Dog Tales III: Lassie's Last Legs at MGM (1948 - 1951)

Ah, the end of the line for Lassie- er, "Shep."

Most franchise characters live within a customized world that suits their needs, tests their limits, and usually brings them full circle to their comfort zone, perhaps a little wiser after each adventure.

With James Bond, for example, the franchise screenwriters went from adapting whole novels to using just the novel titles and a hint of whatever script idea lay within, and when the literary sources ran out, they crafted new ones, often as greatest hits for fans.

For the character of Die Hard’s John McClane, the screenwriters went further. An original script was hastily written for the second movie; an unrelated script was reworked into a third Die Hard installment; and an original was written for the fourth and final (so far) film, riffing off the main character’s age, experience, and steeped cynicism.

The circumstances that enabled Lassie to survive through films and a TV series are really unique because it seemed MGM was aware, perhaps based on prior pooch characters such as Rin Tin Tin, that there can only be so many variations on Lost Dog Coming Home adventures before things become stale, and audiences move on to the next cute animal.

Whereas the first movie, Lassie Come Home [M] (1943), was based on Eric Knight’s book, the next two films – Son of Lassie [M] (1942) and Courage of Lassie [M] (1946) – not only put the character in a contemporary setting (getting affected by the events of WWII), but added a son (Laddie) in the former, and a Lassie-like character named Bill (and Duke by soldiers) in the latter.

As long as it looked and sounded and behaved like the same noble collie, all was good. But MGM and producer Robert Sisk must have realized they needed a shelf of story options, so their literary department retained short stories and novels wherein a dog either existed, or could be woven into tales of a decent character beating the odds.

In Hills of Home [M] (1948), for example, Ian Maclaren’s short story of a village doctor in turn of the century Scotland is goosed with Lassie helping the humanitarian save lives. In the Sun Comes Up [M] (1949), MGM had Yearling novelist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings write an original story of an opera singer who overcomes tragedy with the support of her dog – but it also marks the first time Lassie wasn’t directly relevant in every major scene.

For Challenge to Lassie [M] (1949), Eleanor Atkinson’s 1912 novel Greyfriars Bobby was upgraded, replacing her titular character’s breed of a Skye Terrier to a devoted collie, and with The Painted Hills [M] (1951), MGM repurposed Alexander Hull’s novel Shep of The Painted Hills, keeping the breed, but changing the dog’s name.

There were probably many dog tales in print during the forties and fifties, but it is remarkable how Lassie wasn’t just a star, but a brand name, capable of sustaining itself in stories set in different time periods, countries, global crises, and local tales of woe. The anchor point was Lassie, as played by Pal, a brilliantly trained dog with emotive eyes and sensitive gestures that guaranteed audience sympathy, whether Lassie was trying to cross rapids, avoid destruction by court order, or was used by evil Nazis to identify her master in Norway.

As a character, Lassie traveled far and wide before settling into a radio show (1947-1950) and popular TV series (1954-1973), and it’s during her tenure on the idiot box that Lassie’s writers could relax, and flitter between reusable story templates – a tactic that served other animal series well, particularly The Littlest Hobo (1963-1965, and 1979-1985), adapted from a 1958 film.

Lassie did move back to the theatrical realm in 1994 and 2005, but MGM’s films are fascinating artifacts of a studio keeping a franchise going during WWII, and the postwar era, exploiting their property in what were then the three most impressionable media streams: film, radio, and television, with spin-off tales in literary and graphic form.

Warner Home Video released the first 4 films in a 2-disc set under the TCM banner, and while all of the MGM films have appeared on VHS, the remaining 4 titles aren’t available on DVD, except for the odd public domain disc. (The final film in the series is also available at archive.org.)

I’ve said before that the lot ought to be remastered in HD from the best surviving elements because as Technicolor productions, they’re exemplary for the use of indoor and outdoor cinematography. Mountains served as major locations in the first four films, and even the more studio-bound period installments featured the same blazing use of Technicolor film stock.

There are enough global fans out there to warrant a restoration, and once the films have been transferred to HD, it’s done; the franchise can enjoy new life in theatrical reissues for family matinees, and is ready for HD broadcasts – all of it sustaining the character in the consumer’s consciousness as The Number One Canine, and ensuring future efforts to restart the franchise are absorbed by new and old fans alike. Besides, 2013 will mark the 70th anniversary of Lassie's big screen debut, so let's get the ball rolling.

Film Score Monthly recently issued a boxed set of scores from the MGM series, and having gone through the movies, it’s easy to understand why getting the music out there was such a labour of love for the set's producers. Sure, they love the central character, but certainly in the 6th and 7th films, the music by a young Andre Previn is superb. Composed when he was around 18, it’s easy to see why Previn shot up fast as one of the studio’s top composers, handling prestige pictures for a good 10 years.

The rest of the scores were written by a mix of newcomers and veterans, and the reliance on montages gave them long sequences to develop themes and rich, dramatic variations. Pity few of the original score recordings survive as music-only elements, but the studio put a long of care into the franchise during its 8-year run.

For prior blogs in the Dog Tales series, read Part I and Part II.






Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com

Dog Tales II: Lassie Goes to War!

Corracciones: Coraggio di BILL!

Lassie’s wartime experience was somewhat different in her second film, Son of Lassie, where Pal the dog played both Lassie and her not-so-bright offspring Laddie, and it’s the latter who gets whisked off (almost as a prank) to Norway on a reconnaissance mission, only to get separated from his master Joe, dodging evil filthy Nazis until the inevitable reunion, and fast flight, fight, and straight trip home to June Lockhart and her big hugs and kisses.

In his third film, billed again as Lassie, Pal plays an orphaned pooch named Bill adopted by a teenage Liz Taylor in Courage of Lassie, which really should’ve been called Courage of Bill. Bill eventually runs into multiple hardships, gets donated to the war effort, becomes a war dog, is paired with a combat unit in the Philippines, and is sent back home due to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, where more havoc is wreaked on a local level, resulting in a near-mauling of Liz, and a courtroom trial deciding his fate.

Seriously. This is a kiddie film.

I’m not sure what the hell Warner Bros.’ brass were thinking, but this is the strangest entry among the first four Lassie films, and yet it kind of works, and is fascinating for the jarring plot and mood shifts that happen every 20-25 mins. It’s compelling, dark, bizarre, and only a handful of scenes are really kid-friendly, which is why the studio recut the trailer into a faux happy doggy montage for a 1972 reissue round as a matinee series.

If kids were traumatized by Bambi’s mom dying, I wonder if they comprehended a dog experiencing shell-shock syndrome. I don’t think the producers were trying to compete with adult dramas like The Best Years of Our Lives (also released in 1946), but rather trying to make the franchise timely and fresh, but whether audiences were game for the upgrade is a mystery.

In the second film, Lassie / Laddie’s war experience was the direct result of a gag, whereas in Lassie / er, Bill’s third film, it’s realist social commentary. Besides, the only way you could re-direct Lassie into another cinematic war adventure was through official military channels as a war dog.

That aspect and the dog’s trauma initially seem absurd (Bill gets PTSD flashbacks), but there’s little way any creature could survive bombs, gunfire, and daily near-death experiences without some mental trauma, and it’s not dissimilar from adopting a dog that’s been abused in the past, and gets defensive and snarly when it smells alcohol among rowdy men.

Trauma even figures in the fourth film, Hills of Home (1948), where Lassie refuses to cross water because her prior owner would mock-drown her for letting a sheep get killed. Not exactly kiddie stuff.

In any event, in this second installment of Dog Tales, I’ve uploaded a review of Courage of Lassie [M] (Warner Home Video), as well as a review for a newfound rarity: War Dogs [M], a 1942 propaganda film produced by Monogram to motivate folks into donating their dogs for the war effort.

It’s a bit technically rough at times, but makes for a natural compliment to the Lassie film because it covers in more docu-drama style war dog training. It’s also FREE, because it’s part of that increasingly large pool of movies and other media now in the public domain – works whose copyrights have lapsed, and are essentially available gratis to read (Project Gutenberg Canada, and its main hub, Project Gutenberg), hear or view (via Internet Archive).






Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com

Dog Tales I: Lassie (1943-1945)

Not to be confused with Won Ton Ton, the dog that saved Hollywood. (Ahem)

Lassie, the regal collie, may be the best-known dog on an international level, far eclipsing her predecessor Rin Tin Tin, a German Shepherd who similarly enjoyed a career in film (primarily during the silent era), and whose descendents appeared in a radio series, a TV show in the fifties, and whose ‘life story’ was depicted in the 2007 film Finding Rin Tin Tin.

Lassie excelled in media perhaps because her timing was perfect: Eric Knight’s book was published in 1940, adapted into a film three years later, and the devotion between a happy-looking dog (a collie’s long jaw and floppy ears make it far film-friendlier than German Shepherds) and a young boy were well-suited for weary international wartime audiences wanting escapist tales where man and beast were supportive of each other to the point of near-death.

Moreover, as evidenced in Lassie’s second film (set in Nazi-occupied Norway), German Shepherds were depicted as authority tools of Nazi masters, whereas the British collie came from a stock not refined in the art of crowd control, or hunting down Jews (as dramatized in the terrifying 1949 Polish film, Border Street / Ulica Graniczna).

In Son of Lassie, there’s a moment when a Nazi officer confronts the collie outside of a prisoner yard with his trusty German Shepherd; his dog is clearly feared by the inmates, whereas the inmates all reach out to touch Lassie through the barbed wire fencing because of the breed’s respected virtue as a loving, loyal friend.

That scene’s a stark dramatization of a two breeds that have been worked into very distinct roles in human society, and media-wise, it probably didn’t get corrected until (as much as I hate to say it), the TV series The Littlest Hobo (argh) made the German Shepherd a loyal breed instead of a weapon of sorts.

See, collies just don’t have the image problem associated with other breeds, and that gave MGM’s franchise a lot of life. Warner Home Video’s 2-disc set, TCM’s Lassie collection, gathers the first 4 films released back in 2004, whereas the other 3 remain unavailable on DVD (although they do air time from time-to-time on TCM).

Film Score Monthly, however, have somewhat bridged the gap with a limited 5-CD set featuring surviving music from the series in the aptly titled Lassie Come Home: The Canine Cinema Collection (1943-1955), goosed with a rare Elmer Bernstein score for the 1955 short film, It’s a Dog’s Life.

.Now let’s get back to Lassie.

"Ooja-booja, mon ami cheuveuse!"

Most of the DVD transfers in the TCM set date from the mid-00’s, and while it may seem frivolous to suggest the entire series deserves full HD transfers for loaded Blu-ray discs, it ain’t, because certainly with the first two films, the Lassie series represents some of the best outdoor Technicolor cinematography on record, and if you were blown away by The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), the Lassie series would be equally jaw dropping on BR, since the core sequences in each film involve a search or trek through wild terrain, be it mountains, glaciers (!), or a treacherous swim.

MGM’s series entries weren’t big budget productions, but their embracive use of splendid locations gave their simple stories of boy / man / girl + loyal dog extra oomph.

None of the DVDs include commentaries, featurettes or interviews (people are aging, some are dying…) but if WHV were to plan a 7-film BR set, it would benefit greatly from input by historians and fans, since the films continue to endure as dog-friendly, family classics. I can’t imagine what parents do when they realize their child won’t stop crying until they get their own Lassie.

Eeesh.

In any event, I deliberately dove into these family films because I wanted to see if a cynical writer with allergies towards dogs, cats & birds (feathers, people, it’s the fine plethora of feathers that itch the nasalium nostrixta) could handle period kid-flicks.

Answer: mostly yeah, but as I said, there are aspects that should keep adults content.

For example, MGM drew from a fine stable of character actors, and the series also functioned as training ground and test projects for up-and-coming talent.

The first film, Lassie Come Home [M] (1943), features a big-eyed Roddy McDowall (thankfully no longer billed under that pretentious banner “Master Roddy McDowall, as done for How Green Was My Valley), and Elizabeth Taylor in her second film.

The sequel, Son of Lassie [M] (1945), features the physically handsome / nasally voiced Peter Lawford; pretty June Lockhart, all bubbly and glowing in her Natalie Kalmus-approved Technicolor Red dress; and pig-tailed Terry Moore (soon to appear in Mighty Joe Young, where she perpetually spouted more somfistakated dialogue like ‘Oh Joe! Come on Joe! Hurry Joe!’).

I’ve uploaded reviews of the first two pooch films, and will follow up with not only the rest of the Lassie films in MGM’s franchise, but related pooch movies about loyal dogs, because apparently I’ve lost some of my cynicism for family fodder.

Of course, all it takes is a film starring an ugly child and a dog with grotesque strands of drool (see Turner & Hooch. Go on. Watch the head shaking sequence, and call me wrong), and I’m reset back to Cynic 1.0.






Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com