MICKEY KUHN
(21 September 1932 – 20 November 2022)
Mickey Kuhn, who had a twenty-odd year career in films and television, has died aged ninety. Starting as a child actor, he appeared in many celebrated movies, the most famous being Gone with the Wind in 1939 in which he played Beau Wilkes, the son of Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard). Until his death he was the last surviving credited actor from the film, the only other one in recent years being Olivia de Havilland who died in 2020. Mickey had appeared uncredited in films from 1934 and had several roles in 1939, and it was Gone with the Wind that made Mickey a young star.
He was born Theodore Matthew Michael Kuhn Jr in Waukegan, Illinois, to Theodore Kuhn Sr and Pearl Hicks. In order to find work, the family moved during the Depression from Illinois to Hollywood where Mickey’s father found work as a meat-cutter. Mickey himself began earning money from the age of two when 20th Century-Fox cast him in Change of Heart with Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell and Ginger Rogers. After that he went to the Mar-Ken School for professional children. In 1937 Paramount put him in A Doctor’s Diary with George Brent and he then appeared in King of the Underworld with Humphrey Bogart. He was in Juarez with Paul Muni and Bette Davis, and then S.O.S. Tidal Wave, When Tomorrow Comes with Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer, and Bad Little Angel with Virginia Weidler.
Mickey’s appearance in Juarez turned out to be his biggest break, as he was chosen from over fifty children and it also led to his appearance in Gone with the Wind. Among the films he made later were A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), the first film to be directed by Elia Kazan. Adapted from a popular novel by Betty Smith, it was a portrait of an Irish-American family living in poverty in Brooklyn. It starred Dorothy McGuire, Peggy Ann Garner and James Dunn and won two Academy Awards. In the same year, Mickey Kuhn was in Dick Tracy, playing Junior, the adopted son of the titular police detective (Morgan Conway).
He was the young Walter in The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck, and Kuhn also appeared in William Wellman’s Magic Town (1947) with James Stewart, Howard Hawks’ Red River (1948), Delmer Daves’ Broken Arrow (1950) with James Stewart, and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), his second film with Vivien Leigh (after GWTW), which was directed by Elia Kazan who had staged the original play on Broadway.
Kuhn’s last movie was the war film Away All Boats (1956) with Jeff Chandler. Kuhn retired that year, following an appearance in one of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes. The only honour he received was in 2005 when he won the Golden Boot Award for ‘Kids of the West’, an acknowledgement for a major contribution to Western films by young actors. It was presented by the Motion Picture & Television Fund which looks after the needs of people in the film business.
Mickey Kuhn was married five times. With his first wife, Jean Marie Hannick, whom he married in 1956, he has two children. All of his subsequent four marriages ended in divorce. His fifth wife, Barbara Traci, was with him from 1985 until his death in Florida where he had been doing voluntary work for a local hospital.
In a relatively short career of just thirty-odd films, Mickey Kuhn seemed to have enjoyed working in the movies. He was quoted as saying that "It was a lot of fun. My mother made sure it was a fun job. I learned many things and was taught to be nice to people." As another minor legend leaves the screen, it is good to know that while it lasted, Mickey Kuhn's career in Hollywood was a happy one.
MICHAEL DARVELL
Read our interview with Mickey here.