Mickey Kuhn, Last Surviving ‘Gone With the Wind’ Star, Dead at 90

Mickey Kuhn, a former child actor and the last surviving cast member of the Academy Award-winning film Gone with the Wind, has died. Kuhn passed away in a hospice facility in Naples, Florida on Sunday, his wife Barbara told The Hollywood Reporter, adding that her husband was in good health until recently. The beloved actor was 90.

Born Theodore Matthew Michael Kuhn Jr. in Waukegan, Illinois in September 1932, Kuhn’s acting career began early. After he and his family moved to Los Angeles, Kuhn appeared as an adopted baby in Change of Heart (1934), starring Janet Gaynor, when he was just 2, with his parents going on to enroll him in the Mar-Ken School for show-business kids. Kuhn’s child acting career took off in 1939 when, following a day at work at Republic Pictures on S.O.S. Tidal Wave, he and his mom went to Culver City to interview for Gone With the Wind. According to Kuhn, there were “sixty to eighty kids and adults at the casting office,” though the 6-year-old star managed to land the role of Beau Wilkes, the son of Olivia de Havilland and Leslie Howard’s characters. De Havilland’s death in 2020 left Kuhn as the film’s last surviving credited cast member.

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Kuhn worked on five other films in 1939, including King of the Underworld, starring Humphrey Bogart; Juarez, featuring Bette Davis and Paul Muni; and When Tomorrow Comes, starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer. He went on to star in Magic Town (1947) and Broken Arrow (1950), as well as I Want a Divorce (1940), One Foot in Heaven (1941), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), The Searching Wind (1946), High Conquest (1947) and Scene of the Crime (1949).

He went on to enlist in the Navy in 1951 spending four years as an aircraft electrician before returning to his Hollywood career. He appeared in The Last Frontier (1955) and Away All Boats (1956) and on three 1957 episodes of CBS’ Alfred Hitchcock Presents before retiring from show business. Following his exit from Hollywood, Kuhn worked for American Airlines and the Boston airport.

Kuhn is survived by his wife Barbara, whom he married in 1985, his son Mick (and his wife, Jolene), daughter Patricia, and granddaughter Samantha. An exact cause of death was not disclosed.