Tommy Kirk American actor and businessman Date of Birth: 10.12.1941 Country: USA

1. Tommy Kirk: American Actor and Businessman
2. Early Life and Career
3. Television and Disney
4. The Shaggy Dog and Swiss Family Robinson
5. In 1959, Film Daily named Kirk as one of their five

Tommy Kirk: American Actor and Businessman

Tommy Kirk was an American actor and businessman who is best known for his performances in several highly successful films produced by Walt Disney Studios, including Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog, Swiss Family Robinson, The Absent-Minded Professor, The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, and the beach party films of the mid-1960s.

Early Life and Career

Kirk was born in Louisville, Kentucky, one of four sons. His father was a mechanic who worked for the highway department; his mother, a legal secretary. Seeking better work, they moved to Downey, California, when Kirk was fifteen months old. Kirk's acting debut came in 1954, when he accompanied his older brother Joe to an audition for a Pasadena Playhouse production of Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! "Joe was struck out by the star," Kirk said. Joe did not get the part, losing to Bobby Driscoll, but Tommy did, making his stage debut alongside Will Rogers Jr. "It was five lines, it didn't go anywhere, and no one ever came to see it, so I got the part," Kirk said. His performance was seen by an agent from the Hertz Agency, who signed Kirk and successfully cast him in an episode of Reader's Digest TV, "The Last of the Old West Sheriffs," directed by William Beaudine. Kirk's brother went on to become a dentist.

Television and Disney

Kirk began working steadily on television throughout 1956 and 1957, appearing in episodes of Lux Video Theatre ("The Green Promise"), Cavalcade of America ("The Devil and Dr. O'Hara"), Big Town ("Juvenile Delinquents"), Crossroads ("The Rabbi Davis Story"), Gunsmoke ("The Cow Doctor"), Letter to Loretta ("But for the Grace of God" and "Little League"), and Matinee Theater ("The Walk" and "The Others" - an adaptation of The Turn of the Screw). According to Diabolique magazine, "As an actor, Kirk was in demand almost immediately. Watching his early performances, it's easy to see why - he was wide-eyed, gangly, eager, and endlessly likeable... the very image of American youth in the Eisenhower era, unassuming and unaffected, surprisingly non-irritating, eminently easy to cast as someone's younger brother, son, or next-door neighbor." Kirk also supported Angie Dickinson in a short subject titled Down Liberty Road (aka Freedom Highway) (1956), a travelogue short created by Greyhound Lines to promote their Scenicruiser buses. Of these early experiences, Kirk particularly enjoyed working on Matinee Theater: "I did thirty-seven of them over the next five years. I think I did more than any other actor. It was a fantastic training ground. They were hour-long shows, broadcast live from coast to coast. I worked with some wonderful people - Sara Churchill and others - and I just started to learn."

In April 1956, Kirk auditioned for the role of Joe Hardy for the Mickey Mouse Club serial The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure. He was successful and was cast in one of the lead roles, with Tim Considine. The show was filmed in June and early July 1956 and broadcast in October of that year, at the beginning of the show's second season. The show and Kirk's performance were very well received, and led to a long association between the actor and the studio. In August 1956, Disney hired Kirk and former Mouseketeer Judy Harriet to cover the Republican and Democratic National Conventions for inclusion in theatrical newsreel releases that later appeared in the serial. Kirk also narrated travelogues for the serial's second season. He provided the voiceover for "Eagle Hunters," and later co-hosted two other travel films with Annette Funicello. Tommy also dubbed the voice of the narrator for the Danish film Vesterhavsdrenge, which was shown on the Mickey Mouse Club as the serial Boys of the Western Sea. It was announced around this time that Kirk would appear as Young Davy Crockett, but this does not appear to have happened.

Kirk's career received its biggest boost when Disney cast him in the role of Travis Coates in Old Yeller (1957), an adventure story about a boy and his heroic dog. Kirk had the lead role in the film, which was a huge success, and he became Disney's go-to choice when they needed someone to play the all-American teenager. Kevin Corcoran played his younger brother, and the two were often paired together as siblings.

Both Kirk and Corcoran were announced in the cast of Rainbow Road to Oz, a feature film based on the stories by L. Frank Baum, but this film was never made. Kirk did appear in another installment in the Hardy Boys saga, the feature-length The Mystery of the Ghost Farm (September 13 - December 20, 1957). He continued to guest-star in television shows such as The O. Henry Playhouse ("A Christmas by Judicial Decree"), The Californians (as Billy Kilgore in "Little Lost Man"), Matinee Theater ("Beware of John Tucker"), and Playhouse 90 ("The Corner Garden"). He performed the voice (along with Sandra Dee) of the American version of the Soviet animated film The Snow Queen (1957).

The Shaggy Dog and Swiss Family Robinson

In July 1958, Kirk was cast in the comedy The Shaggy Dog (1959), about a boy inventor who, under the influence of a magic ring, repeatedly transforms into an Old English Sheepdog. It reunited him with Corcoran and two other Disney stars with whom he worked regularly throughout his career: Fred MacMurray and Annette Funicello. According to Diabolique, "much of the credit must go to MacMurray; a great deal of credit must also go to Kirk, whose sunny, boy-next-door charm made him the ideal American teenager." Before filming was completed, Kirk was called into Disney's office, where he was told they had no further projects for him and he was being dropped. "I was thin and gangly and I looked terrible... I thought my whole world was falling apart," he said. He returned to television, appearing in The Millionaire ("The Millionaire Charles Bradwell") (1959) and Bachelor Father ("Kelly's Key"). The Shaggy Dog turned out to be a huge hit - soon bigger than Old Yeller - and Disney contacted Kirk, offering him another long-term contract and the role of middle son Ernest Robinson in another adventure film, Swiss Family Robinson (1960), co-starring John Mills, Dorothy McGuire, Janet Munro, and Corcoran. This was another big box-office success, and it remains Kirk's favorite film. When he returned from location filming in the West Indies, the studio signed him for two more films.

In 1959, Film Daily named Kirk as one of their five