The Quiet Life of Bobby Long

This story was covered on Episode 13 and 30 of SUDDENLY, “What Happened to Bobby Long?” and “Lost and Found: Bobby Long and the World of Soundies.”

People say “don’t read the comments.” Normally, this is good advice. But if you’re an eccentric researching an oddball Frank Sinatra-themed podcast, I’d make an exception. Comment sections are where I’ve found some of the best material for this show, the most interesting takes, the strangest details and and the most vivid personal anecdotes.

We’d just watched It Happened in Brooklyn and I was trawling the internet for a unique angle, something that hadn’t been done before. And I couldn’t help but notice something. It was all over comment sections, all over the internet, on every page related to It Happened in Brooklyn that I could find:

”What happened to Bobby Long?”

Bobby Long is the tapdancing child star seen in the film during the “I Believe” sequence. Go to that YouTube link and you’ll see some of the comments I’m talking about. Someone else has also added, “Who IS this kid?”

You should also stop what you’re doing and watch the clip. It really is amazing. At 14 years old, he easily upstages both Sinatra and Durante, dancing circles around both of them. He acts well and sings great too. He’s a triple threat who looks like he could compete with Gene Kelly, and he’s easily the highlight of a fairly average Sinatra vehicle for MGM.

Reading through all the comments I could find, a story started to emerge: This was his only movie. He “disappeared” afterwards. That word, “disappeared”, kept coming up. People were saying this needed to be “investigated”, and that there was absolutely no trace of him after 1947 even in public records.

When it comes to child stars, it’s easy to let your imagination run away with you. They are some of the most emotionally loaded people, existing as they do at the intersection of Hollywood mythology, infamous stories of exploitation and our deepest parenting instincts - all things we love to project onto and feel strongly about. Some of the theories I found about Long got really off the wall: Maybe there was some kind of conspiracy. Maybe he was made to “go away” after being injured on set. Maybe he was murdered, and maybe Sinatra had something to do with it.

Well, I didn’t know about all that. But I got the feeling there was something interesting going on here.

I spent a few weeks in newspaper archives and family history records, and found that the commenters were at least partly right. It was true that there was virtually no record of Bobby Long after It Happened in Brooklyn. It was as if he rose to fame, got his big break at 14, then dropped off the radar almost immediately - not only not appearing in another film, not only never performing again, not only never discussing it or even being written about, but also leaving almost no impression on the public archives even by the standards of any random 20th century American civilian.

For someone so obviously and extremely talented, it really did make you wonder: who was Bobby Long? Where did he come from, and what happened to him?

More frustrating than the absence of information was the number of dead ends I faced. There were rumours about a Robert Long Jr who starred in a 1941 movie called Rodeo Rhythm. I can confirm that is not Bobby Long. There was movie called A Love Song for Bobby Long, plus multiple musicians and even a serial killer with the same name. All this made him extra difficult to Google or research in any other way.

But eventually, I managed to learn a fair amount about him.

His real name was Bobby Earl Logsdon. He was known professionally as Bobby Long, and later in life, to friends as Bob Logsdon. He was born on March 27th, 1932 in St. Louis, Missouri to Lola Mae and Hubert Earl Logsdon. He began tapdancing at the age of six, got his start on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, and found himself touring as a dancer around the United States by at least age nine.

His childhood must have been a whirlwind experience, right at the tail end of vaudeville and so early in life. I’ve collected a bunch of reviews and theatre listings that paint a vivid picture of the showbiz world he was mingling in.

The first performance I was able to find a record of was in March 1942 at the Majestic Theatre in Paterson, New Jersey. He appeared there as part of a revue alongside “a mock striptease by lovely Miss Armfield”, family dance/violin troupe The Four Warners, an accordion plus acrobatics act called The Balbanows, and The Wallabies, an Australian daredevil trampoline act. He returns to the Majestic multiple times in his touring career.

One reviewer for The Morning Call is generally favourable about the line-up, but clearly takes time out to make special mention of Bobby:

”If nine-year-old Bobby Long, also featured in the show, continues his tapdancing career, he will probably be the greatest dancer to ever appear before the footlights. This can be attested for at the Majestic where the youngster is exhibiting one of the greatest demonstrations of timing ever to be presented by a juvenile tapper. He is especially good in his take-off of Ray Bolger. His dancing ability will definitely assure him big time success.”

It might be easy to dismiss that as promotional guff. Everything in those days was written up as the best, the greatest, never before, etc. But in this case, I’m inclined to believe the reviewer. None of the other acts are described in the same awed tones, and people who see footage of Bobby Long still say similar things today: if he continued his career, he could have been the greatest.

Another reviewer is so stoked at his performance that he evokes a Bible verse: “And a little child shall lead them.”

In 1943, at age 10, Bobby Long appeared alongside another young dancer, Marlene Cameron, in a Soundie called Club Lollypop. A Soundie, I found out, was a 1940s-era music video that played on Panoram machines, early video jukeboxes. I was very surprised to discover that such a thing existed in those days. I’d never heard of Soundies before.

This Soundie was made by LOL Productions, who were infamously the worst and most low-budget producer of the genre. Club Lollypop is a short but unsettling watch with the vague premise of showcasing various acts at a nightclub featuring only children. Bobby and Marlene are seen tapdancing at the beginning, and then not seen again.

Jazz historian Mark Cantor has been studying Soundies for 50 years. He discussed Club Lollypop in his recent book, The Soundies: A History and Catalog of Jukebox Film Shorts of the 1940s. There are few people in the world who know more about the finer points of American jazz and tapdancing history than Cantor. But even he was stumped: “Little is known about Bobby Long.”

Cantor did manage to interview Marlene Cameron about her experience on the set and her memories of Long. She recalled that by the time of filming they had already worked together on stage for some time. The dance we see on film which seems choreographed was actually improvised. We are apparently watching them as they hear the music for the first time, so familiar with each other’s steps that it looks rehearsed.

In 1943, Long performs at Steel Pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He appears on the same line-up as Sharkey the Seal - which is a whole other story, as we covered with Gary Bohan Jr in Episode 18.

He also performs at the Towers Theatre in Camden, New Jersey, the Capitol in Binghamton, New York, and the Hippodrome in Baltimore, Maryland, opening up for the movie Bride by Mistake. There, he gets another rave write-up in an otherwise middling review of the night:

”Given a strong getaway via smart hoofery of eight-year-old Bobby Long, rest of bill moves swiftly and surely through practiced interludes by standard turns. The Long laddie is a skilful tapster making each lick count on both feet and should be an appealing knockout in any company able to play juve talent. Does three routines that are socko.”

He returns to the Majestic in Paterson several times. In October 1945, he opens there for Roy Rogers.

And he is briefly profiled and interviewed in The Morning Call:

”Ten-year-old Bobby Long, dancing marvel at an age when most kids are playing miggles, is one of the featured performers on the Majestic slate and the former St. Louis youngster proves with his first number that he very definitely will be heard about in the near future… Standing 4-6 and weighing all of 75 pounds, the youthful entertainer has played many USO shows and in addition has worked with some of the biggest name bands in the country. He asserted that his mother had just signed him to a contract with Twentieth Century Fox, although most of his films to date have been shorts.

When asked to express an opinion concerning his theatrical life, the curly-haired imp stated, ‘I like it very much, but I’d rather be in New York overlooking the Navy.’ Bobby’s education keeps pace with him, his mother declared, and he is enrolled in the Professional Children’s School from which he recently graduated the eighth grade. His dancing artistry had the first day audiences pleading for more, and the kid’s only ten. (He’s actually 13.) Bobby’s mother chaperones him to his junkets and when we last saw them, she was taking him out for a tuna fish sandwich.”

These short paragraphs are the most vivid sense we have of the life he was leading in those years.

At some point in 1946, he moves to Santa Monica, California and is cast by MGM in It Happened in Brooklyn. He plays Johnny O’Brien, a school kid who keeps sneaking into the gym at night because he’s worried he’ll never grow up. His character’s catch phrase is “Natch!”

Once filming wraps, Long’s parents begin negotiating a new contract for him in court. He then jumps straight back into touring. By December 1946, he’s back in Binghamton, New York, opening for “Zelanie, the psychic wonder.”

"After he terminates his road tour", reads an article in Paterson's News, "(Bobby Long) will return to California for future motion picture assignments."

But he didn’t have any more movies, or performances, or seemingly anything showbiz-related at all.

It Happened in Brooklyn is released in March 1947. By this time, for whatever reason, with the most publicity he’d ever had and a standout feature role alongside Frank Sinatra, Bobby Long’s career seems to be already over.

In the Soundies interview with Marlene Cameron, she also remembered that he “disappeared” in 1947. Even as someone who knew him personally, that’s her memory of it and that’s the word she chose to use.

In April 1947, a brief paragraph about him and his parents runs in a St. Louis newspaper:

This seems to be the last that is ever heard of him in public life.

But for me it was a vital clue: his full name, both parents’ names, even an old address. Another newspaper notice about Long’s parents negotiating his contract in court confirmed his middle name was Earl. I was able to match these details to US census records from 1940 and 1950, and worked from there.

It took a long time, but using all of this information and more clues I picked up along the way, I managed to form a picture of the rest of his life.

At some stage, Logsdon moved again, leaving Santa Monica to live in New York with his family. Later, he moved back to California again and settled around the Long Beach/Orange County area for the rest of his life.

In 1951, at age 19, Bobby Earl Logsdon joined the US Navy. At first I was puzzled by this. What would make him give it all up and take his life in such a drastically different direction? Then I realised the US had a draft for the Korean War; we didn’t have one here in Australia. The new law came into effect in 1951. I think it is reasonable to conclude that Logsdon was drafted.

Logsdon served in the Korean War as an aerographer’s mate third class aboard the U.S.S. Philippine Sea. An aerographer’s mate is effectively a ship’s weatherman, trained in special equipment to predict the conditions ahead. It is tough to imagine him doing this, just a few years out from It Happened in Brooklyn. From the MGM backlot to the East Asian seas.

I found some old stock footage of life aboard the U.S.S. Philippine Sea during the Korean War. I recommend muting the corny music. Silent, it is haunting and vivid to watch. You get a sense of what life was actually like on the ship. You don’t see Bobby Long, at least as far as I know. But from the evidence I’ve gathered, I’m certain this is a glimpse of his life at sea.

He served four years and was discharged in 1955, returning to California.

Let’s do a quick recap of his life up to this point. He starts dancing on the Major Bowes show at six, rises to fame and performs at theatres, USO shows and war fundraising benefits all around the country by ten. At 14, he scores a major role in an MGM musical with Frank Sinatra, then suddenly quits showbiz before the movie is even released. Four years go by, and then he’s drafted. He then spends four years in the Navy and returns to America. And all this happens before his 24th birthday.

Surely you’d have some interesting stories. Surely you’d tell someone, write something down, be interviewed by someone. But he doesn’t seem to have done any of those things. Logsdon, by all indications, lived about as quiet a life as it is possible to live for the remainder of the 20th century.

When That’s Entertainment, Part 2 featured the “I Believe” clip in 1976, the MGM producers miscredited Logsdon as “Billy Roy”, a different child star. Apparently, nobody noticed.

Logsdon married for the first time in 1960 and divorced in 1971. He seems to have worked in technical fields. At one stage, a company named “Laguna CAD Graphics” was registered to his name. He married again in the early 1980s and stayed in that marriage for the rest of his life.

I managed to find a photo of him from around 1982.

I’m not going to share it, but I promise you it exists. You’re just going to have to trust that I’m not making this up for clout in an article on such an obscure topic. The photo was posted in a manner that is technically public, but in a personal enough context that I feel it would be unethical to draw attention to.

It is absolutely him. All the details match - full name, date of birth, relatives, location of residence. There is far too much at work for it to be anyone else, especially when factoring in that the person in the photo also looks exactly like an older version of the Bobby Long we see in the 1940s. Everyone I’ve shown this photo to agrees: the eyes are immediately distinctive.

Bobby Earl Logsdon passed away on October 31st, 2005, at the age of 73.

Despite decades of mounting interest and thousands of pages written about Sinatra, Old Hollywood and the MGM story in the latter half of the 20th century, it seems that nobody went looking for Bobby Long in all of that time. It took until the late 2010s for anyone to pay attention.

Perhaps I will find out more about him eventually if someone who knew him finds this and decides to get in touch. But I have managed to reach people who I know are definitely related to him, and they have not replied. I respect their decision not to reply, and in turn, I will not be actively seeking out any further information myself. I’ve found enough to determine that he most likely lived a quiet life by design, and therefore I consider the case to be closed.

So often we project ourselves onto child stars. Maybe I was projecting my own life onto Bobby Long. I’m a trans woman, and so many of us “disappear." We disappear because we want to, or have to. We disappear to start over. We change names and often deliberately, calculatedly, keep out of the public eye. I’m not saying he was trans, but I’m saying that in hindsight, this must have where been the emotional resonance was for me.

In the documentary Searching for Sugar Man, which probably inspired countless “searching for”-style documentaries and podcasts, the interviewer asks Rodriguez why he backed out of the spotlight when fame would have changed his life, “probably for the better.” Rodriguez smiles and says, “I don’t know about ‘for the better.’”

Perhaps avoiding the fate of becoming a full-blown Hollywood child star was not the worst outcome for Bobby Earl Logsdon. Who knows.

I still don’t know why he quit. But I don’t need to know. I’ve learned enough.


The episodes of the show on this topic go into more detail. “What Happened to Bobby Long?” was recorded before the solution was found, setting out different theories and discussing Long’s creative impact and legacy. “Lost and Found: Bobby Long and the World of Soundies” features an interview with Mark Cantor about his Soundies book and an in-depth discussion about the history of Soundies in general.