Lassie is trying to find her way home. She will have to run all the way from Colorado to California. Her loving owner is looking for her too.
Director: Don Chaffey
Stars: James Stewart, Mickey Rooney, Pernell Roberts, Stephanie Zimbalist, Alice Faye, Mike Mazurki.
Watched online, blurry.
Soundtracks is a mess, with 21 listings, but it looks like every song is tripled. But I don't think they were played thrice. All Written by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman. The songs just made the film drag.
The poster is deceptive. MR is NOT part of the family, which is JS, SZ, the boy and the dog. MR is just one of the people that Lassie meets on her journey back home.
This was tedious beyond it's short-ish runtime. I expected a Lassie film to be sentimental, but hoped JS and AF would elevate it. Nope.
AF was a waitress who met the boy on his journey to find Lassie. She sings along to a Sherman Brothers song by Pat Boone (on the jukebox). She doesn't sound good. PB does.
The filmmakers tried to heighten the tension by showing JS and or the boy crossing paths with Lassie while out on the road trying to get back to each other, but it just caused eye roll: the coincidence was too great.
How the journeys began: PR is a wine tycoon who wants JS's land. When JS won't sell, PR decides he wants the dog. So he claims that Lassie was his when he lived nearby, and she has the ear tattoo to verify it. He has enough pedigree paperwork to back his claim, so he takes her to Colorado where he lives now.
When PR calls JS to report Lassie missing (he figures she'll head that way), after a couple of days the boy goes out to search for her.
SZ has a young lawyer friend (bf wannabe) who researches Lassie's ownership more carefully and shows PR lied. The dog had been sold, so he was not the last official owner before the JS family rescued her. (She was wandering.)
The boy is rescued from a cattle truck just as it's being loaded, and goes home. Lassie befriends a kitten and saves it from a fiery death, then completes her journey back home.
(I've left out plenty. It's a long 1:40.)
distr. Int'l Picture Show Co., dir. Chaffey; 5
