A boy soprano, long broken, fades out
mainBobby Breen was an RKO star in the late 1930s, briefly a rival to Shirley Temple.
Then his voice broke, and war broke out.
He got a life, was house pianist for the NBC Symphony Orchestra, then became a talent agent in Florida.
Bobby died this week, aged 88.
His 1939 starrer “Way Down South” was co-written by Langston Hughes, and depicts an idyllic slave plantation. Which still seems to linger in the minds of a large number of white Americans and the politicians who represent them.