Appearances

Title	Role	Year	Approx. Age
Johnny Doughboy	Bobby	1942	15
Escape to Paradise and Frolics on Ice	Roberto Ramos	1939	12
Bobby Breen - Double Feature #3	Tony Roma	1939	12
Breaking the Ice / Hawaii Calls	Tommy Martin	1938	11
Bobby Breen - Double Feature #2	Billy Coulter	1937	10
Bobby Breen - Double Feature #1	Philip Ainsworth	1936	9

Bobby Breen was born on November 4, 1927 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and made his professional debut at age four in a night club in Toronto. He was an immediate sensation and soon found himself on the radio and doing vaudeville in New York and Canada. His manager and voice coach was his older sister Sally (who paid for his musical education). To the delight of audiences everywhere, Bobby sang in English, French, Italian, and Spanish.

Bobby went to Hollywood in 1935. His first major appearance was on Eddie Cantor's weekly radio show in 1936, and he soon became the leading child star at RKO Radio Pictures. He is best remembered today for his films, and for the fact that he was a boy soprano. His first film was Let's Sing Again (1936), followed by eight more films, including Rainbow on the River (1936), Make a Wish (1937), Hawaii Calls (1938), Way Down South (1939), and his last film, Johnny Doughboy (1942). He was RKO's biggest child star at this time, was considered Shirley Temple's only child rival on the big screen, and while he always played the leading part, his co-stars included famous actors like Basil Rathbone, Alan Mowbray, Charlie Ruggles, May Robson and Dolores Costello.

Four of those films earned single Oscar nominations: three for Best Original Score and one for Best Scoring. Breen's last, Johnny Doughboy (1942), did not afford him the chance to sing solo but only gave him one number, shared with Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer and George 'Spanky' McFarland. The plot revolved around has-been child stars trying to put together a USO show. Unfortunately, Breen's speaking voice at that point in his life (he would have been 15) recorded like a Disney mouse.

He made his final movie at the age of 14 before becoming a full-time singer in nightclubs and a musical performer in stock theatre, later serving as a guest pianist for the NBC Symphony Orchestra on radio, and hosting a local TV show in New York. By the time Bobby Breen arrived at Motown, he was in his late thirties and already seen as washed-up, so for Motown he was positively prehistoric; it was already ten long, lean years since he?d appeared on The Comeback Story (1953) to talk about the challenges he?d faced moving to a new career and how hard he was finding it to get work. Still, the lure of signing a white MOR star was too great for Berry Gordy to resist, regardless of whether said star was on the downswing of his career, and so it came to pass that in mid-December of 1963, Bobby Breen arrived at the studio to try and revive his flagging fortunes. Unfortunately he only made a couple of singles for the studio in 1964.

Curious note: Bobby is featured on the cover of The Beatles' "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album.

After marrying three times, Bobby Breen is currently living in Tamarac, Florida. s of 2002 he is the owner and operator of Bobby Breen Enterprises, a local talent agency.