Friday, December 27, 2024
Thursday, December 26, 2024
2024.1227-Insert-001...
I never knew this. In my youth I had a crush on him. Click on headline to read entire medium-length article...
Tommy Kirk: Clean-cut child star of Old Yeller
Although he was largely adored by critics and audiences for his role in the 1950s tearjerker, Kirk’s career eventually fell victim to the rampant homophobia of the time after coming out as gay
For a few years beginning in the late 1950s, Walt Disney’s busiest actor was a young man named Tommy Kirk, a clean-cut Kentucky native who came to personify the studio’s brand of wholesome family entertainment.
Tommy Kirk: Clean-cut child star of Old Yeller
Although he was largely adored by critics and audiences for his role in the 1950s tearjerker, Kirk’s career eventually fell victim to the rampant homophobia of the time after coming out as gay
For a few years beginning in the late 1950s, Walt Disney’s busiest actor was a young man named Tommy Kirk, a clean-cut Kentucky native who came to personify the studio’s brand of wholesome family entertainment.
Frequently starring opposite Fred MacMurray or Annette Funicello, he befriended a scrappy dog on the Texas frontier in Old Yeller (1957), transformed into a sheepdog after trying on a cursed ring in The Shaggy Dog (1959), explored a remote island in Swiss Family Robinson (1960) and experimented with mind-reading while playing a teenage genius in The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964).
His movies were so popular that, according to Kirk, Disney once introduced him to Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper by saying, “This is my good-luck piece here.” Some three decades later, the comment still resonated. “I never forgot that,” Kirk told the Orlando Sentinel in 1991. “That’s the nicest compliment he ever paid me.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)