Forbidden Planet is a 1956 American science fiction film, produced by Nicholas Nayfack, directed by Fred M. Wilcox, that stars Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, and Leslie Nielsen. Shot in Eastmancolor and CinemaScope, it is considered one of the great science fiction films of the 1950s, a precursor of contemporary science fiction cinema. The characters and isolated setting have been compared to those in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, and the plot contains certain analogues to the play, leading many to consider it a loose adaptation.
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."
Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall was an English–American actor, voice artist, film director and photographer. He is best known for portraying Cornelius and Caesar in the original Planet of the Apes film series, as well as Galen in the spin-off television series. He began his acting career as a child in England, and then in the United States, in How Green Was My Valley (1941), My Friend Flicka (1943) and Lassie Come Home (1943).
Lassie is a fictional character created by Eric Knight. She is a female Rough Collie dog, and is featured in a short story that was later expanded to a full-length novel called 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.
Michael Charles Gauntlet Wilding was an English stage, television, and film actor. He is best known for a series of films he made with Anna Neagle, for the two films he made with Alfred Hitchcock and for being Elizabeth Taylor's second husband.
Frederick Leonard Clark was an American film and television character actor.
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. Pal was born in California in 1940 and eventually brought to the notice of Rudd Weatherwax, a Hollywood animal trainer. In 1943, the dog was chosen to play Lassie in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feature film Lassie Come Home. Following his film debut, Pal starred in six more Lassie films for MGM from the mid-1940s to early 1950s, then appeared briefly in shows, fairs, and rodeos around the United States before starring in the two pilots filmed in 1954 for the television series, Lassie. Pal retired after filming the television pilots, and died in June 1958. He sired a line of descendants who continued to play the fictional character he originated. In 1992, The Saturday Evening Post said Pal had "the most spectacular canine career in film history".
Lassie is an American television series that follows the adventures of a female Rough Collie dog named Lassie and her companions, both human and animal. The show was the creation of producer Robert Maxwell and animal trainer Rudd Weatherwax and was televised from September 12, 1954, to March 25, 1973. The fifth longest-running U.S. primetime television series after The Simpsons, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Gunsmoke and Law & Order, the show ran for 17 seasons on CBS before entering first-run syndication for its final two seasons. Initially filmed in black and white, the show transitioned to color in 1965.
Eric Mowbray Knight was an English novelist and screenwriter, who is mainly known for his 1940 novel Lassie Come-Home, which introduced the fictional collie Lassie. He took American citizenship in 1942 shortly before his death.
Milton R. Krasner, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer who won an Academy Award for Three Coins in the Fountain (1954).
Dan White was an American actor, well known for appearing in Western films and TV shows.
Son of Lassie is a 1945 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, 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 Screen Guild Theater in March 1950.
Family Classics is a Chicago television series which began in 1962 when Frazier Thomas was added to another program at WGN-TV. Thomas not only hosted classic films, but also selected the titles and personally edited them to remove those scenes which he thought were not fit for family viewing. After Thomas' death in 1985, Roy Leonard took over the program. The series continued sporadically until its initial cancellation in 2000.
Hills of Home is a 1948 Technicolor drama film, the fourth in a series of seven MGM Lassie films. It starred Edmund Gwenn, Donald Crisp, and Tom Drake.
Nelson Leigh was a prolific motion picture actor of the 1940s and 1950s.
Lassie Come-Home is a novel written by Eric Knight about a rough collie’s trek over many miles to be reunited with the boy she loves. Author Eric Knight introduced the reading public to the canine character of Lassie in a magazine story published on December 17, 1938, in The Saturday Evening Post, a story which he later expanded to a novel and published in 1940 to critical and commercial success. In 1943, the novel was adapted to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feature film Lassie Come Home starring Roddy McDowall as the boy Joe Carraclough, Pal as Lassie, and featuring Elizabeth Taylor. The motion picture was selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry. A remake of Lassie Come Home, entitled Lassie, was released in 2005.
MGM Children's Matinees were a series of vintage MGM family films that were re-released to theatres between 1970 and 1972. As the name implies, they were shown only as Saturday and Sunday matinees, usually just before the showing of the main feature which happened to be playing at the theatre at that time. The films ranged from old favorites such as The Wizard of Oz (1939), Lassie Come Home (1943), and The Secret Garden (1949), to later widescreen films such as the 1960 remake of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, to then-recent fare such as Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion.
Frank Reppy Wilcox was an American actor. He appeared in numerous films and television series, as well as Broadway plays.
David Newell was primarily known as an American character actor, whose acting career spanned from the very beginning of the sound film era through the middle of the 1950s. He made his film debut in a featured role in The Hole in the Wall, a 1929 film starring Edward G. Robinson and Claudette Colbert. Early in his career he had many featured roles, in such films as: RKO's The Runaway Bride in 1929, starring Mary Astor; 1931's Ten Cents a Dance, starring Barbara Stanwyck and directed by Lionel Barrymore; and White Heat in 1934. He would occasionally receive a starring role, as in 1930's Just Like Heaven, which co-starred Anita Louise. However, by the mid-1930s he was being relegated to mostly smaller supporting roles. Some of the more notable films he appeared in include: A Star is Born (1937), which stars Janet Gaynor and Fredric March; Blondie (1938); the Bette Davis vehicle, Dark Victory (1939); Day-Time Wife (1939), starring Tyrone Power and Linda Darnell; It's a Wonderful World (1939), with James Stewart and Claudette Colbert; Rings on Her Fingers (1942), starring Henry Fonda and Gene Tierney; the Danny Kaye and Dinah Shore film, Up in Arms (1944), which also stars Dana Andrews; 1947's Killer McCoy with Mickey Rooney, Brian Donlevy, and Ann Blyth; Homecoming (1948), starring Clark Gable, Lana Turner, and Anne Baxter; That Wonderful Urge (1949), starring Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney; David and Bathsheba (1951), starring Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward; and Cecil B. DeMille's 1952 blockbuster, The Greatest Show on Earth. During his 25-year acting career, he appeared in over 110 films. His final appearance in film was in 1954's The Eddie Cantor Story, in which he had a small supporting role.
