which scenes in movies or movies make you cry?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

32. Tommy Kirk. Things were going his way until....

Leaving Disney

Kirk said he knew he was gay from an early age:

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 '60s that I began to hear of places where gays congregated. The lifestyle was not recognized and I was very, very lonely. Oh, I had some brief, very passionate encounters and as a teenager I had some affairs, but they were always stolen, back alley kind of things. They were desperate and miserable. 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. It was all going to come to an end.

While filming The Misadventures of Merlin Jones in 1963, Kirk started seeing a 15-year-old boy he had met at a local swimming pool in Burbank. The boy's mother discovered the affair and informed Disney, who elected not to renew Kirk's contract. Kirk was 21 years old. Walt Disney himself fired Kirk after receiving a complaint from the boy's mother. Kirk describes 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."

AIP

The news of Kirk's termination from Disney Studios and of his homosexuality was not made public, and Kirk soon found work for himself at American International Pictures (AIP) who were looking for a leading man to co-star with Funicello in a musical they were preparing, The Maid and the Martian; Kirk was cast as a Martian who arrives on Earth and falls in with a bunch of partying teenagers. The movie was later retitled Pajama Party (1964) and was a box office hit, so AIP signed him to star in a follow-up, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini.

In the meantime The Misadventures of Merlin Jones had become an unexpected smash hit, earning $4 million in rentals in North America and Disney invited him back to make a sequel, The Monkey's Uncle (1965).

He was also cast in a John Wayne film, The Sons of Katie Elder, as well as a beach party movie Beach Ball.

Drug arrest

On Christmas Eve 1964, Kirk was arrested for suspicion of possession of marijuana at a house in Hollywood. The district attorney's office subsequently refused to file a complaint against him on the marijuana charge. The city attorney's office, however, filed an illegal drugs charge because officers found a vial of barbiturates in his car. This charge was dismissed by a judge in early January when Kirk's attorney established that the barbiturates had been prescribed by a physician. However, the damage to Kirk's career had been done. He was replaced on How to Stuff a Wild Bikini by Dwayne Hickman, on The Sons of Katie Elder by Michael Anderson, Jr., and on Beach Ball by Edd Byrnes.

The Cinema of Tommy Kirk

Posted by: Stephen Vagg | in Feature Articles, Slider | September 9, 2019

From 1959 to 1965, Tommy Kirk films appeared in the annual list of the top twenty most popular films in North America every year. It was an astonishing run of commercial successes – The Shaggy Dog (1959), Swiss Family Robinson (1960), The Absent Minded Professor (1961), Bon Voyage (1962), Son of Flubber (1963), The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964) and The Monkey’s Uncle (1965). In particular, it was Kirk’s appeal that propelled the last two films, originally shot for television, to stunning grosses. Yet within a few years he was washed up, basically forgotten. His story remains one of the least known falls from graces in Hollywood history.



{snip}

Then something happened.

Kirk was gay. He had an affair with a teenager he met at the local pool; the boy’s mother complained to Disney, who fired Kirk. Money counted, but the brand name of Disney counted more.

Still, the news did not make the press and Kirk was snapped up by American International Pictures, who focused on films for the teen audience. They gave him the lead in the fourth Beach Party movie, Pajama Party (1964), reuniting him with Funicello. It’s a colourful, lively musical, directed by Don Weis like a comic book, in which Kirk plays a Martian who comes to earth; Kirk even sings a duet with Funicello. One of the best of the Beach Party series, it was a box office success and proved the movies did not need Frankie Avalon.

AIP signed Kirk for a follow up with Funicello, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965), and Gene Corman wanted him for another teen movie, Beach Ball (1965). Most notably, Disney called him back to make a Merlin Jones sequel, The Monkey’s Uncle (1965). Following that he was going to co-star with John Wayne and Dean Martin in a Western, The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) – a film that would give him exposure to a new kind of mass audience; it would also be the first feature he would make for a major Hollywood studio outside Disney (Paramount). Kirk, it seemed, had dodged a bullet.

Then something happened again.

On Christmas Eve, 1964 Kirk was arrested for suspicion of possession of marijuana at a house in Hollywood… and this did make the newspapers. The district attorney’s office subsequently refused to file a complaint against him on the marijuana charge but the city attorney’s office filed an illegal drugs charge because police officers found a vial of barbiturates in Kirk’s car. This charge was dismissed by a judge in early January, 1965 when Kirk’s attorney established that the barbiturates had been prescribed by a physician.

A drug arrest scandal was survivable in Hollywood, even back then, especially if it suited your image – Robert Mitchum’s imprisonment for marijuana possession in 1948 arguably helped his career. But it was trickier if you were meant to be the all-American boy. Kirk was replaced on Wild Bikini by Dwayne Hickman, on Beach Ball by Edd Byrnes and on Katie Elder by Michael Anderson Jnr.

When the noise died down, Kirk found he could still get work, especially since The Monkey’s Uncle (1965), released after the drug bust, proved to be another hit. AIP brought him back into the fold for The Weird World of Dr Goldfoot (1965) and TV and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966), with Walley and Weis. Bert I. Gordon gave him the lead in Village of the Giants (1965) alongside Beau Bridges, and he got leads in movies that tail ended the beach party cycle, like Catalina Caper (1967) and It’s a Bikini World (1967) with Walley.

{snip}

For some reason, I have Swiss Family Robinson on videotape. I stared to watch it about two months ago. I never did finish viewing it.