Lassie!  Quick, Get Help!  Timmy's Not in a Well!

She may have rescued people from wells, lakes and caves, but our favorite collie also had to navigate an audience through an emotional minefield




Lassie, "Lassie's Gift of Love"
OB: December 15 & 22, 1963, 7:00 p.m. EST, CBS
I was born the following month after this two-parter aired.

O.K. let's get something out of the way first: I don't care what Jay Leno or David Letterman or anyone else ever told you...Timmy absolutely did not fall into a well.  Never.  Ever.  Neither did Jeff.

It's an often told joke and Lassie the superhero wonderdog did perform some laughably ridiculous feats over the years...but Timmy never fell into a well.  A bad guy fell into one during the first season and Lassie had to get help for him...Timmy's father almost fell into a well...and Lassie herself fell into a well, during a 1970 two-part episode. And Timmy was goofy enough to get into all sorts of trouble--a snakebite, being threatened by animals ranging from other dogs to a bear to a lion, getting trapped in a cave and a drainpipe (maybe the drainpipe is what people are thinking about), and falling into a lake twice.  But Timmy never fell into a well.  That's actually why actor Jon Provost titled his autobiography "Timmy's in the Well," just to make that point.  The TV Tropes website went as far as to suggest, with all the over-the-top peril Timmy got into, maybe falling down a well was just too boring.

Actually, a quick browse through 19 years of the show's episode guides shows more common recurring themes, ranging from the cute animal of the week, to the show's pet cause, the environment (before that was even fashionable). Lassie during its early years was more often about moral values than it was a cute collie in search of an action movie.


That's not to say that kind of stuff never happened, or that it wasn't laughable when it did.  June Lockhart could give you an earful about the ridiculous things the script assigned to Lassie...like the time Ruth sent Lassie to get a C-clamp, and Lassie came back with a knife.  That wasn't enough to free Ruth from the trap in which she was caught, so she made a letter "C" with her hand...and Lassie brought back the right tool. Still, that wasn't the point of the show.  A more typical show would be about, say, a raccoon upsetting Jeff's and Porky's beehive, or the Martins nursing a bear cub back to health after it's been shot with a hunter's arrow.

The long-running series is actually broken up into multiple formats.  Based on a 1938 novel, Lassie was first the star of a series of MGM movies, always filmed in color.  The first co-starred Roddy McDowall; a sequel featured a young Elizabeth Taylor.  In 1951, when MGM was done with the series, they were trying to get out of its contract with trainer Rudd Weatherwax and didn't have the $40,000 to pay him.  Or maybe they had it and didn't want to part with it...I mean come on, this is a movie studio.  So they simply gave Weatherwax the rights to the name and the character, even the trademark to it.  That was the Hollywood equivalent of winning the lottery; all Weatherwax had wanted was his money and the right to call his collie "Lassie" when he took "her" (him) to make personal appearances.  What he got was a franchise.



That's actually how Lassie operated over the years, as several different mini-shows within one series that lasted 19 years.  That's because the show was aimed mostly at young people, and not only did the stars grow older and get replaced, there were complete turnovers in the audience as well.   And considering that even Lassie herself was played by multiple (male) collies (whose coats didn't shed as much), the show really had a complete turnover, like daytime soaps.  It may very well have paved the way for franchise television like, say, the various Star Trek series.

It was the third version (1964-70) that I and my siblings watched every Sunday night.  We had a Birmingham dual network affiliate (WAPI, Channel 13) that managed to get Lassie on CBS and The Wonderful World of  Color on NBC back to back in the same lineup.  No adult dared get in our way on that night.  That third version was the "Forest Ranger" version, where Lassie served with Corey Stuart (and later, two other rangers).  It was the first version to air in color (though isolated episodes were filmed in color earlier), and it's the first time in my life I ever saw forest rangers, or the green trucks they drove.  I remember one episode in which Corey was hanging over a cliff (I think he was trying to help an eaglet or something) by a rope tied to the front bumper of his Dodge pickup...which apparently slipped its parking brake and started rolling.  Lassie quickly grabbed a log and placed it in front of a tire, stopping the truck.

Version #4 was basically Lassie on her own, wandering the land, and consisted of the 1970-71 season. When an FCC ruling forced networks to give back some early evening access time to local affiliates, CBS suddenly had no decent place to put it on their fall schedule.  It was seen as too juvenile for prime time, yet too good for Saturday morning.  So they dropped the show and it continued for two more years in first run syndication, this time (version #5, 1971-73) set at the fictional Holden Ranch for troubled orphaned boys.  A pre-CHiPs Larry Wilcox can be seen in the cast, along with Pamela Ferdin (The Odd Couple, Lucy's voice in the early "Peanuts" specials) as a deaf girl.



The first version (1954-57), which most fans consider the show's best era, was known in syndication as Jeff's Collie. It starred Tommy Rettig at Jeff, with Jan Clayton as his mother Ellen and George Cleveland as Gramps.  Many fans believe the quality of the writing, and especially the acting, made this version stand out. Jeff, basically, came off as a typical kid, with a best friend Porky.  Jeff wasn't perfect and it wasn't out of the question for him to get into a fight every now and then.  He had pet lizards and pet frogs in addition to Lassie, just like the rest of us who didn't have Lassie did.



I was born halfway through what would be the final season of version #2, the 1958-64 "Timmy" version, known as Timmy and Lassie in its initial syndication run.  I never knew Lassie ever even had a "boy" until the 1970s, when I first saw Jeff's Collie and Timmy and Lassie in reruns.  Initially, Timmy's adoptive parents, Paul and Ruth Martin, were played by Jon Shepodd and Cloris Leachman...yes, the same Cloris who was Phyllis Lindstrom on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (and later Phyllis), Frau Blucher in "Young Frankenstein," and more recently, Maw-Maw on Raising Hope.  She only lasted the second half of a season before she left. One version has her and the producers parting ways mutually because she was unhappy and not a good fit for the role of a farmer's wife; another version had an interviewer asking her if she used the sponsor's product, Campbell's Soups, to which she supposedly replied, "Hell no, I make my own"...and so, Cloris got canned.  So the following season, the Martins were played by Paul Reilly and June Lockhart (Lost in Space). Timmy, as always, was Jon Provost.


While Jeff was basically your typical bruiser of a boy (even 20 years later in reruns, boys my age still felt like we knew real kids like Jeff), Timmy was more of your classic nice guy.  While he had friends of his own, like Boomer, he usually hung around adults and was basically an animal and nature lover who just wanted to do good.  You got the feeling Timmy grew up and became one of the first people to ever celebrate Earth Day. Unfortunately, that doesn't make for the most dramatic or engrossing television in the world, so that's where Timmy found himself getting into ridiculous amounts of trouble--everything from chickenpox to being threatened by escaped circus animals (more than once), and Lassie starting to emerge as an honorary member of the Justice League.

And it's "do-gooder Timmy" who's at the center of the two-part episode, that was the closest one I could find to my birth era.  "Lassie's Gift of Love" first aired a week apart in December 1963, one of the show's Christmas episodes.  They did a different one every year, very unusual for that time.



Part one opens with Timmy and Lassie traipsing along a road in what is unmistakably California's Franklin Canyon Reservoir, without managing to bump into Opie Taylor or the cast of Combat!  But it's supposed to be Calverton, state unknown.  And there's snow on the ground.  As Timmy puts Christmas decorations (some edible, as we'll find out) on a snow-covered fir tree, Lassie sees a deer come up and start eating out of the small picnic basket they brought.  The jingling of one of the ornaments apparently scares it off.



A bearded man names Mr, Nicholson comes up and introduces himself to Lassie and Timmy, shaking hands with both.  He notes what Timmy is doing: feeding wild animals, who can't find food because the snow has covered it all up or covered up the scents.  Mr. Nicholson's donkey Holly brings up Mr. Nicholson's carriage, and Timmy can see by the writing on it that Mr. Nicholson can mend toys.  That's good news since his mother Ruth happens to be involved with a toy drive for a children's hospital.  Mr, Nicholson says he'd love to help, but first he has to find a place to sleep for the night.  Timmy invites him over to the Martin farm.



Ruth and Paul are in the kitchen, talking about how Mr. Nicholson, his wagon and his donkey all seem like they're from another century.  Ruth is making dinner, and expresses concern that she only made three baked potatoes.  But when Paul checks the oven, he finds four.  This seems to shock Ruth a bit.


Mr. Nicholson joins them for dinner, where we see them bow their heads in grace (they actually do a lot of praying on this show by the way...religion was often overlooked on TV even then).  Mr. Nicholson tells about Christmas being celebrated in other parts of the world.  He mentions the countries in which Christmas is shared with animals, like Timmy and Lassie were doing, only with hay and feed being used instead of bread.



This prompts Timmy to suggest the idea to his dad, who agrees to kick off his animal relief effort with a bag of feed.  Mr. Nicholson then recites the Biblical passage from Matthew 25:40, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these...ye have done it unto me."  The Martins invite him to stay.




An exterior of the Martin farmhouse shows it suddenly start to snow.  This is a little symbol reminding us that 1950s and 1960s television believed in God more often than not.  Whenever someone invokes God's name in a positive way in a Christmas show or movie, it suddenly snows.  That's supposed to mean God is listening.  Watch what happens when Jimmy Stewart finishes his "I want to live!" combination prayer/appeal to Clarence in "It's a Wonderful Life" and you'll see the same thing.




Two things are starting to become glaringly obvious at this point.  Obviously the first one is that Mr. Nicholson is Santa Claus, helping out Timmy and the Martins, and the animals in the forest.  Or perhaps he's an off-brand Santa.  Secondly, helping the animals when snow is interfering with their feeding grounds, is a metaphorical stand-in for welfare and helping the poor, the snow representing economic hardship.  



The next day, Mr. Nicholson uses his donkey-drawn wagon to set out with Lassie and Timmy to collect food for the animals Christmas relief project.  They get a sack of corn from Mr. Livermore, a bale of hay from another neighbor, and a hard time from the episode's official Scrooge, Mr. Krebs, who's perfectly content with letting "survival of the fittest" rule the day in the snow.  Timmy apologizes for wasting Mr. Nicholson's time with that man (a Lassie fan site says Timmy spends much of season 10 saying "I'm sorry"), but Mr. Nicholson suggests maybe they "planted a seed in that lonely old heart of his."



That night, Lassie, sleeping next to Timmy's bed, hears howling outside, and finds two wolves trying to get into the Martin barn.  Apparently believing there's no sense in disturbing Paul, his shotgun or his opposable thumbs this time of night, Lassie noses the window open and jumps into wonderdog mode, chasing the two wolves away.

The next day, we hear how helpful Mr. Nicholson has been in decorating the church.  Timmy, who has been rehearsing for a church solo and overhead the Women's Auxiliary, imitates the women complimenting him. 



That's when Mr. Livermore and Mr. Krebs (the latter apparently named by the writers because it sounds like "crabs") show up looking for Paul.  Krebs says wolves raided his farm, killing a bull calf and two laying hens, and apparently did some damage at Livermore's place, too.  Paul tells them about how Lassie chased apparently those same wolves away, and how odd it is since wolves haven't been around that area in years.  
Krebs blames Timmy (naturally, since Timmy is a trouble magnet and Krebs has all the social grace of one of his own cattle), saying the feeding grounds attracted the deer, which attracted the wolves.  While the deer were agile enough to escape, the wolves figured "as long as we're here anyway" and got to work on the farms.  Mr. Livermore acknowledges Timmy's idea was nice, but "just wasn't practical."  Timmy's parents inform him all he can do is stop the project.  A dejected Timmy excuses himself to the barn.



Mr. Nicholson then invites Timmy into his wagon, showing off the toys from the toy drive that were turned from junk to condition: brand new.  Mr. Nicholson explains he's not Santa, just one of his helpers, but he's been at the toy repair trade for along time.  Mr. Nicholson also tries to comfort Timmy about his failed animal relief project.  "The wolves appear in one form or another in every man's life," the old man tells Timmy.  "But each time it happens, there's a reason."  He explains God's way is very difficult to understand, implying Timmy (in addition to all of his other crises) may very well be having a crisis of faith.  End of Part 1, although the June Lockhart-narrated preview of Part 2 pretty much spoils everything.




Oh, and since the whole series is really about separation anxiety, Lassie eggs it on by waving goodbye to us under the closing credits, as always.




Part 2 opens with everyone loading the toys for the toy drive into the bed of Paul's '58 Dodge pickup.  Ruth wishes she could go with them to town but Timmy makes a big deal out of the fact that she can't, she just can't...because it'll make him nervous singing the solo.  (Really, it's so he can buy her Christmas gift.)  They arrive at the store where Timmy asks the shopkeeper for the pink silk umbrella, but the man says he sold the last one before Timmy could save up.  Mr. Nicholson insists he take one more look, and sure enough, that umbrella turns up in the stockroom after all.  (So if you're keeping a "magic" score, that's one potato and one umbrella.)  The shopkeeper throws in that Krebs shot and killed one of the wolves last night night and wounded the other one that got away.  




Sure enough, while Lassie and Ruth are in the kitchen, the remaining wolf shows up and Lassie chases it away. Mr. Krebs, waiting in the woods, shoots and kills the second wolf.  Lassie stops short when she sees it dead, but then hears whimpering nearby and goes to check it out.  She finds three wolf cubs in a den.




Krebs, dragging the wolf up the mountain, bumps a log that sets off a small avalanche, enough to cover the entrance to the den and trapping Lassie with the pups.  It's apparently too much for Lassie to dig through.  
Two hours later, Timmy, Paul and Mr. Nicholson return to the farm, but there's still no sign of Lassie.  So the three search the woods.  They come close to the den--Timmy even finds the wolf's blood, thinking it might be Lassie's.  But not only is there too much snow to dig through, there's apparently enough to block Lassie's barks.  For some reason she can hear them outside the small cave but they can't hear her.  (Consistency was never this show's strong point.)

With no Lassie in sight, Timmy prays silently next to the window, with Mr. Nicholson saying "Amen" along with him.  Cut to Lassie still trying to find a way out of the cave.


At the Christmas Eve church service, we see Timmy singing his solo, and everyone is touched, even that old coot Krebs.  As he finishes there's suddenly a brisk wind outside, enough to shake a small tree outside the church window and enough to blow away the snowdrift that Lassie couldn't dig through.    



Apparently, prayer is a large part of the Martins' life and Timmy says it a lot, mostly on behalf of Lassie and the family.  The show doesn't proselytize, but it doesn't shy away from religion in America life either.

As everyone departs the church, Mr. Nicholson points out the Christmas stars to Timmy.  Mr. Krebs compliments Timmy on his singing and expresses his empathy about Lassie being lost.  He tells Timmy he shot the wolf Lassie was chasing.  They both express a Merry Christmas to each other.



Lassie takes one of the cubs out to the roadway and gets Mr. Krebs' attention in his truck, leading him to the other two.  Back at the Martin farmhouse, there's a happy reunion, and a suddenly chipper Krebs explains about Lassie, the cubs and how he accidentally caused the small avalanche that trapped Lassie and the cubs in the cave.  One of the extras, a woman with light hair and glasses, suddenly shivers in empathy when she hears about Lassie and the cave.  It's a really nice touch.

Back in the Martin kitchen, Krebs admits he's wrong and asks Timmy if he can help restart the animal feeding project.  An excited Timmy runs out to find Mr. Nicholson, only he's gone, along with the wolf cubs and the wagon.  Timmy asks why Mr, Nicholson left, and Ruth suggests maybe he finished whatever it was he came to do.  Timmy notes Lassie sees something they don't, and it's even something we don't see.  The show ends with the credits rolling over the Martins' snow-covered farmhouse, with the guests' cars parked outside, as we hear Timmy sing "Silent Night" one more time.


For all the peril or adventures Timmy might encounter--and this is a kid who narrowly avoided being eaten by enough different animals to fill an encyclopedia--his worst, most dire fear was that he would somehow or another lose Lassie.  And that was a very real fear, for as much as Lassie rescued people from stuff, she couldn't do anything about their broken hearts...even if she was the one who broke them.

In late 1957, the show's producers were hit with a double whammy that complicated their storyline.  First, Tommy Rettig was getting a bit old to appeal to the children who were meant to draw in the family audience. The first answer to that was to go the Brady Bunch "Cousin Oliver" route (come to think of it, Lassie may have even invented that idea) by introducing Timmy, an orphan who had run away from his aunt and uncle. When he ended up on the Miller farm, it's somehow agreed he can stay there for the time being, and Jeff begins to treat Timmy like a younger brother.  In a true, torch-passing episode, Jeff and Porky try to make Timmy get lost so they can enjoy a fishing trip in peace; their bizarre scheme endangers Timmy.


Then the tragic second event that finally forced the producers' hand: actor George Cleveland, who played Gramps, died, and his character needed to be written out of the show.  (My dad remembered watching that when he was 12, and crying when he saw Lassie sadly walk across the farmyard with her head held down.) The writers felt there needed to be a male figure to run the farm (having Ellen become a pioneer woman overnight was seen as implausible, even in a show that seemed to live off implausibility at times) .  So the decision was made to write Jeff and Ellen out of the show.  It's explained Ellen decided to sell the farm and move to the city (something they tried in season one only to be miserable) and they wouldn't be able to take Lassie.  That had to be a lot to take for Jeff; it was a lot to take for any kid having to watch that.  (When Lassie is such a central part of a family, she can't just be passed off to another family without some trauma involved.  Jeff and Timmy just aren't going to "get tired" of a dog who probably saved their lives multiple times.)  So it works out to where Lassie, and Timmy, end up living with the Martins, who also bought the Miller farm.  (Cleveland's death is also why the switch happened in mid-season.)


The Timmy era is the best known era because it lasted the longest. And aside from Timmy's seemingly Dickensian life full of peril (Did I mention the runaway hot air balloon incident?  Or the one where Timmy and Lassie are exposed to radiation?  Or the minefield...yes, there was a minefield?!), we saw him get separated from Lassie on occasion, most notably the classic three part 1962 episode, "The Odyssey," in which Lassie accidentally gets locked inside a produce trailer and ends up a state or two away, trying to find her way home.  This is likely the greatest Lassie episode ever. Keep in mind, this epic saga actually began with Timmy and Lassie going to their favorite spot, and Timmy carving "Timmy and Lassie Martin" on a log, as if she were his sister. Timmy's reaction to the prospect of losing Lassie borders on clinical depression (remember, he already lost his birth parents, too).  It's at that spot where Lassie and Timmy are finally reunited.

So after all of that...the 1964-65 season premiere finds Paul getting some kind of job in Australia...only for everyone to find out Lassie can't come, because she'd have to be quarantined for six months in England and that would break her spirit.  (That was an actual law at the time, but it's been changed.)  By now Timmy has bonded with Lassie in a way that's more similar with how soldiers bond under fire than, say, the relationship I had with my own childhood dog Ginger. So his coming to terms with this pending loss is very, very difficult to watch; the last time we see him, he's in the farmyard one last time as Lassie walks up.  Instead of embracing her and saying goodbye, he runs away.  He's just in too much pain. A lot of people probably cried when they first saw that episode; I simply gasped, my mouth dropped open, when I first saw it decades later on Nick at Nite.  (And at the end of the three-parter, we see one last, mournful glimpse of the now-deserted Martin farmhouse with a "For Sale" sign in the yard.  If nothing else, the writers and directors of Lassie knew how to push its viewers' buttons with emotional imagery.)


Then it's Lassie's turn.  Five years later, Robert Bray, who played Ranger Corey, was let go from the show due to his alcoholism.  He was written out as having been critically burned in a forest fire.  Lassie walks all over the countryside, along an interstate and into the next major city to find Corey in the hospital and stay by his side. The fact that she ends up staying with two other rangers in later episodes, implies the news wasn't good for Corey.  All of these can be very disturbing to a young person watching it, especially if it's first run. And any adult who responded with "Get over it, kid, it's just a TV show," probably wasn't helping.

The current that runs through the great, big, rural, rugged 19-year world of Lassie...is trauma and heartbreak. Widows and orphans, be they Ellen, Timmy or the boys on the Holden Ranch, are a big part of the show. So is separation, for that is the true peril that feeds all the others.  The opening credits to every episode in the show's first ten years began with someone calling Lassie's name because they couldn't find her. All the times either Lassie, Jeff or Timmy are lost or trapped somewhere, were stand-ins for the horrible day in which each of them have to say goodbye forever to someone they love. This likely had the unintended effect of getting us all used to the idea of loss in the 1960s era of assassinations and war dead, then in time for us to grow up and eventually deal with other forms of loss in our adulthood.  And that could very well be Lassie's greatest rescue of all.

Availability: A smattering of episodes are available on DVD, including "Lassie's Gift of Love" and "The Odyssey."  They may be out of print, but they turn up on eBay and Amazon.  There's also a 50th anniversary set that came out in 2004.  All or most of season five (1958-59, the first June Lockhart season) also appears to be on Hulu.  Dreamworks bought the full rights to the show not long ago, but so far we have no indication as to whether that means season-by-season DVD releases or remastered episodes streaming online.

Next time on this channel: The Danny Kaye Show, Christmas edition.