shoulders is his as well. We will admit the laugh got on our nerves inside ten minutes. We will also admit it is exactly the laugh a boy like that would have, and that the fault lies less with Driscoll than with a film that wants a hero who is right about everything and has taken out everything in Barrie that hurts. He was found by chance at five and a half and was working the same year, in *Lost Angel* (1943); Disney signed him in 1944, when the studio had barely used real children at all. The parts that followed were ordinary boys: Johnny in *Song of the South* (1946), Jerry Kincaid in *So Dear to My Heart* (1948), both opposite Luana Patten, then Jim Hawkins in *Treasure Island* (1950), the studio's first film with no animation in it. What critics have always said of him is that he was believable as an ordinary boy, which sounds like faint praise and is not. The film that makes the case is *The Window* (1949), made when Disney loaned him to RKO for Ted Tetzlaff. He plays Tommy Woodry, a boy who witnesses a murder and cannot get anyone to believe him, and by every account the picture rests on him. We have not reviewed it and will not judge it at length here. We will say it is the one to seek out if you want to know what the fuss was about, because it asks a child to carry a thriller rather than to be charming in one. *Peter Pan* was the end. The contract was terminated shortly after it came out, the studio's boy having stopped being a boy, and the work after that was mostly television guest parts until around 1960. Later he moved to New York and into the avant-garde art scene. He was not sentimental about any of it. "I have found that memories are not very useful," he said. "I was carried on a silver platter and then dumped into the garbage can." So the performance most people know is the one where he is least himself: a voice and a set of gestures handed to the animators and simplified. Watch *Peter Pan* for the flight over London and for Hans Conried's Hook, both of which earn their keep. Then find *The Window*, where nobody drew him first. ## Biography Bobby Driscoll was an American actor. He provided the voice of Peter Pan and served as the live-action model for the character in the 1953 Disney film *Peter Pan*. Driscoll appeared in several Disney productions, including *Song of the South* (1946), *So Dear to My Heart* (1948) and *Treasure Island* (1950). He received an Academy Juvenile Award in 1950 for his performances in *So Dear to My Heart* and *The Window* (1949). His career declined in the mid-1950s, after which he made guest appearances on television series. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *Peter Pan* (1953), Fi1m 68, as Peter Pan (voice) — [page](https://film.one/film/peter-pan-1953.md) ## Also known for - *Once Upon a Studio* (2023), Peter Pan (voice) (archive sound) - *Melody Time* (1948), Bobby Driscoll - *Song of the South* (1946), Johnny - *Treasure Island* (1950), Jim Hawkins - *Lilies of the Field* (1963), Mexican Holding Chapel Door (uncredited) - *The Window* (1949), Tommy Woodry - *So Dear to My Heart* (1948), Jeremiah 'Jerry' Kincaid --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/bobby-driscoll