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Benjy Ferree: Songs for the Lost Boys

Posted Dec 16, 2009

Benjy Ferree is Bobby Driscoll, a Disney child actor who turned to drugs when his career floundered in the mid-1950s, and died of heart failure ending his life in an unmarked grave at the age of 31.We find out more this artist's tribute to the child star and his Neverland music.

 

Child actor Bobby Driscoll.

 Once Disney’s golden boy of cinema, Driscoll was fired from Disney after the making of Peter Pan for the unforgivable crime of hitting puberty and developing a bad case of acne.

Bobby Driscoll was the voice of animated "Peter Pan", 1953, for which he was also the live-action model. His contract with the Disney studios was prematurely terminated shortly after the release of Peter Pan in late March of 1953.

No longer cute and profitable, he struggled to find work and fell into a life-long battle with drugs until ultimately dying homeless and broke in a Manhattan tenement in 1968 at the age of 31. With police unable to identify his body, the one-time Academy Award winner ended up in an unmarked mass grave on New York’s Hart Island.

Come Back To The Five And Dime Bobby Dee Bobby Dee - the latest album from Benjy Ferree.

In his second full-length album -  Come Back To The Five And Dime Bobby Dee Bobby Dee, Benjy Ferree gives actor Bobby Driscoll a recognition that is long overdue: a musical eulogy to a forgotten child star who was chewed up and spit out by the unforgiving Hollywood meat market. Blending rock and roll and Americana, with a vocal dose of Freddie Mercury and the balladry of Nick Cave - Ferree's music is both unique and enchanting.

Video for Ferree's single 'In The Countryside' by Benjy Ferree. Taken from the album 'Leaving the Nest', out on Domino Records.

 Benji's new album Come Back to the Five and Dime Bobby Dee Bobby Dee is out now on Domino Records.

www.myspace.com/benjyferree

www.benjyferree.com

Kerry Olsen

Source & Photo Credits: Domino Records


 

 

 

TAGS: benjy ferree lost boys bobby driscoll peter pan hollywood celebrity music