Frequently Asked Questions

I enjoy all the letters I get from Lassie fans, but some questions by now are "regulars." Hope this provides some up-front answers for those times when I cannot get directly to my e-mail.

• Where can I watch Lassie?
  
• Why doesn't Discovery Kids show [fill in name of episode]?
  
• Why isn't Animal Planet showing Lassie anymore?
  
• Whatever happened to [name a character or actor on the series]?
  
• How can I contact/get an autograph from [name an actor on the series]?
  
• How can I contact Bob Weatherwax / get Lassie to appear at my charity event / find out where Lassie is making an appearance?
  
• Which Lassie "are they on now"?
  
• Can you help me get a copy of a certain Lassie episode?
  
• I have a Lassie book/comic/toy, etc. Can you tell me how much it's worth?
  
• I hear Eric Knight wrote a lot of collie books. I'd like to read them. What are their titles?
  
• Why did you miss this Lassie movie on your movie list? / I remember these scenes from a Lassie movie, but it doesn't seem to go with anything on your movie list, so which movie is it?
  
• What episodes do these syndication titles correspond with: Jeff's Collie, Timmy and Lassie, and Lassie?
  
• How many episodes of the original series were made? I see different numbers for the totals.
  
• Where's Calverton? (a.k.a. Where did Lassie take place?)
  
• What was the make and model of the truck used on Lassie?
  
• How many times did Lassie "have puppies" on the series?
  
• What was it that Jeff and Porky used to yell to each other when they met?
  
• Did Gramps/George Cleveland really die on the show?
  
• What happened to Uncle Petrie?
  
• Other television shows are always making jokes about Timmy being trapped in a well. Which episode was that?
  
• What happened to Corey Stuart?
  
• Was Uncle Steve on The New Lassie really supposed to be Timmy?

  The following questions are answered on the Lassie Facts page:

• Donald Keeler and that kid on The Addams Family look a lot alike—are they related?
  
• That's Lassie as the dog in the movie Hondo, right?

  And here's an entire page just for the different versions of the Lassie theme songs and opening titles and closing credits sequences.

The Discovery Kids cable channel is still showing Lassie, but at the wee hours of the morning (4 a.m. Eastern time to 6 a.m.) They are only showing the Timmy and later episodes, none with Jeff.

A detailed cable guide that lists Discovery Kids or the website Discovery Kids Weekly TV Listings will tell you when these episodes air.

TVLand in Canada is showing Lassie three times a day, including once in "prime time" (the same episode all three times) starting with the Jeff episodes. If you are a Canadian viewer, please consult your listings for the time. The Timmy episodes are now showing as of January 2007. Express Vu and Starchoice provide this channel on satellite.

Chicago's Channel 23 shows the Timmy episodes of Lassie.

Canada's Pet Network shows the 1997 Animal Planet series on Saturdays, two episodes at 6 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. with repeats at 10 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. and again at 4 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. [Thanks, Steve!]

Beats me. Since Discovery Kids never answers their e-mails we may never know.

I think this is a pretty accurate list of the episodes Discovery Kids has skipped (plus others that have aired before but are not being shown now). I did not count any of the theme-connected episodes that were edited into "movies," like "Countdown" or most of the Neeka episodes (these are listed on the Lassie media page) because I know they're not in the syndication package anyway. Darn.

The ones with question marks I wasn't sure about.

"Old Henry" is listed because, although Discovery Kids lists it as showing, when you actually watch the episode for that day it's something else. (Maybe someone put the wrong tape or film in the box labeled "Old Henry"?)

Reruns of the classic series are on Discovery Kids (see above). Both DK and Animal Planet are owned by the Discovery Channel. I do not know why Animal Planet isn't showing their own series any longer.

However, the first season of the Animal Planet Lassie series is available in Canada from Amazon.ca and other Canadian mail order DVD sites. It is in Region 1 format so it is playable on US DVD players without the need for hacking or a multi-region player.

Check out the "Whatever Happened to..." link on the main page. These are facts garnered from the Internet Movie Database, since I have no contact with the actors on the series. Jon Provost does have his own website, cited below, and is working on an autobiography, Timmy's in the Well.

Although I have heard from several people who have worked on/are connected with the series, I have no connection to the series and do not personally know any of the performers; plus, I would not give out e-mail addresses without permission. So I have no idea how you would contact any of the surviving actors from the series. You can try writing to Jon Provost via his website: http://www.jonprovost.com. At one time, Bob Weatherwax had the web page Bob Weatherwax and Lassie.com, but it looks like the domain was allowed to lapse. Someone has a so-called "Lassie site" there now, but it is just generic dog training hints plus information cribbed from this site, and Bob Weatherwax has no connection with it. Bob Weatherwax's official site is now Weatherwax Trained Dogs and autographs may be available via this route, but I don't know for certain. The e-mail is bobwdogs@aol.com.

Autographed photos from the series are also sold on e-Bay as well as other auction sites.

See the Weatherwax Trained Dogs site.

The ninth generation Lassie is presently working and has just appeared in a cameo role in the new Charles Sturridge movie Lassie, based on Lassie Come Home, which was filmed in Ireland and is scheduled to be released in the US in September of 2006. This Lassie will be touring the United States promoting a new all-natural dog food this summer. For tour cities and dates, see the Official Lassie Website.

Probably not. I only have selected episodes, so chances are anything I have won't be what you want. (I only have Jeff and Timmy episodes.) I also work extended hours and really don't have much free time to copy things. Lastly, I have no way to do so.

Please check the link on the main page labeled "Movies/Comics/Other Media." It has a section on Lassie episodes that are available on videotape and DVD or that have been available on videotape. The ones that are no longer "in print" also may be found on e-Bay as well as other auction sites. See the Movies and Other Media page for more details.

No, sorry. I don't know values of anything as I don't sell any merchandise, and I don't collect any Lassie merchandise for its value. Please don't e-mail me about values of Lassie merchandise; I'll just have to disappoint you by saying I don't know. You can check out several books to find out how much your collectible might be worth. There is a comic price guide book that will give you the prices on all comics. If you have one of the little Golden Books, there is a Golden Book price guide. If you have a Lassie toy, there are toy price guides. A subject search on "price guides" on a book site like Amazon.com would probably find you what you're looking for.

You might also check out web auction sites like e-Bay and Amazon.com auctions to see what your Lassie piece is selling for. I've gotten several questions about the Lassie ring that was given out as a premium in the late 50's (featured in the episode "The Ring"). This ring turns up all the time on e-Bay. I did read an article that suggests this item has sold "for up to $500." That doesn't mean it is actually valued at that price.

As far as I know, Knight only wrote one dog story, Lassie Come-Home, first as a short story for The Saturday Evening Post in 1938, then as a novel in 1942. You may be thinking of Albert Payson Terhune, who did indeed write "a lot of collie books," and who, because he and Knight both wrote about a collie protagonist who became extremely well known, is often confused with Eric Knight (a Lassie article in a Florida newspaper did just this and was published without correction). (The two men were at least a generation apart, with Terhune the elder.) Terhune's first collection of collie stories was Lad: a Dog (1919), and some of the others were Lad of Sunnybank, The Further Adventures of Lad, Bruce, His Dog, Treve, Buff: A Collie, A Highland Collie, Lochinvar Luck, Gray Dawn, and Wolf. You may have read one of his most famous collie short stories in school or in a collection of dog stories: "One Minute Longer," which was originally published in 1919 in St. Nicholas magazine.

Here is a great Albert Payson Terhune website that includes photos of Sunnybank past and present. The "Books" link has a complete listing of all his books, dog-related and not. The "Magazines" page links two articles written by Terhune; the March 26, 1927 story "With a Reverse English" from The Saturday Evening Post contains pictures of the collies. The links are excellent, too.

Also, here are the text and pictures from "The Sunnybank Collies" from St. Nicholas magazine, March 1922.

Finally, see next question!

The scenes cited from this "missing" Lassie movie are typically as follows:

1. Lassie rescues a little girl from a poisonous snake, and the little girl's mother/some woman beats Lassie for attacking her instead because she didn't see the snake. Turns out Lassie was the one who was bitten instead. She wanders into the forest, given up for dead, but returns later all covered in mud. The mud has drawn the snake's poison out of the bite.
2. The wife of the couple who own Lassie gets very sick and is taken care of by a nurse. The nurse and Lassie hate each other, and when the wife is well again, Lassie tears the nurse's uniform off the clothesline and drags it around the yard.
3. Lassie is in a dog show and has to do some fancy obedience routine to beat another collie. The man handling the other collie has a cigar in his hand which confuses the dog.
4. There is a fire in the barn and Lassie's puppies are killed.

You won't find any description like that in the Lassie movie list because it's not a Lassie movie at all. In 1962, Warner Brothers adapted Albert Payson Terhune's (see above) novel Lad: A Dog into a color movie. Angela Cartwright, who was then starring as Linda on Make Room for Daddy, plays Angela, the little girl endangered by the snake, and Carroll O'Connor, later to gain TV immortality as Archie Bunker, played her snooty rich father, Hamilcar Q. Glure. He is the man with the cigar handling "the other collie" in the obedience contest. Lad's owners (named the Tremaynes rather than the Terhunes) were played by Peter Breck (later Nick in the long running television series The Big Valley) and Peggy McCay. All of the situations in the movie are adapted from the book, although things are changed to make a cohesive narrative: for instance, in the book, the little girl saved by Lad is not given a name, and she is not related to Hamilcar Q. Glure. There is no "Little Lad" puppy, just "Wolf."

I don't remember if the credits say who trained "Lad"—it might be a collie from the Weatherwax kennels—but this is certainly not Lassie, as the collie in the story has no blaze at all.

Note: The woman in the snake scene is motherless Angela's nurse and is played by Alice Pearce, who later became well-known to Bewitched fans for portraying snoopy Mrs. Kravitz (Pearce died and was replaced on that series by Sandra Gould). And, oh, only one of "Lassie's puppies" dies in the fire.

Seasons 1 through 3 and the first 13 episodes of Season 4 are syndicated as Jeff's Collie. The remainder of Season 4 through Season 10 are marketed under the title Timmy and Lassie. When the three-part story "The Wayfarers" (opening Season 11) are shown as individual episodes rather than a movie, they are also syndicated with the Timmy and Lassie package. Lassie consists of the remainder of Season 11 all the way through the end of the series (includes the Corey Stuart, Bob Erickson/Scott Turner, Lassie-on-her-own, and Holden Ranch episodes).

The total of episodes probably differs because many episodes have been pulled from the syndication lineup to make Lassie "movies," multiparters like "Lassie, Look Homeward" and "Lassie the Voyager" along with similarly-themed episodes that became The Adventures of Neeka or Flight of the Cougar, etc. Thus the episode count is coming up from the episodes remaining in the syndication circuit.

Total episodes broadcast were 591. Broken down:

103 with Jeff Miller
13 with Jeff and Timmy ¤ 27 with Timmy (Cloris Leachman/Jon Shepodd as parents) (40 fourth season total)
209 with Timmy Martin (June Lockhart/Hugh Reilly as parents)
125 with Corey Stuart
50 with Scott Turner and/or Bob Erickson
22 on her own
44 at the Holden Ranch

Anywhere you'd like to imagine it.

It's very difficult to pick out where in the United States Lassie was presumed to take place, and that was probably deliberate: so that people could imagine she was in their own backyards. All the Jeff episodes and the early Timmy stories feature a mixed-range type area with fields broken by stands of trees, including the infamous woods near the farm. Later episodes used a network of outcropping rocks ("Deadly Goats," for example, "The Rescue," "The Black Sheep," etc.) that look nothing like the earlier landscape, much more western.

Even the radio stations mentioned give us no clues. In general, radio stations with call letters beginning with "W" are located east of the Mississippi, radio stations with call letters beginning with "K" are located west of the Mississippi (although there are exceptions before this practice was standardized, such as Pittsburgh's KDKA). Radio stations with both "W" call letters and "K" call letters are mentioned on the series.

The Calverton streets Timmy walks are clearly a set. However, the streets of nearby Capitol (Capital? It's spelled both ways) City often look like they were filmed on real streets, i.e. the hospital in the Jeff episode "The Journey," the hospital in "A Specialist for Lassie," etc. However, the area of the country was never given, unlike in the Holden Ranch episodes, in which city scenes were clearly indicated as being filmed in Solvang, California.

(Indeed, Calverton is definitely not in California, as so many articles state. In "The Christmas Story"—the 1960 episode—the Dennis children tell Timmy that their father is taking them to California. Timmy then remarks, "Gosh, my dad is always talking about going to California." Later, when Timmy tells Ruth about the family, he comments, "That car of theirs will never make it to California," implying that the state is quite a distance away.)

The series filmed in various locations over the years. The two "pilot" episodes "Inheritance" and "The Well" were apparently filmed in British Columbia. The Jeff and early Timmy episodes were filmed on the same ranch where Fury filmed, the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, California. Later episodes were filmed at the Franklin Canyon Reservoir area in the Santa Monica Mountains of California, also a location for series like Bonanza and The Andy Griffith Show. A correspondent tells me the Thousand Oaks area was also used for filming, as was Vasquez Rocks (that sure looks like those rocks Timmy used to hang around) and the Beverly Hills Reservoir. Some shows were filmed on location, such as part 3 of "Lassie the Voyager" (Williamsburg, VA), part 7 of "Lassie the Voyager" (New Orleans), "More Than Meets the Eye" (the Braille trail in the San Bernardino National Forest), and "Ride the Mountain" (the Columbia Gorge Log Flume). Looking at a site for the Clark Fork River in the Stanislaus National Forest in Modesto, California, it looks very familiar and may have been the site of several Lassie episodes taking place near a river.

However we do know where that beautiful landscape behind Lassie in the syndicated titles might be. Dustin Carpenter noticed that the peak looked familiar and thought it might be Mount Hood in Oregon. He wrote to a friend who works in the lodge there and confirmed that it is indeed Mount Hood.

Not a question you ask most women! The cars and trucks were provided by Chrysler, at least through the Timmy and later episodes; if you look at the credits it has a notation mentioning this. So the cars are Chryslers; pretty sure the trucks are Dodges, since Chrysler owns Dodge and I don't believe Chrysler itself ever had a truck division. I have never seen a model name on any of them; maybe someone else has seen an ID.

UPDATE: Alfred Gruhler sent me an informative e-mail about the cars—in the Jeff episodes they were not Chryslers. He says "[T]the Miller's car is a 1949 Ford while Gramps' pickup is a 1941 Ford."

Of other interest from Alfred: "The Miller's phone is manufactured by the 'Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Co.' of Chicago. Kellogg manufactured phones for the independent (non Bell System) phone companies."

Dustin Carpenter adds this information about Ruth's sedan: "Ruth's sedan is a 57 Dodge Coronet. You can read the chrome script CORONET above the passenger front wheel opening in the episode "The Blanket."

Other vehicle trivia:

The Martin truck was blue and white: white at the top to the level of the truck bed and then pale blue below. Corey's Forest service truck was green with a white roof.

98-81304: Gramps' truck license plate number.

2A4323: License plate of the Martin car (at least in "Lassie's Guest"; the prop department may have popped any old license plate on the car in other episodes).

Corey's license plate number is A113393.

Another "repeating vehicle": Dustin Carpenter adds "A 'white' (I don't know because it is B&W) 1960 Ford Country Squire station wagon appears in Timmy & Lassie so far as I know twice in the series. In Season 9 , 'Desperate Search,' Mr. Brown (Andy's father) drives the car. In 'Home Within A Home,' (the very next episode!) the gas line surveyors have the same car."

Since all the collies portraying Lassie have been males (see the Lassie facts page for the reason why), of course Lassie actually didn't have any litters, although each Lassie was the sire of the next collie to take over the role. However, the character of Lassie did have a litter several times within the story. She has a litter in "Lassie's Pups," a Jeff episode. She also has puppies that are being given away at the beginning of second season; this is probably another litter. All the puppies are given away except for Laddie, who is only seen in one other episode. Another of one of her puppies, Comet, is featured in the episode "The Marauder" (he appears to be from the same litter as Laddie).

Lassie has at least three litters during the Timmy years, the first two in "The Puppy Story" and "Puppy Sitters." Blacktail, one of the members of the litter born in "The Puppy Story," returns at the beginning of seventh season in an episode entitled (surprise! <g>) "Blacktail." Lassie also gives birth in the episode "Lassie and the Eagle."

The only other litter mentioned is at the beginning of the seventeenth season, in the seven part sequence, "The Saga of Lassie's Puppies." Lassie's encounter with a male collie named Duke in "Lassie's Interlude" leaves her in "a family way." The first puppy is given away to a little boy named Kerry in "The Miracle," the second to another young boy in "The Offering," and the third to a little girl in "Nature's Child."

Lassie also had a litter of puppies at least once in The New Lassie (one was given to Mrs. Chadwick, who turned out to be a remarried Ruth Martin) and at least once in the Animal Planet series (the series finale, "Graduation").

The cry was "Eee-Yaw-Kee!", which, a correspondent of Tom Rettig told me, was something that Tom and his friends used to yell to each other back in Rettig's old neighborhood.

The character of Gramps died on the series because George Cleveland died in real life (but, no, he did not actually die on the set). Initially, Gramps was supposed to severely injure himself, which is why the Millers would have had to give up the farm. When he died the producers made the decision to have Gramps die. (See my note on the controversy this caused at CBS at the top of the fourth season page.)

Uncle Petrie was planned as a "Gramps" type character, but he didn't work out and was quietly dropped from the series without explanation after fifth season (although he appears out of nowhere in the sixth season story "In Case of Emergency," which may have been filmed as a fifth season episode and then postponed). In the first episode with Petrie, it was explained he was just there temporarily to help Paul get started on the farm.

Not to disappoint you—and all the writers who have milked this joke for years—but the answer is "none"! See my note on this joke, as well as the title of Jon Provost's autobiography, after the entry for "Her Master's Voice.")

Actually, the only main character in the Lassie series who fell down a well was Lassie herself, in Season 17's "Well of Love."

Apparently the character of Corey never recovered from his burns. In reality, Robert Bray had to leave the series. He had a worsening alcohol problem and then had an accident related to his alcoholism and had to retire from the show.

The way the story postulated it, yes: when the Martins moved to Australia, they hadn't properly adopted Timmy (uh-huh—after seven years!) and he was removed from their custody. Embittered, he started going by his middle name, Steven. He was then adopted by the McCullough family. Ruth Martin later turned up at the McCullough home under a new married name, Mrs. Chadwick. (Read my note about this improbable plot device in The New Lassie entry.)