2021 Year End Review: Part 2 – Those We Have Lost, But Not Forgotten

As a movie fan, the older we get, the more names and faces we lose that have helped entertain us throughout our lives. Whether they are directors, actors, makeup artists, cinematographers, or set designers, they all helped create something magical to entertain us, whether it was scaring us, making us nervous or filled with anxiety, laugh, cry, or even enlightening us, making us want to be better people. For those brief moments of their work, we are forever grateful. Thankfully, most of those memories are permanently recorded and can be experienced time and time again, whenever we want, as well as them being there to do the same thing for newer audiences every single year. While we are bound lose such great talent through the passage of time, as movie fans, we can rest assured that we will help keep their memory, and their work, alive for decades to come.

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Tommy Kirk – Rest in Peace

Sure, while Tommy Kirk is best known for his roles in a plethora of Disney films, such as Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog, The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, and many others, you might be wondering why I would be mentioning his passing here on the Krypt. Well, like a lot of stars that “fall from grace”, they sometimes end up in some low-low-low budgeted films, which is exactly what happened with Kirk.

Disney had primed him to be an even bigger star in his youth, but once they found out that Kirk was gay, that was all it took and gave him the boot. At that time, it was hard to recover from that. Having bouts with drug addiction, which was not helping his career. After Disney, he started to work with A.I.P. in films like Pajama Party (1964), as well as working with director Bert I. Gordon in Village of the Giants (1965).

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