For a few years beginning in the late 1950s, Walt Disney’s busiest actor was a young man named Tommy Kirk, a clean-cut Kentucky native who came to personify the studio’s brand of wholesome family entertainment.
Frequently starring opposite Fred MacMurray or Annette Funicello, he befriended a scrappy dog on the Texas frontier in “Old Yeller” (1957), transformed into a sheepdog after trying on a cursed ring in “The Shaggy Dog” (1959), explored a remote island in “Swiss Family Robinson” (1960) and experimented with mind-reading while playing a teenage genius in “The Misadventures of Merlin Jones” (1964).
