Challenge to Lassie | |
---|---|
Directed by | Richard Thorpe |
Screenplay by | William Ludwig |
Based on | Greyfriars Bobby 1912 novel by Eleanor Atkinson |
Produced by | Robert Sisk |
Starring | Donald Crisp Edmund Gwenn Geraldine Brooks Pal (credited as "Lassie") |
Cinematography | Charles Edgar Schoenbaum |
Edited by | George White |
Music by | André Previn |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Loew's Inc. |
Release date |
|
Running time | 76 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $775,000 [1] |
Box office | $1,155,000 [1] |
Challenge to Lassie is an American drama directed by Richard Thorpe in Technicolor and released October 31, 1949, by MGM Studios. It was the fifth feature film starring the original Lassie, a collie named Pal, and the fourth and final Lassie film starring Donald Crisp.
The movie is based on Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson's 1912 novel Greyfriars Bobby which in turn is based on the supposedly true story of Greyfriars Bobby. Twelve years after starring in Challenge to Lassie, Crisp would star in another movie based on the novel and produced by Walt Disney titled, Greyfriars Bobby .
Set in Scotland in 1860, the film tells the story of a rough collie named Lassie whose master, Jock Gray, is killed by robbers in Edinburgh. After his death, the dog keeps a constant vigil beside her master's grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard, which is in violation of the local dog laws. In the original novel, the title dog was a Skye Terrier named Bobby and his owner dies from pneumonia.
Jock Gray (Donald Crisp) raises his collie Lassie to be an extraordinary sheep dog and companion. When he is beaten to death by robbers after he retires, Lassie keeps vigil over his grave and refuses to let anyone else take ownership of her. However, the law requires that all dogs be leashed and licensed by a legal owner. With no owner to pay her license and her only "home" being the church graveyard, Lassie faces an uncertain future.
Her late owner's friend John Traill (Edmund Gwenn), his law student son William (Ross Ford), and the keepers of the graveyard struggle to keep Lassie hidden from the zealous police Sergeant Davie (Reginald Owen) and the town magistrate (Edmund Breon). Matters are brought to a head when they must go to court to plead for the dog's life before the Lord Provost.
In 2010, Film Score Monthly released the complete scores of the seven Lassie feature films released by MGM between 1943 and 1955 as well as Elmer Bernstein’s score for It's a Dog's Life (1955) in the CD collection Lassie Come Home: The Canine Cinema Collection, limited to 1000 copies. Due to the era when these scores were recorded, nearly half of the music masters have been lost so the scores had to be reconstructed and restored from the best available sources, mainly the Music and Effects tracks as well as monaural ¼″ tapes. [2]
The score for Challenge to Lassie was composed by André Previn. The music-and-effects tracks from Challenge to Lassie supplied by the studio were missing approximately 10 minutes of the score. In order to provide the most complete listening experience of this early Previn effort, FSM has taken these missing tracks directly from the film, incorporated in chronological film order along with the music-and-effects tracks. [2]
Track listing for Challenge to Lassie (Disc 4)
Contains Sound Effects
†Contains Dialogue
Total Time: 23:04
According to MGM records the film earned $850,000 in the US and Canada and $330,000 overseas resulting in a loss to the studio of $156,000. [1]
Challenge to Lassie was released to VHS on July 15, 1997 as part of the Lassie Collection series. It featured Geraldine Brooks on the cover with Lassie and was in a clamshell case. A second VHS version was released on September 1, 1998 featuring Donald Crisp and Lassie on the cover and in a standard slipcover case.
Lassie Come Home is a 1943 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Technicolor feature film starring Roddy McDowall and canine actor Pal, in a story about the profound bond between Yorkshire boy Joe Carraclough and his rough collie, Lassie. The film was directed by Fred M. Wilcox from a screenplay by Hugo Butler based upon the 1940 novel Lassie Come-Home by Eric Knight. The film was the first in a series of seven MGM films starring "Lassie."
Lassie is a fictional female Rough Collie dog and is featured in a 1938 short story by Eric Knight that was later expanded to a 1940 full-length novel, Lassie Come-Home. Knight's portrayal of Lassie bears some features in common with another fictional female collie of the same name, featured in the British writer Elizabeth Gaskell's 1859 short story "The Half Brothers". In "The Half Brothers", Lassie is loved only by her young master and guides the adults back to where two boys are lost in a snowstorm.
Greyfriars Bobby was a Skye Terrier or Dandie Dinmont Terrier who became known in 19th-century Edinburgh for spending 14 years guarding the grave of his owner until he died on 14 January 1872. The story continues to be well known in Scotland, through several books and films. A prominent commemorative statue and nearby graves are a tourist attraction.
Donald William Crisp was an English film actor as well as an early producer, director and screenwriter. His career lasted from the early silent film era into the 1960s. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1942 for his performance in How Green Was My Valley.
Edmund Gwenn was an English actor. On film, he is best remembered for his role as Kris Kringle in the Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street (1947), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the corresponding Golden Globe Award. He received a second Golden Globe and another Academy Award nomination for the comedy film Mister 880 (1950). He is also remembered for his appearances in four films directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson was an American writer, journalist and teacher.
Pal was a male Rough Collie performer and the first in a line of such dogs to portray the fictional female collie Lassie in film, on radio, and on television. In 1992, The Saturday Evening Post said Pal had "the most spectacular canine career in film history".
A Yank at Oxford is a 1938 comedy-drama film directed by Jack Conway and starring Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O'Sullivan, Vivien Leigh and Edmund Gwenn. The screenplay was written by John Monk Saunders and Leon Gordon. The film was produced by MGM-British at Denham Studios.
Lassie is a 2005 adventure comedy-drama film based on Eric Knight's 1940 novel Lassie Come-Home about the profound bond between Joe Carraclough and his rough collie, Lassie. The film was directed, written, and co-produced by Charles Sturridge and is a production of Samuel Goldwyn Films. The film stars Jonathan Mason and was distributed by Roadside Attractions and released in the UK on 16 December 2005. Filming took place in Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man. The supporting cast features Peter O'Toole, Samantha Morton, Peter Dinklage, Edward Fox, and John Lynch. The film was generally reviewed positively by critics, but performed poorly at the box office.
Son of Lassie is a 1945 American Technicolor feature film produced by MGM based on characters created by Eric Knight, and starring Peter Lawford, Donald Crisp, June Lockhart and Pal. A sequel to Lassie Come Home (1943), the film focuses on the now adult Joe Carraclough after he joins the Royal Air Force during World War II and is shot down over Nazi-occupied Norway along with a stowaway, Lassie's son "Laddie" – played by Pal. Son of Lassie was released theatrically on April 20, 1945, by Loew's.
The Sun Comes Up is a 1949 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Technicolor picture with Lassie. Jeanette MacDonald had been off the screen for five years until her return in Three Daring Daughters (1948), but The Sun Comes Up was to be her last. In it, she had to share the screen not with an up-and-coming younger actress but with a very popular animal star. Although her retreat from a film career can be blamed largely on an increasingly debilitating heart ailment, MacDonald continued to make concert and TV appearances after this. Her last radio performance was a broadcast version of this same story on The Screen Guild Theater in March 1950.
Greyfriars Bobby is a 1912 novel by Eleanor Atkinson based on the true story of the dog Greyfriars Bobby. The novel has been adapted into two films: Challenge to Lassie and Greyfriars Bobby. Both films starred Donald Crisp. The 1961 Walt Disney film Greyfriars Bobby: The True Story of a Dog was also based on this book. This novel is written from the point-of-view of the dog, Bobby, and uses Scottish dialogue as the novel is set in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Lassie is a Canadian television series which aired from 1997 to 1999 on YTV in Canada and Sunday nights on the Animal Planet network in the United States, as a modified remake of the original Lassie series (1954–1973) about a boy and his faithful dog. As with previous Lassie TV versions and several films dating back to the original Lassie Come Home film of 1943, the star was Lassie, a trained Rough Collie.
Greyfriars Bobby is a 1961 American drama film starring Donald Crisp and Laurence Naismith in a story about two Scottish men who compete for the affection of a Skye Terrier named Bobby. The screenplay by Robert Westerby was based upon the 1912 novel Greyfriars Bobby by Eleanor Atkinson which was based, in turn, upon an incident in 19th century Edinburgh involving a dog that came to be known as Greyfriars Bobby. It was the second film based upon Atkinson's novel, the first being Challenge to Lassie in which Crisp also starred. The film was directed by Don Chaffey and shot at Shepperton Studios and on location in Scotland. The film has been released to DVD and Disney+.
The Painted Hills, also known as Lassie's Adventures in the Goldrush, is a 1951 drama western film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and directed by Harold F. Kress.
Hills of Home is a 1948 American Technicolor drama film, the fourth in a series of seven MGM Lassie films. It starred Edmund Gwenn, Donald Crisp, and Tom Drake.
Courage of Lassie is a 1946 American Technicolor MGM feature film featuring Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Morgan, and dog actor Pal.
Thunder in the Valley is a 1947 American Technicolor drama film directed by Louis King and starring Lon McCallister, Peggy Ann Garner and Edmund Gwenn. It is based on the 1898 novel Owd Bob by Alfred Ollivant, which has previously been adapted into a 1938 film of the same title. The film was produced and distributed by 20th Century Fox and cost a reported $1.9 million. It was released in Britain under the alternative title Bob, Son of Battle.
It's a Dog's Life is a 1955 American comedy drama film directed by Herman Hoffman and starring Jeff Richards, Edmund Gwenn and Jarma Lewis. It is adapted from Richard Harding Davis’s 1903 novel The Bar Sinister.
John Traill was the owner of Traill's Temperance Coffee House which was regularly visited by Greyfriars Bobby.