Posted on 09/29/2021 8:10:49 PM PDT by truthkeeper
Tommy Kirk, whose career as a young leading man in Disney films like Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog and Son of Flubber came to an end, he said, after the studio discovered he was gay, has died. He was 79.
Kirk lived alone in Las Vegas and was found dead Tuesday, actor Paul Petersen announced on Facebook. TMZ reported that he died at home, and no foul play is suspected.
Kirk first made his mark starring as sleuth Joe Hardy in a pair of Hardy Boys TV serials, “The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure” and “The Mystery of the Ghost Farm,” offshoots of ABC’s The Mickey Mouse Club that aired in 1956-57...
(Excerpt) Read more at hollywoodreporter.com ...
Who saw “Old Yeller?” Who cried when Old Yeller got shot at the end? Nobody cried when Old Yeller got shot? (hands are reluctantly raised) I cried my eyes out. So we’re all dog faces, we’re all very, very different, but there is one thing that we all have in common: we were all stupid enough to enlist in the Army. We’re mutants, there’s something wrong with us, there’s something very, very wrong with us. Something seriously wrong with us. We’re soldiers, American soldiers! We’ve been kicking ass for 200 years, we’re 10 and 1. Now we don’t have to worry about whether or not we practiced. We don’t have to worry about whether Captain Diller wants to have us hung. All we have to do-oo is to be the great American fighting soldier that is inside each one of us. Now do what I do, and say what I say. And make me proud.
RIP Tommy Kirk.
You gave me many hours of entertaiment during the 1950s and 1960s.
RIP
RIP, Tommy Kirk
Hell yeah, I cried my eyes out at the end of Old Yeller when I first saw it. And teared up mightily when I watched a few years ago. Powerfully acted from when Disney knew how to make movies.
Mr. Kirk was great.
My kids still like to watch Old Yeller.
Well said. I kicked the sh*t out of covid this last week, Romeo Company.
That was the old Disney. If they had discovered he was a homo in the current environment, his career would have taken off.
Walt Disney personally fired him, but they kept it quiet so he could keep working.
Too bad they canned him for being gay when so may other great actors were gay, too.
You’ll love Togo on Disney, spoiler alert: Togo doesn’t die (even though one scene makes you think he will). Well, not until he was very old in dog years.
There were other gay/bi during that period who didn’t get fired, Rock Hudson, Anthony Perkins, Tab Hunter, Vincent Price, Tallulah Bankhead, Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, Randolph Scott, Greta Garbo, Cesar Romero, Montgomery Clift, Tyrone Power, Raymond Burr (many were secretly or not so secretly gay or bi).
Vincent Price and Cesar Romero? I don’t believe it!
I haven't seen the movie since, but nearly half a century later, I read the book, by Fred Gipson (New York: Harper, 1956). However, I didn't like it as much as his first book, Hound Dog Man (New York: Harper, 1947), which is out of print and hard to find--and will remain so, because the protagonist is a black dog whose name starts with N.
Don’t forget Grandpa.
Did you do that from memory? Impressive.
Ironsides.
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