I can’t remember how it was that I saw Peter Pan for the first time. I wonder about this because today is the anniversary, March 7, 1955, when Peter Pan, starring Mary Martin, first aired on television. I have seen this version before and wondered how it was that they cast Mary Martin for the role of young Peter Pan. Forever young.
The story is based on the 1904 play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up by J. M. Barrie. It has taken on many shapes and forms since then. And, from the outset, women have been used in the role of Peter. The reason for this goes back to when the play was first staged in England in the early 1900s.
Apparently, it was Broadway producer Charles Frohman who suggested that a woman should play the role. He said that casting a boy would affect the rest of the children in the ensemble — they “would have to be scaled down in proportion.” Besides all of that, English law stated that children under the age of 14 couldn’t work after 9 p.m. Bedtime, and all.
So there it is. They put a woman in the lead as Peter Pan in 1904, and it has gone that way, mostly, ever since. Besides Mary Martin, there were Sandy Duncan and Cathy Rigby. And then NBC did that live broadcast on TV not too long ago, where Allison Williams played the role.
But, back to where I started, I’d say the first time I saw Peter Pan — and I’m am taking an educated guess — must have been Disney’s rendition which was produced in 1953. The animated version.
It is such a fantastic story. The parents, George and Mary Darling. The children, John and Michael and Wendy. The visit, in their nursery, by Peter Pan himself.
We know the rest. Peter teaches them to fly with the help of his obstinate pixie friend, Tinker Bell. He takes them with him to the island of Never Land. Captain Hook. Mr. Smee. Trouble. Crocodiles. Lost Boys. Rescues. High drama. The end.
The Disney version is great, as I recall, but it made me wonder who played Peter in that animated rendition. It was none other than Bobby Driscoll. He was a pretty big child actor back in those days. He starred in a lot of the live-action pictures of that period, such as Song of the South (1946), So Dear to My Heart (1949), The Window (1949), and Treasure Island (1950).
But, as happens with so many other childhood actors, the time of childhood came to an end. A story of a boy who probably didn’t want to grow up, but was forced to. After Bobby Driscoll left the Disney studios, his parents withdrew him from the Hollywood Professional School — where child actors went to school. They ended up sending him to the public West Los Angeles High School instead.
That’s when the trouble started. He didn’t fit in there, was teased about his earlier roles in movies, and was kept mostly on the outside. So he started taking drugs. And the drugs took hold of him. From high school forward, he got into a lot of scrapes with the law and was incarcerated for a time.
Then, on March 30, 1968, two boys were playing an East Village tenement in New York. It was deserted, run-down. Anyway, they found his dead body lying on a cot. The only things next to him were two empty beer bottles and a bunch of religious pamphlets scattered on the ground. That was it.
The autopsy of Bobby Driscoll determined that he had died from heart failure directly related to his drug use and abuse. There was no identification on his body. The police showed photos around the neighborhood, but no one could say who this was. So for a while, the famous and successful young actor had become a John Doe. As it went, his unclaimed body was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave in New York City’s Potter’s Field. That is on Hart Island.
It was a year and a half later — late in 1969 — when his mother sought the help of officials at the Disney studios to contact him. Bobby’s father was dying, and she wanted a reunion before his death. All of this resulted in a fingerprint match at the New York City Police Department, and of course, his burial on Hart Island. That is how his mother found him.
He was 31 when he died. And only 12 when he played the role of Peter Pan. And sometimes, time can go the wrong way, it seems. We can only hope to stay on the better side of it.
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“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”
― J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan
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“Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
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“Second star to the right and straight on ’til morning.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
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I suppose it’s like the ticking crocodile, isn’t it? Time is chasing after all of us.
