Here’s What Happened to Lassie and Actor Jon Provost Before, During and After the Classic TV Show

‘Lassie’ Remains Popular Despite Changing Society

While Jon’s views of the show’s strengths make perfect sense, on the surface it would seem to be a little out of step in what can best be described as more cynical times. “What blows me away,” he replies, “is when I’m at a Comic-Con signing autographs and meeting with people. When people my age come up and say they grew up with the show or learned something from it, that’s great, but their children, who are young adults, or their grandchildren come up and say, ‘Oh, wow, you’re really him!’ It just goes over all these different generations, and I’m not sure you could reproduce that today.”

Love for the Collie

“And then there’s the dog thing,” Jon points out. “People nowadays, the amount of money they are spending on their dogs and cats is amazing. Every year there’s a National Collie Convention. It’s held in a different state every year and people come from all over the world. The last one I went to, there were over 400 dogs that were all collies. People come up to me when I’m in a venue like that and they will say, ‘I want to thank you, because you’re the reason I’ve been raising Collies for 45 years.’ So it transcends all barriers. There is just such a love for those dogs.”

The Earliest Days

One could argue that that love began way back in 1859, when British writer Elizabeth Gaskell wrote a short story called “The Half-Brothers.” Introducing Lassie to the world, she put the poor collie to work right away, having her attempt to rescue the brothers from freezing to death in the snow. It’s also one of the few times that Lassie actually fails: one of the brothers dies, while she saves the other.

Real Life Lassie

An alternate theory is that Lassie was actually inspired by a real incident during World War I. In The Shipwreck Guide to Dorset and South Devon, author Nigel Clarke says that a collie named Lassie in England saved the life of a sailor following the Germans torpedoing the Royal Navy battleship Formidable. The story of this courageous dog was spread to anyone who would listen.

‘Lassie: The Novel’

Author Eric Knight wrote a 1938 short story for The Saturday Evening Post called “Lassie-Come Home,” which, two years later, he expanded into a novel with the same name. Set during Depression-era England, the story has Lassie tracking down her master, whose family was forced to sell their home and move, across a great distance.

Over the years, Lassie has been featured in no less than 50 books designed for readers of different ages. Some are novels, some are more picture books, but all told it’s pretty impressive considering the authors are telling the adventures of a dog.

Lassie Starred in Seven Movies from 1943 to 1951

The first adaptation of everyone's favorite rough collie arrived on the big screen in the form of 1943's Lassie Come Home. Following the storyline of the novel, it stars the (very) young Roddy McDowall as Joe Carraclough and Elizabeth Taylor as Priscilla. Lassie was played by Pal. This was followed by Son of Lassie (1945), Courage of Lassie (1946), which marked Elizabeth Taylor’s first starring role; Hills of Home (1948), The Sun Comes Up (1949), Challenge to Lassie (1949), and The Painted Hills (1951). What’s so surprising is that out of those seven films, three of them didn’t use the name Lassie in the title. These days, a studio would never release a franchise film and not have the star character in the title somewhere. Much later, there was a pair of movies (one in 1994 and the other in 2005) simply given the name Lassie, though they were fairly unmemorable.

Meet the Family

Enjoying a long life of 18 years (spanning from 1940 to 1958), Pal is the Rough Collie who played Lassie in seven feature films and two TV pilots. In between, he became a major draw for crowds at shows, fairs, and rodeos around America. Few dogs enjoyed a career with such longevity. When Pal died in June of 1958, he was privately buried on Rudd’s ranch, so don’t make plans to visit Lassie’s grave anytime soon.

Family Ties

Keeping things in the family, Pal’s son Lassie Junior played the part until 1959, but then retired due to being afflicted with cancer. His son, Spook, briefly played the part, although he was never comfortable on the set. Rudd got him to power through, though, while his brother, Baby, was being trained to take over. And Baby did so, working the show for six years, but dying at the age of eight (all the other Lassies lived to be at least 17). Mire took over from 1966-71, with Hey Hey coming in for 1971-73.

Lassie is a Female Character Mostly Played by Male Dogs

Originally cast in the role of Lassie in Lassie Come Home was a female collie, but the producers replaced her with a male when she began to shed excessively as the film was in production during the summer. Others commented that the male collie Pal just looked more impressive in the part. What we do know is that in that first film, MGM head Louis B. Mayer commented that Pal went in the river, but Lassie came out; and upon watching Pal in action, the demand was made for more footage to be shot.

Lassie Was Trained By Rudd Weatherwax

Not only did he train Pal, who we know played Lassie in a string of films from the 1940s to the early ’50s, Rudd Weatherwax also trained collies for the 20-year run of the Lassie television series. And as if that wasn’t enough, he trained the dog Spike for Disney’s Old Yeller (1957). What was an amazing stroke of luck is that when the seventh Lassie film, The Painted Hills, was released, MGM made it clear there were no intentions of producing anymore. With the studio owing Rudd $40,000 in back pay, he, instead, said he would accept all rights to the Lassie name and trademark. Thinking they were making the better deal, the studio went for it. Hah!

As to the photo above, Rudd did such a great job with Pal, that he could make public appearances like any other celebrity, such as encountering the Lone Ranger and Tonto.

There Was Even a ‘Lassie’ Radio Series

It’s hard to imagine how you would take a series that is essentially about a dog and make it a riveting radio series where everything is sound-based. But they did, and The Lassie Show was broadcast from 1947-48 on ABC Radio, and 1948-50 on NBC Radio.

Lassie Finally Comes to Television

With the film series played out, but sensing that there was still a lot of love out there for Lassie, the decision was made to bring her adventures to the small screen. The show remains the fourth-longest running primetime show in US history, behind The Simpsons, Gunsmoke and Law & Order. Lassie ran from 1954 to 1973 on CBS and then moved to first-run syndication from 1971-73. During that time, the first 10 seasons were filmed in black and white, the remaining nine in color.

Lassie Gets Two Shots

What’s interesting is that occasionally, a potential TV series will get a second pilot in the hopes of selling a show when the network has rejected the first (Star Trek is a perfect example). What was unusual about Lassie is that two pilots were intended from the beginning. The first showcased the bond between a boy and his dog, while the second was designed to give a look at what a typical episode would be like. It worked, and CBS placed the show on its 1954 schedule, premiering on September 12th at 7:00 p.m. — where it would remain for 17 years.

The Human Cast Underwent Changes as Time Went On

The early years of the show focused on farm widow Ellen Miller (Jan Clayton), her elderly father-in-law, George "Gramps" Miller (George Cleveland), and Ellen’s 11-year-old son Jeff Miller (Tommy Rettig), with stories set in their small farming community. Things changed in 1957 when both Ellen and Jeff said that they wanted to leave the show. In response, the decision was made to find a new boy to bond with Lassie and the show would start to follow them. Six-year-old Jon Provost was hired as Timmy for Season 4, with Cloris Leachman and Jon Shepodd cast as his foster parents. Cloris became unhappy, fought with her co-workers and this, coupled with falling ratings (apparently the audience wasn’t fond of her either) resulted in yet another change being made.

Right Place, Right Time

“I’m a super believer in being at the right place at the right time,” Jon notes, “because the only reason I got into the business is not  because my mom and dad wanted me to. My mother was not in show business; she grew up in a little farm in Texas and her idol growing up was Jane Wyman. Well, she was a seamstress when she came to L.A. and that’s how she made her living. When my parents got married, she read an ad in the LA Times that Warner Bros was looking for two to three year old blond boys to be in a movie starring Jane Wyman. My mom thought if she took me on this audition, she was going to meet Jane Wyman and get her autograph. That was the only reason she took me. There were over 200 little boys and little girls whose moms had cut their hair to look like little boysAnd I got the job. How crazy is that?”

That film was 1952’s So Big, which was followed by small roles in The Country Girl (1954), He Laughed Last  and Back from Eternity and Toward the Unknown (all 1956), and All Mine to Give and Escapade in Japan (both 1957). He was cast as Timmy on Lassie, as noted, in 1957.

‘Lassie’ Gets a New Family

At the start of the fifth season, Timmy had new foster parents in the form of June Lockhart (who starred in the film Son of Lassie, and would go on to star in the TV show Lost in Space) and Broadway star Hugh Reilly. Although the show’s ratings had suffered because of the previous changing of casts, it began to rise in 1960 with the new family and reached #13 (its highest placement during the entire run) in 1964.

Jon remembers his co-stars fondly, though of June Lockhart he offers, “She’s going to be 94 at the end of this month and she’s doing great. I spoke with her a few weeks back and we’ve kept in touch since day one. We were like a big family.”

Animal Kingdom

Jon, who was born on March 12, 1950 in Los Angeles, looks back at his acting career as the best collection of “home movies” he could hope for. “I just watched a clip the other day from So Big, my first movie, and my second movie, Country Girl, with Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly. I’m barely four years old. Come on, who has stuff like that? And then I did 249 half-hour episodes of Lassie, probably only a third of which I remember, because on any given day we could be filming from three different scripts. As a child, I never read a script straight through; I only read what I had to do the next day, so I didn’t really know what was going on half the time. I just showed up, but I did have fun most of the time. Now I can watch those episodes and it brings back all these great memories.

“We were watching this episode the other day,” he reflects, “and, truthfully, I didn’t remember a thing. But I should have, because it was an episode where me and my friend were protecting a penguin. Come on, I was holding a penguin. We worked with alligators, ostriches and elephants — you name it, we did it — and a lot of those I remember. You’d think I’d remember a penguin.”

Co-Stars

Jon shares that even before meeting Lassie, animals had been a part of his life. “I’ve always been raised around animals,” he says. “We were living somewhat rural outside of Los Angeles. My sister and I had a horse, we had a goat and dogs and cats. But I loved Lassie. I was on the show for seven years and worked with three different dogs.The last dog I worked with for five years, so obviously he and I bonded. We loved each other, but the funny thing is that I would ask him to do something — shake hands, lay down, whatever — and he would look at me like he was saying, ‘You’re my friend, but you’re not my trainer.’ He wouldn’t do anything I told him to. He would only respond to his trainer and the assistants, but it had to be that way.”

Weekends with Lassie

“On Friday after work,” he elaborates, “I would jump in the station wagon with Lassie and laugh. Rudd Weatherwax would drive out to his ranch out in the San Fernando Valley, I’d spend the weekend there and then come back to work Monday morning. For me it was a chance to get away from the city and have fun. It was also a great way for me and the dog to bond. And we did everything together. But, again, he was so well-trained. Rudd Weatherwax was incredible the way he trained his animals. I learned a lot from him. And the funny thing is that the dog made  less mistakes than June Lockhart made. All the actors made more mistakes than the dog.”

Jon Says Goodbye to ‘Lassie’

After seven seasons and 249 episodes, and having turned 14, Jon decided that the time was right for him to leave the show, despite the fact that producers wanted to sign him up for another three years. “I started when I was seven and by the time I left I was going through puberty,” he offers in explanation. “Everyone, including the girls, thought of me as little Timmy. Well, I’m not. I wanted out and my parents were great. They said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I told them I wanted to continue to work — I totally enjoyed that part of it, but I wanted to move on. I was tired of being Timmy. That was it. I’d spent a lot of time with the dogs, now I was looking at the girls.”

Say Hello to Lassie the Forest Ranger

With Jon (and therefore Timmy) leaving the show in 1964, the producers decided to change the format of Lassie. At that point, the farm stories were abandoned and Lassie started working with the US Forest Service, helping out wherever she could. Now it wasn’t only Timmy that would fall in the well! The so-called “Ranger Years” were represented by Seasons 11 through 16. But all good things come to an end, and in Season 17 things changed — without explanation — and Lassie traveled on her own, getting involved with people in different locations (think of The Fugitive, but, you know, with a dog). Then things more or less came full circle for Seasons 18 and 19, when Lassie became a part of the Holden Ranch, a home for orphaned boys.

Lassie gets animated.

Running from 1973-75, this Saturday morning animated show, Lassie’s Rescue Rangers, had Lassie working with the ranger-rescue team, The Forest Force, consisting of the Turner family as well as Groucho the owl, Toothless the mountain lion, Musty the skunk (oh, boy), and Robbie the raccoon. We’ve never seen an episode, and likely won’t. If you do … let us know what you think.

And then there was a sequel series.

In 1989, we got the syndicated series The New Lassie, which ran until 1992 and starred Christopher and Dee Wallace-Stone as Chris and Dee McCullough (at least the actors wouldn’t have trouble remembering their characters’ names), a couple in Glen Ride, California. Chris’ brother, Steve, turns out to be the adult Timmy from the original series (too convoluted to explain here). And Lassie was the fifth generation of the original, trained by Rudd Weatherwax’s son, Robert.

“That was a ball,” Jon, who these days interacts with fans at conventions around the country and has always been involved with animal rights, enthuses, “and I totally enjoyed it. Got to work with June Lockhart again and Roddy McDowall and Bob Weatherwax, the son of Rudd. Since then, I’ve done some voiceovers, a couple of independent small parts and it all just goes on. June told me this many, many years ago when I was young: ‘Jon, if you’re in this business, you do it. When you get older, you just play all the parts.’ So the door is always open.”

‘Timmy’s in the Well: The Jon Provost Story’

Let’s face it: all in all, that collie — the most famous dog in Hollywood — has had one heck of a life. And Jon’s hasn’t been too bad, either. In fact, he reflected on it all in his 2007 autobiography Timmy’s in the Well: The Jon Provost Story. “I went with that as the title, because we all fall in wells and we either get to be pulled out or we don’t,” he explains. “So we just thought it was appropriate, and the book was a lot of fun to do. Doing it, I learned more about myself than I knew. It starts at day one and goes all the way through to the point when the book came out. What it’s really about is a normal American family. My parents weren’t Hollywood people. My father was from Mobile, Alabama. My mom was from Wolf City, Texas. They met in Hollywood, got married in the forties. I had an older brother and an older sister. And then, all of a sudden, there’s this big celebrity in the family. How does that affect the family? I think it’s a good read.”