I’ve only seen Old Yeller (’57) once, I think, but it’s commonly regarded as one of the most emotionally affecting family-friendly flicks ever released. What I really mean is that it delivered a highly traumatic climax (tearful kid forced to shoot beloved dog because of rabies). Millions of youths were devastated, and Bill Murray was one of them — he recalled crying over the shooting scene in Stripes. And I’m sure that the late Tommy Kirk, the teenaged star of that classic Disney film, was proud when he watched Murray’s schpiel.
Old Yeller was certainly the highpoint of Kirk‘s career. He was 15 during filming. A fairly major Disney star between the mid ’50s and early ’60s, Kirk’s career began to wind down around his 20th or 21st birthday and certainly by his mid 20s. Emotional instability was a factor, due to some extent to being gay and closeted and full of loneliness and uncertainty about how to be himself and yet maintain his career and especially keep things status quo with his Disney employers. His career also suffered over a pot bust in ’64.
I had never paid attention to Kirk’s saga before yesterday, which is when his death was announced. I’m very sorry for what the poor guy went through. His fate was sealed when the mother of a 15 year-old kid Kirk wad been seeing in ’63 outed him to Disney management. Walt Disney himself personally lowered the boom, according to one account. If I had been in Disney’s shoes at the time, I would have taken Kirk aside and…I don’t know what I would have done. I’d like to think I would have found an affectionate and supportive way of telling Kirk to keep his lifestyle under wraps, but maybe Kirk’s teenaged persona was starting to wane anyway at that point.
Kirk quote from Wiki excerpt: “I consider my teenaged years as being desperately unhappy. I knew I was gay, but I had no outlet for my feelings. It was very hard to meet people and, at that time, there was no place to go to socialize. It wasn’t until the early ’60s that I began to hear of places where gays congregated. The lifestyle was not recognized and I was very, very lonely. When I was about 17 or 18 years old (in ’58 or ’59), 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.
“Even more than MGM, Disney was the most conservative studio in town. The studio executives were beginning to suspect my homosexuality, [and] certain people were growing less and less friendly. Walt let me go, but asked me to return for The Monkey’s Uncle bbecause the Jones films had been moneymakers for the studio.”
I’m very sorry for that trauma. Many child actors have found it difficult to shift into adult roles, but Kirk had a double burden going on. The poor guy was pretty much out of the acting game or at least his way down by ’66 or thereabouts. He subsequently got along and lived a life of a once-famous child star for 50-plus years. He was “found” dead in his Las Vegas residence. He was 79.