Lassie Come Home/Son of Lassie/Courage of Lassie
by Fred M. Wilcox, S. Sylvan Simon
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Actor: Dame May Whitty, Donald Crisp, Edmund Gwenn, Nigel Bruce, Roddy McDowallDirector: Fred M. Wilcox, S. Sylvan Simon
Brand: Warner Brothers
Producer: Dore Schary
Producer: Harry Rapf
Writer: Eric Knight
Writer: Hugo Butler
Writer: Jeanne Bartlett
Writer: Lionel Houser
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 282 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-11-07
Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of Lassie Come Home/Son of Lassie/Courage of Lassie
DVD Review: Beautiful dogs, beautiful country, and beautiful tales of loyalty
Summary: 4 Stars
The first three major Lassie movies are here inexpensively collected within a single jewel case. The one that started it all, "Lassie Come-Home" (based upon Eric Knight's classic and still beloved novel Lassie Come - Home), is set in Yorkshire during the days of the Depression. Sam Carraclough (Donald Crisp), an out-of-work coal miner, must find a way to feed his wife (Elsa Lanchester) and son Joe (Roddy McDowall), and the only thing he has worth any money is the beautiful collie Lassie whom he's raised from a pup. The Duke of Rudling (Nigel Bruce) has been coveting her for years and offers a good price, and finally Sam agrees. But Lassie is bound to young Joe by a love that knows no distances. Twice she escapes from the Duke's estate and returns to him. At last, taken to the Duke's castle at the far northern tip of Scotland, she flees again and sets out on an epic trek south. Some of the people she meets try to harm or hinder her; some, like old Dally Fadden (Dame May Whitty) and her husband Dan'l (Ben Webster), succor and help her along the way; at least one, travelling peddler Rowlie Palmer (Edmund Gwenn), she travels with almost as a partner. At last, after many trials, she makes it back to Yorkshire, where her courage and devotion bring an unexpected turn of fortune to her human family.
In "Son of Lassie," it's several years later; Joe (Peter Lawford) is now a young man of 17, the Duke's granddaughter Priscilla (June Lockhart) has become rather more to him than just a fellow dog-lover, and England is at war. Rambunctious Laddie, the scapegrace of Lassie's latest litter and Joe's special favorite, doesn't seem to have inherited much from his mother except her looks; he even washes out of the dogs-for-defense program when he proves to be gun-shy. But he too has a deep bond with Joe, and when the young man goes off to his RAF posting Laddie follows him. He ends up on board Joe's bomber when it's shot down over Nazi-occupied Norway, and he and Joe are separated. While Joe is found and assisted by the local underground, Laddie tries to re-connect with him and almost betrays him to the enemy several times (what, after all, does a dog know of Nazis?). United at last, the two must somehow make their way back to England, Priscilla, and Sam and the Duke (Crisp and Bruce reprising their previous roles).
"Courage of Lassie" really has nothing in common with the other two movies: even the dog star isn't named Lassie. He's Bill, whose purebred mother ran off into the wilderness of the Northwestern US to have her puppies. When her owner manages to find her and most of the litter, the wandering Bill is left behind and ultimately found and befriended by Kathie Merrick (Elizabeth Taylor, who played Priscilla in the first movie and, interestingly enough, had a long and close friendship with Peter Lawford), the daughter of a sheep-raising widow (Selena Royle), who secretky trains him to help with the sheep. Bill proves a good learner and assists Kathie in saving a bunch of strays during a late-spring blizzard, but when he's separated from her and placed in the American war-dog program, his life takes a terrible turn. Sent with his unit to help flush the Japanese out of the Aleutian Islands (which actually happened in 1943), he returns a year later so severely stressed out that, when he accidentally finds himself back in his own stamping grounds again, he doesn't even recognize the brokenhearted Kathie. It takes her neighbor Harry MacBain (Frank Morgan) to come up with a way to save the traumatized dog from being put down as a hazard to the community.
Like the original book, these movies can be enjoyed even by the cat-lovers in the audience (like me), though Taylor perhaps overdoes the emotional end of her role in the third. They're also suitable for all ages, as most movies were in the years 1932-68.
Description of Lassie Come Home/Son of Lassie/Courage of Lassie
Features include:
?MPAA Rating: G
?Format: DVD
?Runtime: 282 minutes
Lassie Come Home is a classic for all the usual reasons: its timeless, universal appeal, its first-of-its-kind status, and its exceptional cinematography, direction, and performances. What makes this 1943 charmer especially fun for grownups who haven't screened it since their own preteen, pet-obsessed days, though, is a couple of cute-as-a-button cast members. An adorably over-earnest Roddy McDowall stars as Joe, the mostly hapless lad whom Lassie refuses to part with despite his down-and-out family's decision to sell her, for a paltry 15 guineas, to a wealthy duke; and Elizabeth Taylor, already stunning at around age 10, surrenders a sweet if mawkish performance as Priscilla, the Duke's tenderhearted granddaughter, who lends a hand in Lassie's escape from her family's unkind kennel master and winks her way into winning the fearless pup a permanent place at her true master's side. Beyond that, it's no mystery why generations of dog-loving audiences have marveled at the precocious collie's career--Lassie is a great actor. She so convincingly digs impossible trenches, leaps towering fences, swims raging rivers, knocks out bad guys, and betrays the essence of brokenheartedness with her bedraggled coat and woebegone expressions that it's sometimes hard to shake the suspicion that she's really an incredibly limber person in a cute dog suit. All told, Lassie Come Home delivers a lot to love, not the least of which is the deeply dramatic score--quirky sounding to the modern ear--which returns audiences to simpler, irony-free times, as does the movie's message of loyalty at all costs. --Tammy La Gorce
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