RIP Tommy Kirk

It was just a few months ago that I thought of Tommy Kirk and I looked him up online to check out his age, see if I could find out where he lived, what he's been up to and to see if he was alive.  I was surprised to learn he'd make some movies in these later years.  I hadn't thought he'd done anything since the sixties.  I noticed there was no date of death but wondered if there was perhaps some mishap in reporting his death.  That wouldn't have surprised me.

He was older than I but when we were children I idolized him.  I had a hero-worship kind of thing and even joined a fan club.  They were a popular thing at the time although it was the only time I ever joined one.  

I became a devotee of The Mickey Mouse Club and especially its serials.  I looked so forward to watching the show everyday after I got home from school.  Of course if I messed up on some behavioral issues, my punishment was often no Mickey Mouse Club.  Some parents are just so mean.

One day TMMC  introduced a new serial called The Hardy Boys.  It concerned the young sons of a detective who are left on their own a great deal and much time was spent sharpening their own crime-solving skills.  Tommy starred alongside Tim Considine whom I was already wacko over due to an earlier serial, The Adventures of Spin and Marty.  Now Tim and Tommy would play Frank and Joe Hardy.  

With Tim Considine (r) as The Hardy Boys

I was bonkers over both of them but perhaps Tommy's emotional acting really turned my head.  I will never forget tearing up every time he did and he did a lot.  He was always a little scrappy as Joe and began a trait I detected in most of his movies.  He was also a know-it-all and he pouted when he didn't get his way.  Begging forgiveness from Tim and David Stollery (who played Marty on Spin and Marty), Annette Funicello, Darlene Gillespie, Roberta Shore and others, I thought Tommy had the best acting chops of the bunch.

Around this time my family moved from Illinois to Los Angeles, actually the San Fernando Valley, and not very far from Disney's Burbank studios.  I could not stop thinking of those kids just blocks away and hoped I'd run into them, especially Tommy and Tim.  I occasionally hopped my Schwinn and headed to the studio where I maintained a good view at the front gates.  Others were frequently there, too.  It was comforting to know I wasn't the only nutball fan.  One day a crowd of mainly girls were screaming as they surrounded a convertible.  I dashed to the commotion and to my disappointment found it was only Annette.  

Tommy was born in 1941 in Louisville, Kentucky, one of four sons of a mechanic and a legal secretary.  When he was still an infant, the Kirks moved to Downey (one of a gazillion L.A. suburbs).  The folks wanted better lives.  

Tommy accompanied older brother Joe to an audition at the famed Pasadena Playhouse and Tommy was the one who was cast in a minor role in a production of Ah, Wilderness! with Will Rogers Jr. and young Bobby Driscoll.  You know the drill... he was discovered by an agent who got him into several television productions.  One of those shows brought him to the attention of Disney and his large, squeaky-clean family and a script for The Hardy Boys was waiting.

A year later he would take on the role of Travis Coates in one of Disney's most treasured live-action films of all time, Old Yeller.  His popularity in this film would see him soar to the top of the ladder of the young Disney stars and would turn him into a teen idol.  No one who has seen this movie could ever forget the killing of that dog.  No Mama... he was my dog.  I'll do it.  

He was the studio prankster and was always out to have a good time and create them for his coworkers as well.  Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't.  He was also well-liked and most importantly Uncle Walt liked him.   It was also said around the studio that he was oozing with talent.  He became the young go-to Disney star for the next eight years.

He juggled public school and some television while he waited for the next good script which came in 1959 as the teenager who turns into a rowdy sheepdog in The Shaggy Dog.  It was also immensely popular.

A special Kirk movie to me, and apparently his favorite, is the great child's adventure saga of a shipwrecked family, Swiss Family Robinson  (1960).  Reuniting with his Old Yeller mother and brother, Dorothy McGuire and Kevin Corcoran, and joined by James MacArthur as the oldest brother and John Mills as the father, it was a roaring success and to this day, far removed from my childhood, I still think it's a fun ride from start to finish.

It was around this time, as Tommy later told Filmfax Magazine, that he'd privately come to terms with his homosexuality and realized how coming out would impact his career.  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.

Tommy had two run-ins with the zany flying substance flubber in 1961's The Absent-Minded Professor and its 1963 sequel Son of Flubber.  I must have been on drugs to have seen the first one and in recovery by the time I missed the second.  Silly, silly, silly.  But the kiddies ate 'em up.  And there's old cornball Fred MacMurray in both of them, as he had been in The Shaggy Dog.

One day Uncle Walt had been talking with gossip columnist Hedda Hopper when Tommy stopped by.  Disney put his arm around him and chirped to Hopper this is my good-luck piece here.  Tommy beamed and always said it was the nicest thing his boss ever said about him.

The emotional Tommy was upset that his next few films weren't the successes he'd been accustomed to.  He was happy, however, to be reunited with his pal Funicello in Babes in Toyland (1961) but the male lead was another Tommy... Sands.  In Moon Pilot (1962) he was Tom Tryon's pesky younger brother and the astronaut comedy was a resounding flop. 

Then came the goofy vacation comedy, Bon Voyage (1962), with Tommy playing Corcoran's brother for the fourth out of five times and the fourth time playing MacMurray's son.  The older actor gave Kirk a serious dressing down in front of some of the company for his unprofessional behavior.  Kirk said he deserved it.  He also ran into difficulties with Jane Wyman, playing his mother, who admitted she didn't enjoy working with him and he said he hated her and found her homophobic.  It's been said that it was during the making of this film that the Disney brass became aware of Tommy being gay.

While Savage Sam (1963) wasn't a huge hit, it did reunite Kirk and Corcoran as the Coates brothers with the title star playing the son of Old Yeller.  He looked suspiciously like a hound dog to me but I didn't care.  It was a fun western saga with Brian Keith (as the boys' uncle) and Dewey Martin participating. 

Then came the time to play college genius Merlin Jones in two movies opposite Funicello, The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964) and The Monkey's Uncle (1965).  That same year he starred in the cult comedy classic Village of the Giants alongside two other child stars, Ron Howard and Johnny Crawford.

He lost a 1964 role in The Sons of Katie Elder, a John Wayne western because, a week before filming was to begin, a Hollywood party Kirk was attending was busted by the vice squad and marijuana was discovered.  

Before The Monkey's Uncle began filming, Kirk's career suddenly ended with Disney and it wasn't pretty, not at all.  The newly adult Tommy had picked up a 15-year old for a limited engagement.  The kid then told his mother and she marched over to see Uncle Walt and laid out the scorching truth.  There was no choice.  Even if there had been, the most conservative studio in town wouldn't have been able to keep Tommy on.  He is fortunate the parents didn't pursue charges.

Of course, that didn't mean he couldn't film The Monkey's Uncle, a sequel to a very successful film.  Sure Walt and minions were concerned about morals and harsh judgments but this is commerce, Baby, just pure old commerce.  Tommy quietly walked off the lot after the filming completed and Disney said nothing to the press.

If American-International knew, they apparently didn't hold anything against the young actor because they hired him for a bunch of mainly beach party movies.  I know they were largely dreadful and certainly did nothing for re-establishing his career.  Funicello came along for a couple and her career wasn't enhanced either.

With frequent costar Annette

For about 10 years he was strung out on grass, pills and booze.  He had been a street person for awhile and had a couple of arrests.  They made the news as did his joining a gay-oriented church in Hollywood.  He came into some money and it all went into drugs and partying... all of it.  A couple of times he almost died of a drug overdose.  He was and would remain estranged from his main family for the rest of his life.  Of course only the tawdry stuff made the papers.  I always felt so sad when I read it.

Of course we didn't hear at the time that in the mid 70s, Kirk gave up drugs which, in turn, straightened up so much of his life.  He worked as a waiter and a chauffeur before opening Tommy Kirk's Carpet & Upholstery business in the San Fernando Valley.  It was a successful 20-year run.   

I had no idea he made his last movie as late as 2001.  In fact in the 30 years before that movie, he made a half dozen more, all forgettable, they say.

In 2006 he was named, along with some others such as Considine, Stollery and Corcoran, a Disney legend.  That same year he retired and moved to Redding, California.  He said around this time:  I don't blame anybody but myself and my drug abuse for my career going haywire.  I am not ashamed of being gay, never have been and never will be.  For that I make no apologies.  I have no animosity toward anybody because the truth is, I wrecked my own career.  I am not aware that he has ever been in a long-term relationship although surely he must have been at some point.  But if so, he kept it quiet.

Last week Tommy Kirk, 79, was found dead in his Las Vegas home of natural causes.  I was deeply saddened... it felt like a friend had died.  I even teared up... damn if he didn't have me crying once again.  That evening I watched Old Yeller for the gazillionth time.  It was never more poignant.

Disney released the following statement:  We are saddened by the passing of Tommy Kirk, the beloved and iconic star of such Disney family favorites from the 1950s and 1960s as Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog, Swiss Family Robinson and The Misadventures of Merlin Jones.

Tim Considine said he was one of the most talented people I ever worked with.  Frighteningly talented.  A friend of mine who was a casting director told me that when Tommy Kirk came to an audition, he had never seen a kid actor as good as he was.  Especially because he could instantly cry on cue.  He was a great talent.  And it was a privilege to work with him and call him a friend.

So long Buddy.

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That musical we've recently discussed