[truthkeeper]

He was a wonderful child actor back when movies were great. Unforgettable in "Old Yeller." Still makes me cry.

[Old Yeller]

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.

[Tupelo]

RIP Tommy Kirk.
You gave me many hours of entertaiment during the 1950s and 1960s.

[laplata]

RIP

[Adder]

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.

[crusty old prospector]

My kids still like to watch Old Yeller.

[Disambiguator]

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.

That was the old Disney. If they had discovered he was a homo in the current environment, his career would have taken off.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Too bad they canned him for being gay when so may other great actors were gay, too.

[Fiji Hill]

I saw Old Yeller in the theater in the spring of 1958. The matinee was sold out, so we had to wait for the afternoon showing. It was worth it--probably the most exciting movie I had seen up to that time--at least until I saw Around the World in 80 Days a few weeks later.

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.

[Menehune56]

Well I feel old. Rest In Peace Tommy Kirk.

[Persevero]

He was not just “gay.” He was a 21 year old “seeing” a 15 year old. Horrific.

[fieldmarshaldj]

RIP.

[wbarmy]

While filming the movie, Kirk, then 21, started seeing a 15-year-old boy he had met at a swimming pool.

He might have been a wonderful actor, but he was a sexual predator hanging around at pools in Hollywood hunting for young boys.

[\/\/ayne]

At one time he was a giant in his field.