Tommy Kirk

Thomas Lee "Tommy" Kirk was an American former actor and later, a businessman.
==Career==
Kirk was cast as a clean-cut teenager in The Hardy Boys serial feature which was aired in the Mickey Mouse Club television series in 1956 and 1957. He played Joe Hardy opposite Tim Considine as older brother Frank Hardy in The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure (September 21, 1956 - February 1, 1957), based on the book The Tower Treasure.
Following this, Walt Disney used Kirk and Judy Harriet to cover the 1956 Democratic and Republican conventions for the Mickey Mouse show. Around this time he announced he would appear as Young Davy Crockett, but this does not seem to have eventuated.
Kirk's career received its biggest break yet when Disney cast him as Travis Coates in Old Yeller (1957), an adventure story about a boy and his heroic dog. He had the lead role in the film, which was enormously successful, and he became Disney's first choice whenever they needed someone to play an all-American teenager. Kevin Corcoran played his younger brother and they would often be teamed. Both of them were announced in the cast of Rainbow Road to Oz, based on the stories of , but this film never resulted.
Kirk appeared in another Hardy brothers installment, the original story The Mystery of Ghost Farm (September 13 - December 20, 1957). He then starred in The Shaggy Dog (1959), a comedy about a boy inventor Wilby Daniels, who is repeatedly transformed into an Old English Sheepdog under the influence of a magic ring. This teamed him with Corcoran and two other Disney stars with whom he would regularly work, Fred MacMurray and Annette Funicello. He went over to Universal-International to do some voice work for the animated film The Snow Queen (1959), originally in Russian but adapted for US release.
Kirk said at this stage Disney told him they did not have any projects for him and he was being dropped. "I was thin and gangly and looked a mess... I thought the whole world had fallen to pieces," he said. However, the studio soon contacted him offering him another long-term contract and a role as Ernst Robinson in another adventure film Swiss Family Robinson (1960). This was another box office hit, as were three comedies where he supported MacMurray: The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), Bon Voyage! (1962), and Son of Flubber (1963). He also played Grumio in the fairy tale fantasy Babes in Toyland, had a small role in Moon Pilot (1962), and teamed with Funicello for two stories shot overseas, The Horsemasters (1961) and Escapade in Florence (1962). Newspaper columns occasionally linked his and Funicello's names romantically.
MacMurray once reportedly gave Kirk "the biggest dressing-down of my life" during the filming of Bon Voyage!, one that he says he deserved. But he maintained good relationships with his fellow actors.
"Tommy played my brother in a lot of films and put up with a lot of things that I did to him over the years," Corcoran says in a commentary on the DVD release of Old Yeller. "He must be a great person not to hate me." Considine calls him "a monster talent."
Kirk was given the lead in Savage Sam (1963), a sequel to Old Yeller which did not do as well at the box office. However, when he played "scrambled egghead" student inventor Merlin Jones in The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964), it resulted in one of the biggest hits of the year.
==Post life==
Despite his success, Disney chose not to renew Kirk's contract upon discovering he had been having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy. Walt Disney himself fired him after receiving a complaint from his mother. Yet in a bow to audience wishes, the studio rehired him for the Merlin Jones sequel, The Monkey's Uncle.
Kirk described the situation himself: "Even more than MGM, Disney was the most conservative studio in town...the studio executives were beginning to suspect my homosexuality. Certain people were growing less and less friendly. In 1963, Disney let me go. But Walt asked me to return for the final Merlin Jones movie The Monkey's Uncle, because the Jones films had been moneymakers for the studio."
Immediately after Kirk's departure from Disney, he kept busy appearing in several of the 1960s beach party films and teen movie films, notably in American International Pictures' Pajama Party (taking Frankie Avalon's usual lead role opposite Funicello while he only appears in cameo role), The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (with Deborah Walley), and later in the independent It's a Bikini World (paired again with Walley).
Kirk was inducted as a Disney Legend on October 9, 2006, alongside his old co-stars Considine and Corcoran. His other repeat co-stars, Funicello and MacMurray, had already been inducted (in 1992 and 1987, respectively). Also in 2006, the first of his Hardy Boys serials was issued on DVD in the fifth "wave" of the Walt Disney Treasures series.
==Filmography==
Year 	Film 	Role(s)
1955-1959	Mickey Mouse Club 	HimselfJoe Hardy
1957 	Old Yeller 	Travis Coates
1959 	The Shaggy Dog 	Wilbur "Wilby" Daniels
1960 	Swiss Family Robinson 	Ernst Robinson
1961 	The Absent-Minded Professor 	Biff Hawk
1961 	Babes in Toyland 	Grumio
1961 	The Horsemasters 	Danny Grant
1962 	Moon Pilot 	Walter Talbot
1962 	Bon Voyage 	Elliott Willard
1963 	Son of Flubber 	Biff Hawk
1963 	Savage Sam 	Travis Coates
1964 	The Misadventures of Merlin Jones	Merlin Jones
1965 	The Monkey's Uncle 	Merlin Jones
1995 	The Mickey Mouse Club Story 	Himself
==Roles==
Tommy kirk tim considine in the hardy boys.jpg|Joe Hardy(The Hardy Boys)
7892.jpg|Travis Coates(Old Yeller, Savage Sam)
Tommy kirk as wilby daniels in the shaggy dog.jpg|Wilby DanielsThe Shaggy Dog)
Swiss-family-robinson-disneyscreencaps.com-585.jpg|Ernst Robinson(Swiss Family Robinson)
Tommy kirk as Biff Hawk.jpg|Biff HawkThe Absent-Minded Professor, Son of Flubber)
Grumio.jpg|Grumio(Babes in Toyland)
Fred MacMurray and Tommy Kirk in Bon Voyage.jpg|Elliott Willard(Bon Voyage)
Tumblr lke9xwKQRb1qiceiuo1 1280.jpg|Merlin JonesThe Misadventures of Merlin Jones, The Monkey's Uncle)
==Gallery==
Tommy kirk judy harriett mickey mouse club.png|Kirk with Judy Harriett on a The Mickey Mouse Club news reel segment.
Tommy Kirk and Spike.jpg
3a8dde016e515a382fd975c39e67e5fa.jpg
Zanna gialla dorothy mcguire robert stevenson 025 jpg xrmv.jpg
Zanna gialla dorothy mcguire robert stevenson 026 jpg umtv.jpg
86affadd43595530a43c0a5b032958a2.jpg
15KZXA.So.4.jpg
Tommykirk14.jpg
F8D4492E-5676-4E85-81A3-A6F3F91596D4.jpeg|Tommy with James MacArthur and his Horsemasters costar Janet Munro
Tommy Kirk.gif 
Tommy kirk mickey mouse club story.JPG|Kirk in The Mickey Mouse Club Story.
==External links==
*Tommy Kirk at the Internet Movie Database
*Salon interview with the author of Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company From the Inside Out — mentions Kirk
*Disney Legends profile
Category:Males
Category:1940s births
Category:2020s deaths
Category:Deceased
Category:People from Kentucky
Category:American people
Category:Actors
Category:Voice actors
Category:Singers
Category:Mickey Mouse Club
Category:Mouseketeers
Category:Disney Legends
Category:Old Yeller
Category:The Shaggy Dog
Category:Swiss Family Robinson
Category:The Absent-Minded Professor
Category:Babes in Toyland
Category:Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color
Category:The Misadventures of Merlin Jones
Category:Moon Pilot
Category:ABC
Category:LGBTQ+ people