Tommy Kirk
| Tommy Kirk | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
Thomas Lee Kirk December 10, 1941 Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actor/businessman |
| Years active | 1955–1996 |
| Parent(s) | Louis and Lucy Kirk |
Thomas Lee "Tommy" Kirk (born December 10, 1941) is an American former actor and later a businessman. He is best known for his performances in a number of highly popular movies made by Walt Disney Studios such as Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog, The Swiss Family Robinson and The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, as well as beach party movies of the mid 1960s.
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. Looking for better job opportunities, they moved to Downey in Los Angeles County, California, when Kirk was fifteen months old.
In 1954, Kirk accompanied his elder brother Joe to an audition for a production of Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California. Joe was not cast, losing out to Bobby Driscoll, but Tommy was, and he made his stage debut opposite Will Rogers, Jr. The performance was seen by an agent from the Gertz agency who signed Kirk and succeeded in casting him in an episode of TV Reader's Digest, "The Last of the Old Time Shooting Sheriffs."
Kirk began to work steadily in television: episodes of The Man Behind the Badge, Frontier, ("The Devil and Doctor O'Hara"), Letter to Loretta ("But for God's Grace", "Little League"), The Californians (as Billy Kilgore in "Little Lost Man"), Gunsmoke ("Cow Doctor"), Angel ("Goodbye, Young Lovers"), Big Town, and Matinee Theatre ("The Outing", "The Others"). Kirk also supported Angie Dickinson in a short feature called Down Liberty Road (aka Freedom Highway) (1956), a short commercial travelogue produced by Greyhound Lines to promote their Scenicruiser buses. Of these experiences, Kirk especially liked working on Matinee Theatre:
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