Home > News & Advice > News Obituaries > Kevin Corcoran (1949 – 2015)

Kevin Corcoran (1949 – 2015)

by Legacy Staff

Kevin Corcoran, the actor who played the youngest son in the 1957 Disney classic “Old Yeller,” has died, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 66.

Corcoran, who worked on many Disney movies and TV shows behind and in front of the camera, died Tuesday at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank after a five-year battle with colorectal cancer, his wife, Laura, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Kevin Corcoran, the actor who played the youngest son in the 1957 Disney classic “Old Yeller,” has died, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 66.

Corcoran, who worked on many Disney movies and TV shows behind and in front of the camera, died Tuesday at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank after a five-year battle with colorectal cancer, his wife, Laura, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Corcoran is best remembered for his role as Arliss Coates, the youngest son of Jim (Fess Parker) and Katie (Dorothy McGuire) and the brother of Travis (Tommy Kirk), in the post-Civil War tear-jerker “Old Yeller,” which centered around the family’s heroic dog.

He and Kirk returned for the 1963 sequel “Savage Sam,” a tale about another courageous dog — Old Yeller’s son.


Click to get weekly celebrity death news delivered to your inbox. 


Corcoran was a native of Santa Monica, California. He was one of eight children, all of whom acted in the 1950s and ’60s. One of his sisters, Noreen Corcoran, played the niece of John Forsythe’s character on the 1950s CBS-NBC series “Bachelor Father.”

Kevin made his movie debut in Anthony Mann’s “The Glenn Miller Story” (1954), then played Moochie, an irrepressible sort who hates being treated like a little kid, on a pair of “Spin and Marty” TV serials and on “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.”

He later shifted his focus behind the scenes and became a producer.

Corcoran was a co-producer on nine episodes of “The Shield” and on 14 installments of another FX drama, “Sons of Anarchy.”

Corcoran was “a delightful person and producer, including on ‘The Shield,'” that series’ creator, Shawn Ryan, said on Twitter.

We invite you to share condolences for Kevin Corcoran in our Guest Book.

 

More Stories