Biography for
Tommy Kirk More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

10 December 1941, Louisville, Kentucky, USA

Birth Name

Thomas Harvey Kirk

Height

5' 9" (1.75 m)

Mini Biography

Scrappy Tommy Kirk was born in 1941 and 13 years old when he was discovered by talent agents in a production of Eugene O'Neill's "Ah, Wilderness!" at the Pasadena Playhouse. The freshly-scrubbed All-American kid was swiftly brought to the attention of Walt Disney who signed him to a long-term contract. In 1955, he joined "The Mickey Mouse Club" TV series and won a legion of young fans as the irrepressibly inquisitive teen sleuth Joe Hardy in the "Hardy Boys" serial with Tim Considine, another young Disney staple, playing his brother Frank. Tommy became a prime juvenile hero and ideal mischief maker for many of Disney's wholesome full-length classics including Old Yeller (1957), The Shaggy Dog (1959), Swiss Family Robinson (1960), The AbsentMinded Professor (1961), Babes in Toyland (1961) and The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964). However, in 1964, the Disney factory found out Tommy was gay and they immediately released him from his contract after finishing The Monkey's Uncle (1965). Tommy still pursued teen-oriented movies but was essentially blacklisted from the industry and deemed "box office poison." The offers he did receive became progressively dismal. From mediocre fun-in-the-sand fluff like Pajama Party (1964) and It's a Bikini World (1967) to absolute fiascoes like Mars Needs Women (1967) (TV) in which he played a Martian, and Blood of Ghastly Horror (1972), Tommy's career went into an irreversible tailspin. Depressed and angry, he sought solace in drugs and nearly died at one point. For health reasons, he completely abandoned his career and slowly moved forward as a recovering addict. He put together a successful carpet and upholstery cleaning business which has run steadily for well over two decades. As recently as 2001, Tommy showed up again in Hollywood -- glimpsed in a few low-budgets here and there -- but a full time commitment to acting is quite unlikely.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Trade Mark

Disney movies

Trivia

Played Kevin Corcoran's brother in five different films: Old Yeller (1957), The Shaggy Dog (1959), Swiss Family Robinson (1960), Bon Voyage! (1962) and Savage Sam (1963).

In July 1996, he was a guest at the Western Film Fair in Charlotte, North Carolina along with Morgan Woodward, Tony Young, Patricia Blair, Roberta Shore, Gregory Walcott, Gene Evans, Justin Tubb, Adrian Booth, Robert F. Hoy, Neil Summers and Dale Berry.

Personal Quotes

Even more than MGM, Disney [in the early 1960s] was the most conservative studio in town....They were growing aware. They weren't stupid. They could add two and two, and I think they were beginning to suspect my homosexuality. I noticed people in certain quarters were getting less and less friendly....In 1963 Disney didn't renew my option and let me go. But Walt let me return to do the final Merlin Jones movie, 'The Monkey's Uncle,' because those were moneymakers for the studio.

In the 1960s all my social life was underground gay. It was my own life. I kept it separate from work, where I went on publicity dates with Annette Funicello or Roberta Shore.

In 1965, I'd signed a contract for 'The Sons of Katie Elder' with John Wayne, but a week before shooting I went to a Hollywood party that the vice squad busted because of marijuana. I was handcuffed and photos of me got in the papers with headlines like 'Ex-Disney Child Star Arrested for Pot!' So Wayne and the producers fired me.

[on why he quit acting] I got sick of it and I just stopped.

I consider my teenage 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 Sixties that I began to hear of places where gays congregated ... When I was about 17 or 18 years old, 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. Eventually, I became involved with somebody and I was fired. Disney was a family film studio and I was supposed to be their young, leading man. After they found out I was involved with someone, that was the end of Disney.

After I was fired from Disney, I did some of the worst movies ever made and I got involved with a manager who said it didn't matter what you did as long as you kept working ... I wound up completely broke. I had no self-discipline and I almost died of a drug overdose a couple of times. It's a miracle that I'm still around ... 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.

[when asked about his contract termination with Walt Disney]: Yeah, I picked somebody up. It was just one of those crazy things; I used to swim in the pool in downtown Burbank, and I met this teenager and one thing led to another and we had an affair. And then he talked, and his parents went down to the studio and Disney was confronted with this. They didn't press charges, but that was the end of my contract. They did not renew me.

Where Are They Now

(2000) Runs a carpet/upholstery cleaning business.