Former Disney star Kevin Corcoran has died

Kevin Corcoran – a popular child star of the ’50s and ’60s who went on to work as a producer on popular television series such as Sons of Anarchy – has passed away at the age of 66.

Entertainment Weekly reports that Kevin Corcoran died Tuesday in Santa Monica, Calif., of complications from cancer.

Corcoran’s most famous role was young Arliss Coates in Old Yeller, the 1957 tearjerker about a frontier family and their loyal yellow hound. He even had his own leading role, playing the title character in “Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks with a Circus” (1960). Fellow child star Tommy Kirk played Arliss’s brother Travis.

The twosome went on to play brothers in several more Disney classics including The Shaggy Dog, Swiss Family Robinson, and Bon Voyage! as well as reuniting for the Old Yeller sequel Savage Sam.

After graduating from California State University, Northridge with a degree in theatre arts, Kevin returned to Disney, working behind the camera on such films as Superdad, Island at the Top of the World, and Pete’s Dragon.

He produced the 1983 pilot episode of CBS’ Scarecrow and Mrs. King and went on to serve as a second assistant director on that series as well as on other hourlong shows like Simon & Simon, Baywatch, Quantum Leap, Murder, She Wrote and Providence. For his decades-long contributions to Disney, he was honored in 2006 as a Disney Legend.

Corcoran’s most recent production credits have included US TV action dramas including The Shield and Sons of Anarchy.

“Usually they would give you pages from the script, let you know what the character is like”, Corcoran recalled of his final audition before becoming a producer in a 2012 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle.