Tommy Kirk was a ’50s Disney child star, most known for his roles in the Shaggy Dog series, The Absent-Minded Professor, Old Yeller, The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, and this, Swiss Family Robinson. When these films came out, I wasn’t yet born, but would see the movies as rerun kid matinees and on television. There was always something about him and his roles that were different—it was the smart loner, kind of a romantic, gentle, but cool and different kid. When I was a kid, I don’t know if I had a crush on him, but I was attracted to him in a way I couldn’t really describe. I identified with his gentleman kid persona, and the movies were fun. As I got older, I realized he had been a gay actor—he was fired by Disney for making out with an extra outside the set and had another short-lived career later as an older teen/young man in “hip” cool beach movies, Mars Needs Women and more. Sadly, he got into drugs—it was hard and lonely for him to be gay and the time when this was still subjugated against, especially in the film business but also for his personal life. He ended up retiring from acting but had a successful carpet-cleaning business and retired to the wilderness on a nice pension.

I thought this image was cool, kind of like a David vs. Goliath. Even though he had a “kid next door” allure he was somehow always different, and in his roles, usually the loner, and/or made outcast from the core group, including family. In this image, although he is throwing a slingshot, I think to gather food for his family, it seemed like it was so primal, this queer kid in the jungle, throwing a slingshot to the giant of the humanity that tries to suppress and repress him. Tommy Kirk was always out and proud to be gay for his whole post-acting life and off drugs and a successful businessman. Although it might not have been the career he sought, at least he did it his own way and didn’t let it get him down but won in his personal life. I wonder about so many gay men of a different generation, we know the ones who survived as out gay people, but so many probably had sad lives of oppression.

This image represents to me a fighting back, a standing up for oneself, and promise for myself and other LGBTQ people of my generation can serve also as models for successful, queer, and happy individuals who don’t allow the system to bring it down, but to fight on and win.