Tommy Kirk, one of Disney’s major young stars of the 1950s and early ’60s with performances in generational touchstone films such as Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog and Son of Flubber, has died at the age of 79.
Paul Petersen, friend and fellow child star, posted the news on Facebook.
“My friend of many decades, Tommy Kirk, was found dead last night,” writes Petersen, who has long been an advocate for child actors through his organization A Minor Consideration, adding, “Tommy was intensely private. He lived alone in Las Vegas, close to his friend…and “Ol Yeller” co-star, Bev Washburn…and it was she who called me this morning. Tommy was gay and separated from the rest of his blood-family. We in A Minor Consideration are Tommy’s family. We will not apologize.
We will take care of this.”
Kirk said in a 1993 interview with Filmfax magazine writer Kevin Minton that he realized he was gay at age 17 or 18, and that his sexual orientation all but destroyed his career. “Disney was a family film studio and I was supposed to be their young leading man. After they found out I was involved with someone, that was the end of Disney.”
“I consider my teenage years as being desperately unhappy,” Kirk stated this in an interview. “I knew I was gay, but I had no outlet for my feelings. It was hard to find people and there was no place to socialize. It wasn’t until the early ’60s that I began to hear of places where gays congregated. I was extremely lonely and the lifestyle was not acknowledged. Although I did have brief, passionate encounters, and I was a teenager, I had many affairs. But they were always stolen. They were miserable and desperate.
“When I was about 17 or 18 years old, I finally admitted to myself that I wasn’t going to change. I didn’t know what the consequences would be, but I had the definite feeling that it was going to wreck my Disney career and maybe my whole acting career. It was all going to come to an end.”
Although he left the Disney youth movies, Kirk continued to appear as a star in several beach party films in the mid-1960s. He also appeared in a few low-budget sci fi films like Village of the Giants in 1965 opposite Beau Bridges, and Mars Needs Women 1968. He would still make occasional appearances in films such a Billy Frankenstein (1998) or The Education of a Vampire (2002).
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Kirk hadn’t yet reached his second birthday when he and his family moved to Downey, California, and by the mid-1950s was cast as Joe Hardy, opposite Tim Considine’s Frank Hardy, in The Mickey Mouse Club serial adventure The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure.”
MORE TO COME…