Tommy Kirk, who was a busy star in the Disney universe as a child and young man, appearing in “Old Yeller,” “The Shaggy Dog,” “Swiss Family Robinson” and other movies in the late 1950s and early ’60s, but whose career was derailed when his homosexuality became too widely known and when drugs and alcohol got the better of him, died on Tuesday at his home in Las Vegas.
He was 79. The Walt Disney Company announced his death in a statement, which did not give a cause. Mr. Kirk got into show business by accident.
An older brother was auditioning for a part in Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah, Wilderness!” at the Pasadena Playhouse in California and took Tommy, then 12, along; the brother didn’t get cast, but Tommy did (though not in the part his brother.