LASSIE EXPOSED

This time I’m gonna write about dogs because you can’t go wrong with dogs. People like dogs. And people like movies so I’ll write about movie dogs. Enough blogs seething with righteous indignation. Write about fun things, Dad!

            OK. Oh, and something else. Daughter (who knows all things) tells me I should post on a consistent schedule so my readers (and both of you know who you are) know when to look for me. So from now on I’m aiming to post on Mondays and Thursdays. 

Now, on to…Lassie! And being Hollywood I’ll start with a whiff of scandal.

LASSIE WAS A DRAG QUEEN!

Well, sorta. Every movie and TV Lassie has actually been a male and not the lady dog he portrays. (And yes I know, lady dogs are called bitches. But I can’t, I just can’t. I mean we’re talking Lassie here.) There are two schools of thought as to why this is. The first is that male collies don’t shed as much as lady collies. The second is that being the, ah, heroine “she” should have a larger presence while saving Timmy from the well. Which brings up something else:

TIMMY NEVER FELL INTO A WELL!

When Jon Provost (TV’s Timmy from 1957 to 1964) wrote his autobiography he titled it (tongue firmly in cheek) TIMMY’S IN THE WELL! But in fact Timmy never fell into a well. Into deep pits, raging rivers, pitch-black mines, icy lakes and grasping quicksand, yes. Face it, he was a clumsy kid. Thankfully there was a Lassie or two or three to haul him out.

Yes, it’s true. A LOT OF DOGS PLAYED LASSIE!

Among them: dogs named Baby, Spook, Boy, Howard, Mason, Lassie Jr., Hey-Hey, Dakota, Mire and Pal. Pal seems to have carried a lot of the load, starring in seven Lassie films beginning with 1943’s LASSIE COME HOME. Pal also went on the road to meet and greet fans at dog shows, county fairs, rodeos and the like.

Of course they had to use several dogs. If the original Lassie (Pal, 1943 movie star) was still making personal appearances (and yes, “Lassie” does to this day, often for a line of pet food) he’d have to be in dog years seven hundred years old!

Next Monday we’ll investigate other dark secrets of Hollywood canine celebs. Who was Cleo with the soulful eyes and sexy voice? Why was Duke replaced on the BEVERLY HILLBILLIES? There were two dogs who starred in popular radio shows. How the heck does a dog star in a radio show?

Until then, Dad out.                     

                       

IT’S OK, DAD: MOVIE MEMORIES

Long ago in a faraway land I was a film critic for a major daily newspaper. Well, not really that far away. It was in Central California. The paper’s circulation covered an area larger than New Jersey, Delaware and Massachusetts combined. That’s a lot of theaters in a lot of small towns where there often isn’t much to do except go to the movies which made being the local film critic kind of a big deal.

I got the job for three reasons. One: I attended a university film school. There I saw lots of French New Wave cinema filled with metaphors for contemporary social values and brooding Scandinavian films with lots of pale people. Two: I had actually worked around television and movies so I knew the technical jargon like “Cut!”

 

And three: with Wife locally employed I was not going to move to a big city where, stimulated by the vibrant lifestyle, I’d probably have won a Pulitzer. In other words I would stay put and work cheap.

It was a good gig, particularly when the studios flew me to “the coast” to see free movies and interview people I usually saw only on the cover of PEOPLE. The parties were fun and I was welcome to bring Wife. To this day Daughter is jealous that we did not include her but as I keep reminding her she wasn’t born yet.

Part of the movie TIME AFTER TIME is laid in Victorian London. At the San Francisco opening we were served champagne by people dressed as if they had wandered over from Downton Abbey. Meanwhile a hidden machine puffed out fog that swirled around our knees.

After seeing BLUE LAGOON in Hollywood we were directed behind the theater. There Columbia Pictures wizards had transformed a parking lot into a Polynesian beach. In New Mexico I waited on a dusty movie set for the Lone Ranger to gallop up on his great white horse Silver. (Unfortunately Ranger suffered a wardrobe malfunction (split his pants) and arrived by stagecoach instead.)

That by the way was not the current Lone Ranger box office flop. It was an earlier Lone Ranger box office flop starring Klinton Spilsbury. Who? Exactly.

A sense of the absurd helped. Like at the CADDYSHACK party in Rockefeller Center’s plaza (the one you see in movies about New York). The plaza is a level down from the street and open to the sky. Passersby look down on you. I looked back up, sipped my cocktail and thought, “My God, they shot the Czar for living like this!”

That was then and this is now and yes there’s times when I miss it. But then something happens to make me realize that I don’t. Not entirely anyway. Certainly not the many clinkers I had to sit through. Which brings me to having just sat through IDENTITY THIEF.

   

According to its DVD box IDENTITY THIEF is “hilarious” as well as “smart and funny.” Two (count ‘em) hilarious (There’s that word again) comedy stars (Melissa McCarthy and John Bateman).

Uh uh. Predictable plot, unlikable characters, unnecessary “ehuu” moments. Hippo of a movie, lying on its back, waving its stubby feet in the air, begging to be thought of as sharp and funny and just not making it.

Kind of movie people should be paid to sit through. Come to think of it, kind of movie I was paid to sit through.

Dad out. 

    

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