A Day with Kurt Russell by Ann Moses

From the Tiger Beat Archives, July 1967

No day is an ordinary day when you spend it with Kurt Russell. No girl ever feels ordinary again when she’s lucky enough to exchange words and looks with Disney’s handsome new star. This all happened to me just last week on the lot of Walt Disney Studios.

We sat for several minutes and watched a scene being shot and after a while he invited me to join him for lunch. As we started for the studio commissary he told me:

“I just got out of school before I went on the set. The studio school is great because I only go for four hours a day and there are fewer tests. I learned just as much here as I do at Thousand Oaks.”

New Movie

When Kurt isn’t filming a movie or a TV spot, he’s enrolled at Thousand Oaks High School. The thing he really misses, though, about regular school is the sports program. Shooting his current film “The One and Only Genuine, Original Family Band” doesn’t allow him to try out for the baseball season.

But Kurt is most excited about the new movie because it’s the first film in which he both sings and dances. “Family Band” is the story of a family of musicians (mostly youngsters) traveling across the country around the 1890s. Though Kurt has never taken dancing lessons he told me the steps were easy and fun to learn and he enjoyed the singing.

He also reiterated the way he began his work in movies (he had appeared in television’s “Adventures of Jamie McPheters”), which is the second love, baseball being his first. “There was a movie being cast called ‘Safe at Home’ and Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were going to be in it. I thought it would be great to meet them, so my father’s agent got me an interview. I didn’t get the part, but Bryan Russell did. That’s how I met Bryan, I see him on the set occasionally now. But after that first interview I kept going back for other interviews and I finally began to get some parts.”

After ordering lunch from the cafeteria lines, we grabbed a nearby table and this is where we did most of our talking. Throughout the afternoon I was continually impressed by Kurt’s bubbly personality. He says he’s never moody and it’s not hard to believe. He was so cheerful to everyone that came in and I can’t remember him not smiling. Oh and what a smile it is!

His beautiful blue eyes glanced up from the plate of roast beef below. “I really do enjoy working in the movies. I often think about bringing enjoyment to people and I like it more than ever. I think about entertaining people more than anything else. That’s what you work for, that’s why you try to always do your best.”

Since his fabulous appearances in “Follow Me Boys” and TV’s “Willie and the Yank,” Kurt has been swamped with letters from new-found fans. He especially remembers one of his more unusual gifts. He told me, “Every year for my birthday some guy sends me a pair of sneakers, and they’re just the right size. It never fails, he sends them every year! He must really be a nice guy.”

Just Turned Sixteen

Kurt just turned 16 in March and he was given a surprise birthday party by the cast of “Family Band.” Also this year Kurt received the Teenage Oscar for his performance in “Follow Me Boys.” He feels the Oscar is the highlight of his career thus far.

Another new thing in Kurt’s busy life is press interviews. During our luncheon interview he was calm and good-natured and completely polite. I asked him what he considered the most insane question he’d ever been asked. After teasing me by answering that most of the time mine were, he laughed, “I really get asked some unbelievable questions. One time I was reading Tiger Beat and I read this great answer to a question. It was in an interview with Mark Lindsay and I thought at the time ‘If I ever get asked that I could use the same answer.’ It was a really groovy reply, but I’ve forgotten it.”

Before long Kurt was called back to the set so that the Disney cameras could capture that face, that smile, that happy young man on film for all of us to see and enjoy. And enjoy.