Lassie's Big Day

 

by Pa Rock

TV Junkie

If you display the good manners of telling Alexa "Good morning!" when you arise, she will reward you with an interesting fact related to the day upon which you are about to embark.  This morning, for instance, after I gave a greeting to my most faithful friend, she responded by telling me that the television show, "Lassie," premiered on this date in 1954.  Alexa also noted that contrary to a widely held belief, Lassie never pulled Timmy out of a well, but she did rescue him from a lake, and mines, and even quicksand.

(I could swear that I remember her pulling little Timmy from the well, but as one ages the mind begins to fade and wander aimlessly.)

I was six-and-a-half when the television series began, and by the time it ended, 591 episodes later in 1971, I was in my early twenties.   During my younger days - those when I was in elementary school - I watched "Lassie" most Sunday evenings and then stayed in front of the television for "Dennis the Menace" which began a couple of years after "Lassie" premiered.

Today Jon Provost (Timmy Martin from "Lassie") and Jay North (Dennis from "Dennis the Menace") are both still around and both still describe themselves as "actors," though their work in the acting field appears to be rare.  Provost is seventy-one, North is seventy, and I, alas, am seventy-three - and my work in any field is also quite rare!

I used Alexa's announcement about the "Lassie" anniversary as a pretext for doing a bit of internet research on the show, one of my favorites from the early days of television, and I learned some things of interest.    Lassie, the star of the show, was obviously intended to be a female character - her name is the big clue there - yet she was played by a series of nine collies over the years, and each and every one of them was a male!  The original Lassie was a dog named "Pal," who died in 1958, and the remaining eight were all descendants of his.

Breeding tells.

Lassie's first human buddy wasn't Timmy Martin, but another farm kid named Jeff Miller.  Jeff shared adventures with Lassie for three seasons before finally aging out of the role.  Jeff was played by child actor Tommy Rettig, and I have clear memories of him in those pre-Timmy days.  I can also remember how sad I felt twenty years or so later when I heard on the radio that Rettig had been arrested for cocaine smuggling.  Tommy Rettig died in the nineties, a lifelong advocate for the reform of marijuana laws.

Rettig was replaced at the beginning of the fourth season in 1957 by Jon Provost who entered the show as the foster child of Jeff's mother.  She sold the farm to the Martins, and they found Timmy who had runaway from another foster home, and wound up adopting him.  Provost's "Timmy" was the running buddy of Lassie for seven seasons, 1957-1964, and the one most of us remember best - whether he was pulled from a well or not!

What I didn't remember was that Paul and Ruth Martin, Timmy's adoptive parents, changed after their first season.  Jon Shepodd and Cloris Leachman were the original parents, but they moved on and were replaced in Timmy's second season by Hugh Reilly and June Lockhart who remained as Timmy's parents for the next six seasons - until the Martins all conveniently departed for Australia and left the world's most heroic (and gender-confused) dog behind to live with a series of forest rangers.

And it all began sixty-seven years ago today.

Thanks for the memories, Alexa!

(Quick Lassie, go get a rope!  Timmy fell in the well and he's too old to climb out!)