The legend of Disney and ‘Kirt’

James Gunn loves a good Hollywood story, so the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 director weighs for a moment whether to embellish a bit of entertainment lore.

The urban legend has persisted for decades: were Walt Disney’s final words, whether written or spoken, actually “Kurt Russell”?

Now that Russell has returned to Disney studios to star in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, it seems an opportune time to ask the film’s director what he has heard.

“I don’t know whether to join the (misinformation) or tell the truth,” Gunn briefly teases. “As a storyteller, I feel equally beholden to this wonderful story. But at the end of the day, the truth wins out.”

Russell was a child actor making a series of Disney movies — including 1966’s Follow Me, Boys! with Fred MacMurray — when Disney died that same year.

As Russell recounted in the 1999 biography Remembering Walt by Amy Boothe Green and Howard E. Green: “Sometimes (Disney would) come down to the set and ask, ‘Do you want to see part of a movie that’s being put together?’”

Russell has said over the years that the legendary animator-filmmaker liked to ask him questions to get a sense of how a young mind works. He has said Disney reminded him of his own grandfather and so the teen actor wasn’t intimidated by the mogul.

Disney, impressed by the young actor’s gifts, wanted him under contract for future Disney films — which might well explain why the words “Kirt Russell” were found scribbled on a note on the filmmaker’s desk when he died at age 65.

Russell was shown the sheet soon after the filmmaker died, when a Disney employee asked him about its possible meaning. Perhaps Disney had written the actor’s name weeks earlier. No one knows.

“It isn’t exactly a true story, that this was the last thing (Disney) wrote in his office,” Gunn says. Yet the lore persists.

“I talked to Kurt about it; he loves the story,” Gunn says.