How many dogs played lassie

Modern Farmer: Lassie is the most famous fictional farm dog that ever existed, but the history of where Lassie came from is a little bit unclear. What was the first instance of Lassie in popular culture? Knight was an American citizen who had come from Britain.

He was a freelance writer and well respected journalist, and he had been sent back to England to report upon the desperate times during the war; people were suffering so much that they had to sell their prize dogs to keep going. That became a best-selling novel.

From there, MGM bought it as a B-picture. AC: A-pictures were the front run pictures, the pictures that closed the night. B-pictures were lesser budgets with lesser stars, and they were usually the first movies shown in the theater on the night, and then you would have the newsreel and the cartoon and the big feature.

They looked at over different dogs to play Lassie, and finally picked a show-winning dog. They were trying to film a middle sequence where Lassie has to swim across this wide expanse. Well, Rudd had a dog named Pal at his kennel that was a collie; it was just a dog that the owner had left so that Rudd could break the dog out of the habit of barking and chasing motorcycles.

Rudd had no use for a collie, but Pal was an intelligent dog, and he knew that Pal was athletic. So to save the movie scene, they had Pal swim the river, and come out the other side with beautiful acting — coming out of the side, looking exhausted. AC : A couple of things.

One, the United States after World War II was moving from a rural culture to a more urban culture, so many people that lived in the city remembered growing up on the farm. And so the image of the farm dog, of working the fields, of the barn, of the adventures they had growing up, all that rang true. The thing that cemented it and made it really strong was the fact that there was this incredible dog who represented the dogs of their youth.

I remember my father watching it because he remembered growing up on a farm in Arkansas where he had a shepherd collie named Rex that did a lot of the things that Lassie did as far as the task and what was going on. Obviously Lassie took it a step further. How many dogs were cycled through? AC: Gosh, there have been 11 generations now. If you count Pal being the original Lassie and then looked at the Lassies that followed, they were always sons of the previous dog.

There is just such a love for those dogs. An alternate theory is that Lassie was actually inspired by a real incident during World War I. The story of this courageous dog was spread to anyone who would listen. Set during Depression-era England, the story has Lassie tracking down her master, whose family was forced to sell their home and move, across a great distance. Over the years, Lassie has been featured in no less than 50 books designed for readers of different ages.

The first adaptation of everyone's favorite rough collie arrived on the big screen in the form of 's Lassie Come Home. Lassie was played by Pal.

These days, a studio would never release a franchise film and not have the star character in the title somewhere. Much later, there was a pair of movies one in and the other in simply given the name Lassie , though they were fairly unmemorable.

Enjoying a long life of 18 years spanning from to , Pal is the Rough Collie who played Lassie in seven feature films and two TV pilots.

In between, he became a major draw for crowds at shows, fairs, and rodeos around America. Few dogs enjoyed a career with such longevity. His son, Spook, briefly played the part, although he was never comfortable on the set.

Rudd got him to power through, though, while his brother, Baby, was being trained to take over. And Baby did so, working the show for six years, but dying at the age of eight all the other Lassies lived to be at least Mire took over from , with Hey Hey coming in for Originally cast in the role of Lassie in Lassie Come Home was a female collie, but the producers replaced her with a male when she began to shed excessively as the film was in production during the summer.

Others commented that the male collie Pal just looked more impressive in the part. Mayer commented that Pal went in the river, but Lassie came out; and upon watching Pal in action, the demand was made for more footage to be shot.

What was an amazing stroke of luck is that when the seventh Lassie film, The Painted Hills , was released, MGM made it clear there were no intentions of producing anymore. Thinking they were making the better deal, the studio went for it. As to the photo above, Rudd did such a great job with Pal, that he could make public appearances like any other celebrity, such as encountering the Lone Ranger and Tonto. With the film series played out, but sensing that there was still a lot of love out there for Lassie, the decision was made to bring her adventures to the small screen.

Lassie ran from to on CBS and then moved to first-run syndication from During that time, the first 10 seasons were filmed in black and white, the remaining nine in color. What was unusual about Lassie is that two pilots were intended from the beginning. The first showcased the bond between a boy and his dog, while the second was designed to give a look at what a typical episode would be like.

It worked, and CBS placed the show on its schedule, premiering on September 12th at p. Things changed in when both Ellen and Jeff said that they wanted to leave the show. In response, the decision was made to find a new boy to bond with Lassie and the show would start to follow them. My mother was not in show business; she grew up in a little farm in Texas and her idol growing up was Jane Wyman.

Cloris Leachman did not like her role in the series and often argued with the cast and crew. Lassie was both owned and trained by Rudd Weatherwax and reportedly lived to be 19 years old.

The first two seasons of Lassie with the above cast garnered an Emmy award each of those years for best prime time children's show. Lassie never won an Emmy after that. Tommy Rettig was getting too old for the part, so he voluntarily left and was replaced by Timmy and his adoptive parents, the Martins. The critical quality of the show writing, acting, etc. With the notable exception of a couple of acclaimed Christmas shows the popularity of the dog Lassie and her acting abilities carried the show for many years.

She was played by a boy dog called Pal Jr. Their acting abilities as a team were what made the Lassie brand what it was and still is today. Childhood favorite of poet and writer J. In Gabriel reached out to Jon Provost to thank him for his contribution to the show. Provost responded with his own appreciation for J. Gabriel's work. His one-shot return to the series as Ben Adams, after his recurring role as Cully Wilson was the final performance for comedy legend Andy Clyde.

During the run of the seasons starring Jon Provost , the earlier episodes starring Tommy Rettig were syndicated to daytime TV under the titles "Jeff's Collie". Similarly, when Provost left the series, his shows were syndicated as "Timmy and Lassie". Timmy was named after producer Bonita Granville 's mother, Timmie. A booklet with 20 picture postal cards was also issued. On the stamp honoring "Lassie" is a picture of its canine star, Lassie the Dog.

Spoofed in Mad Magazine as "Lizzzie".