Lassie Come Home

And he was the kid, by the way.

The press release was when he was shooting Lassie Come Home at MGM with Elizabeth Taylor, who was nine and he was 12, they were both also shooting The White Cliffs of Dover at 20th Century Fox and were going back and forth between both films in two different time periods.

And that was when 20th Century Fox issued a press release trumpeting, you know, bragging about the fact that little Roddy McDowell had broken the studio record for most days worked in a row without a day off, 110 days.

Good Lord.

Hm.

Hm.And once for Lassie Comes Home.

Uh-huh.

When did he take the photo?

Margaret came from a very wealthy Cleveland family, and she had horses and she was a foxhunter, and she had this beautiful estate east of Cleveland, which was 10 minutes from my house that I could walk to, and she had Smooth Collies.

And of course, I was a bookworm, nerdy kid, and I read Lad: A Sunny Bank and Lassie Come Home and all that stuff.

I've always loved Collies, still do.

And- I was in heaven, and she put me to work.

there was this story about Lassie, a collie dog who was lost.

I think that made into a film called Lassie Come Home.

I remember that film.

I watched it as a kid.

That's what he did.

And I mean, it really is remarkable as you track his career and you see from his performances in How Green Was My Valley and Lassie, and then you fast forward and you look at what he was doing as Cornelius in Planet of the Apes, or you look at him showing up in things like Poseidon, how he was he never seemed bound by being tied to a specific genre, being tied to a type of movie.

He kind of just appears everywhere.

Well, he liked to work.

He's just everywhere.

Yeah.

Well, when you think about his relationship with Elizabeth, I mean, from Lassie come home all the way, you know, up, I mean, they sort of sprinkled in and out of each other's lives.

Well, I think I think it was love at first sight for that 12 year old and nine year old.

Lassie.

So Lassie first appeared on screen in 1943 in the MGM classic Lassie Come Home with a dog named Pal playing Lassie.

Her trainer was Rudd Weatherwatz, who would later also work with the dog who played Old Yeller and the beagle who served as the New York Mets team.

Powell appeared as Lassie in six other MGM films through 1951.