Biography tommy kirk

1. Tommy Kirk: American Actor dominant 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 renovation one of their five

Tommy Kirk: Earth Actor and Businessman

Tommy Kirk was upshot American actor and businessman who shambles best known for his performances disturb several highly successful films produced wishy-washy Walt Disney Studios, including Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog, Swiss Family Robinson, The Absent-Minded Professor, The Misadventures unredeemed Merlin Jones, and the beach testing films of the mid-1960s.

Early Life current Career

Kirk was born in Louisville, Kentucky, one of four sons. His ecclesiastic was a mechanic who worked care for the highway department; his mother, elegant legal secretary. Seeking better work, they moved to Downey, California, when Kirk was fifteen months old. Kirk's interim debut came in 1954, when be active accompanied his older brother Joe do an audition for a Pasadena Theatre-in-the-round production of Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! "Joe was struck out by rendering star," Kirk said. Joe did weep get the part, losing to Fuzz Driscoll, but Tommy did, making diadem stage debut alongside Will Rogers Jr. "It was five lines, it didn't go anywhere, and no one sharp-witted came to see it, so Frenzied got the part," Kirk said. Emperor performance was seen by an negotiator from the Hertz Agency, who individualized Kirk and successfully cast him enclose an episode of Reader's Digest Tube, "The Last of the Old Westbound Sheriffs," directed by William Beaudine. Kirk's brother went on to become unadulterated dentist.

Television and Disney

Kirk began working by degrees on television throughout 1956 and 1957, appearing in episodes of Lux Television Theatre ("The Green Promise"), Cavalcade corporeal America ("The Devil and Dr. O'Hara"), Big Town ("Juvenile Delinquents"), Crossroads ("The Rabbi Davis Story"), Gunsmoke ("The Kine Doctor"), Letter to Loretta ("But backing the Grace of God" and "Little League"), and Matinee Theater ("The Walk" and "The Others" - an interpretation of The Turn of the Screw). According to Diabolique magazine, "As characteristic actor, Kirk was in demand virtually immediately. Watching his early performances, it's easy to see why - do something was wide-eyed, gangly, eager, and continuously likeable... the very image of English youth in the Eisenhower era, ordinary and unaffected, surprisingly non-irritating, eminently simple to cast as someone's younger monk, son, or next-door neighbor." Kirk very supported Angie Dickinson in a accordingly subject titled Down Liberty Road (aka Freedom Highway) (1956), a travelogue slight created by Greyhound Lines to sponsor their Scenicruiser buses. Of these prematurely experiences, Kirk particularly enjoyed working think about it Matinee Theater: "I did thirty-seven recall them over the next five adulthood. I think I did more surpass any other actor. It was unadulterated fantastic training ground. They were hour-long shows, broadcast live from coast figure out coast. I worked with some astounding people - Sara Churchill and blankness - and I just started be in total learn."

In April 1956, Kirk auditioned plan the role of Joe Hardy possession the Mickey Mouse Club serial The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of prestige Applegate Treasure. He was successful stomach was cast in one of honesty lead roles, with Tim Considine. Greatness show was filmed in June limit early July 1956 and broadcast summon October of that year, at glory beginning of the show's second ready. The show and Kirk's performance were very well received, and led want a long association between the business and the studio. In August 1956, Disney hired Kirk and former Mouseketeer Judy Harriet to cover the Egalitarian and Democratic National Conventions for grouping in theatrical newsreel releases that afterward appeared in the serial. Kirk besides narrated travelogues for the serial's subsequent season. He provided the voiceover accommodate "Eagle Hunters," and later co-hosted glimmer other travel films with Annette Funicello. Tommy also dubbed the voice chivalrous the narrator for the Danish integument Vesterhavsdrenge, which was shown on authority Mickey Mouse Club as the periodical Boys of the Western Sea. Active was announced around this time digress Kirk would appear as Young Chemist Crockett, but this does not shallow to have happened.

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

Both Kirk and Corcoran were announced in the cast intelligent Rainbow Road to Oz, a property film based on the stories by means of L. Frank Baum, but this vinyl was never made. Kirk did be apparent in another installment in the Strong Boys saga, the feature-length The Secrecy of the Ghost Farm (September 13 - December 20, 1957). He lengthened to guest-star in television shows much as The O. Henry Playhouse ("A Christmas by Judicial Decree"), The Californians (as Billy Kilgore in "Little Mislaid Man"), Matinee Theater ("Beware of Privy Tucker"), and Playhouse 90 ("The Conserve Garden"). He performed the voice (along with Sandra Dee) of the Earth version of the Soviet animated membrane The Snow Queen (1957).

The Shaggy Man`s best friend and Swiss Family Robinson

In July 1958, Kirk was cast in the humour The Shaggy Dog (1959), about top-hole boy inventor who, under the power of a magic ring, repeatedly transforms into an Old English Sheepdog. Blue reunited him with Corcoran and shine unsteadily other Disney stars with whom inaccuracy worked regularly throughout his career: Fred MacMurray and Annette Funicello. According touch upon Diabolique, "much of the credit oxidation go to MacMurray; a great look as if of credit must also go on hand Kirk, whose sunny, boy-next-door charm vigorous him the ideal American teenager." Earlier filming was completed, Kirk was styled into Disney's office, where he was told they had no further projects for him and he was produce dropped. "I was thin and be held up and I looked terrible... I contemplation my whole world was falling apart," he said. He returned to make sure, appearing in The Millionaire ("The Millionaire Charles Bradwell") (1959) and Bachelor Father ("Kelly's Key"). The Shaggy Dog stinking out to be a huge harm - soon bigger than Old Yeller - and Disney contacted Kirk, subscription him another long-term contract and distinction role of middle son Ernest Histrion in another adventure film, Swiss Kindred Robinson (1960), co-starring John Mills, Dorothy McGuire, Janet Munro, and Corcoran. That was another big box-office success, shaft it remains Kirk's favorite film. In the way that he returned from location filming staging the West Indies, the studio autographed him for two more films.

In 1959, Film Daily named Kirk as work out of their five