Tommy Kirk
Thomas Lee Kirk (December 10, 1941 – September 28, 2021)[1] was an American actor, best known for his performances in films made by Walt Disney Studios such as Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog, Swiss Family Robinson, The Absent-Minded Professor, and The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, as well as the beach-party films of the mid-1960s. He frequently appeared as a love interest for Annette Funicello or as part of a family with Kevin Corcoran as his younger brother and Fred MacMurray as his father.
For the Australian rugby league player, see Tommy Kirk (rugby league).
Tommy Kirk
September 28, 2021 (aged 79)
(date body found)
Actor
1953–1975, 1987-2001
Louis and Lucy Kirk
Kirk's career with Disney ended when news of his homosexuality threatened to become public. He struggled with drug addiction and depression for several years, appearing in a series of low-budget films before leaving the acting business in the mid-1970s. Kirk opened a carpet cleaning business and lived a mostly ordinary life, occasionally appearing at fan conventions. He died at his home in Las Vegas, Nevada, in September 2021, aged 79.
Early life[edit]
Kirk was born in Louisville, Kentucky, one of four sons. His father, Louis, was a mechanic who worked for the highway department; his mother, Lucy, was a legal secretary.[2] Looking for better job opportunities, they moved to Downey in Los Angeles County, California, when Kirk was 15 months old.[3][4]
In 1954, Kirk accompanied his elder brother Joe to an audition for a production of Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California. "Joe was star struck," said Kirk.[4] Joe was not cast, losing out to Bobby Driscoll, but Tommy was, and he made his stage debut opposite Will Rogers Jr.[5] "It was five lines, it didn't pay anything, and nobody else showed up, so I got the part," recalled Kirk.[4]
The performance was seen by an agent from the Gertz agency, who signed Kirk and succeeded in casting him in an episode of TV Reader's Digest, "The Last of the Old Time Shooting Sheriffs", directed by William Beaudine. Kirk's brother went on to become a dentist.[4] Kirk was in demand almost immediately.[6]
Television[edit]
Kirk began to work steadily in television throughout 1956 and 1957 in episodes of Lux Video Theatre ("Green Promise"), Frontier ("The Devil and Doctor O'Hara"), Big Town ("Adult Delinquents"), Crossroads ("The Rabbi Davis Story"), Gunsmoke ("Cow Doctor"), Letter to Loretta ("But for God's Grace", "Little League") and Matinee Theatre ("The Outing", "The Others" – a version of Turn of the Screw).[28]
Kirk supported Angie Dickinson in a short feature called Down Liberty Road, a.k.a. Freedom Highway (1956),[29] a short commercial travelogue produced by Greyhound Lines to promote their Scenicruiser buses.
Concurrent with his film career at Disney, Kirk continued to guest star on television series, such as The O. Henry Playhouse ("Christmas by Injunction"), The Californians (as Billy Kilgore in "Little Lost Man"), Matinee Theatre ("Look Out for John Tucker"), Playhouse 90 ("A Corner of the Garden"),The Millionaire ('Millionaire Charles Bradwell") (1959) Bachelor Father ("A Key for Kelly"), Mr. Novak, "Love in the Wrong Season" (1963), Angel ("Goodbye Young Lovers"), and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour ("Ten Minutes from Now") (1964).
Later films[edit]
The news of Kirk's termination from Disney Studios was not made public, but Kirk was soon working for American International Pictures (AIP), which needed a leading man to co-star with Funicello in a musical they were preparing, The Maid and the Martian. Kirk was cast as a Martian who arrives on Earth and falls in with a bunch of partying teenagers. The movie was later retitled Pajama Party (1964) and was a box-office success. AIP then cast him in The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966) with Deborah Walley.[6] Soon after, he and Walley were put in It's a Bikini World, filmed in late 1965 under the direction of Stephanie Rothman. It was not released until 1967.[30] Also for AIP, he appeared in a TV special, The Wild Weird World of Dr. Goldfoot (1965), made to promote Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, which aired in November 1965. In December, he announced he would make three more films for Exclusive, starting with Teacher, Teacher, alongside Bob Denver and Dawn Wells[31] but the film would not be made.
Following his work for AIP, Kirk spent the remainder of the 1960s making various low-budget films, including Village of the Giants (1965) for Bert I. Gordon; The Unkissed Bride (1966) for Jack H. Harris; Track of Thunder[32] and Catalina Caper in 1967[33]; and two films for Texan director Larry Buchanan: Mars Needs Women (1968) and It's Alive! (1969). Kirk got along well with Buchanan and the two would often spend time together off-set.[20]
Kirk said he reached bottom in 1970 when he did two movies that were not Screen Actors Guild, Ride the Hot Wind and Blood of Ghastly Horror, causing him to almost lose his SAG card. "Finally, I said, to hell with the whole thing, to hell with show business, I'm gonna make a new life for myself, and I got off drugs, completely kicked all that stuff."[17] In the 1970s, he was in a 1973 episode of The Streets of San Francisco and then starred in low-budget western My Name Is Legend (1975). While filming My Name is Legend, Kirk was thrown from a horse and injured.[34]
Singing[edit]
In the succession of films with Annette Funicello, Kirk recorded a few songs to accompany the films. For Pajama Party (1964), they recorded and filmed "There Has to Be a Reason" in a lip-synced performance as a duet. However, the original recording track was heavily altered by the studio engineers, mostly with echo effect. Kirk described his own singing voice as "wispy and adolescent".[35] For Merlin Jones, Kirk featured on the song "The Scrambled Egghead" with Funicello.[36]
Later in his career, Kirk returned to his home state of Kentucky and performed in musical theatre, including Guys and Dolls, Hello, Dolly! (as Horace Vandergelder), Anything Goes (as Moonface Martin), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (as Marcus Lycus), and Little Mary Sunshine (as General Fairfax).[35][37]
Personal life[edit]
Sexuality[edit]
While filming The Misadventures of Merlin Jones in 1963, 21-year-old Kirk began a relationship with a 15-year-old boy, and was caught having sex with him at a swimming pool in Burbank.[38][39] The boy's mother informed Disney, who elected not to renew Kirk's contract.[40] Walt Disney personally fired Kirk,[41] but when Merlin Jones became an unexpected hit, Disney allowed him to return long enough to film a sequel, The Monkey's Uncle.[27]
Kirk publicly came out as gay in a 1973 interview with Marvin Jones.[42] At the time he was studying acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, while working as a busboy in a Los Angeles restaurant.
In 2017, while being interviewed for an online talk radio show, Kirk confessed that he regards himself as bisexual. "I have had relations with women too. I am not just gay, I am—I happen to be both, I would say. Like many people."[43]
Arrests[edit]
On Christmas Eve 1964, Kirk was arrested for suspicion of possession of marijuana at a house in Hollywood. The district attorney's office subsequently refused to file a complaint against him on the marijuana charge. The city attorney's office, however, filed an illegal drugs charge, because officers found a vial of barbiturates in his car. This charge was dismissed by a judge in early January when Kirk's attorney established that the barbiturates had been prescribed by a physician.[44] However, the damage to his career had been done. He was replaced on How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965) by Dwayne Hickman (intended as AIP's follow-up to Pajama Party), on The Sons of Katie Elder by Michael Anderson, Jr. and on Beach Ball by Edd Byrnes. His initial casting in these films was announced in late 1964.[45]