Elizabeth Gaskell short story Elizabeth Gaskell's 1859 short story "The Half-Brothers" features a
collie named "Lassie" with "intelligent, apprehensive eyes", also described as "an ugly enough brute, with a white, ill-looking face". Lassie rescues two half-brothers who are lost and dying in the snow. When the younger brother can no longer carry on, elder brother Gregory, Lassie's master, ties a handkerchief around Lassie's neck and sends her home. Lassie arrives home, and leads the search party to the boys. When they arrive Gregory is dead, but his younger half-brother is saved. There is no known connection between Gaskell's Lassie and the better-known character created by Eric Knight.
Eric Knight short story and novel The fictional character of Lassie was created by English author
Eric Knight in
Lassie Come-Home, first published as a short story in
The Saturday Evening Post in 1938 and later as a full-length novel in 1940. Set in the
Depression-era England, the novel depicts the lengthy journey a
rough collie makes to be reunited with her young
Yorkshire master after her family is forced to sell her for money.
Movies and television In 1943, the novel was adapted into a feature film,
Lassie Come Home, by
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) that stars
Roddy McDowall and
Elizabeth Taylor. The movie was a hit and enjoyed favorable critical response. MGM followed this with several additional films, including a sequel entitled
Son of Lassie (1945), starring
Peter Lawford and
June Lockhart, and
Courage of Lassie (1946) with Elizabeth Taylor again. A
radio series,
Lassie Radio Show, was also created, airing until 1949. Between 1954–1973, the television series
Lassie was broadcast, with Lassie initially residing on a farm with a young male master. In the eleventh season, it changed to
U.S. Forest Service rangers as her companions, then the collie was on her own for a season, before ending the series with Lassie residing at a ranch for orphaned children. The series was the recipient of two
Emmy Awards before it was canceled in 1973. Lassie won several
PATSY Awards (an award for animal actors). A
second series followed in the 1980s. In 1997, Canadian production company
Cinar Inc. produced a new
Lassie television series for the
Animal Planet network in the U.S. and
YTV in Canada. It ran until 1999. In 2005, a remake of the original
Lassie Come Home movie was produced in the United Kingdom. Starring
Peter O'Toole and
Samantha Morton,
Lassie was released in 2006. Additionally, two animated TV series featuring the canine were produced. The first was ''
Lassie's Rescue Rangers, created by Filmation Associates, which aired on ABC from 1973 to 1975. Nearly four decades later, a new animated series titled The New Adventures of Lassie'' was co-produced by
Superprod Animation and
Classic Media, in which Lassie was owned by the Parker family and lived in a national park. The series was primarily a
traditionally animated (2D hand-drawn) TV series, though it also used some
CGI animation. It was first seen in the United States starting in 2020 via the
CBS All Access streaming service, then carried over to successor service
Paramount+. Lassie continues to make personal and TV show appearances as well as marketing a line of pet food and a current pet care TV show, ''Lassie's Pet Vet
on PBS stations in the United States. Lassie is one of only three animals (and one of very few fictional characters, such as Mickey Mouse, Kermit the Frog, and Bugs Bunny) to be awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame—the others being silent-film stars Rin Tin Tin and Strongheart. In 2005, the show business journal Variety'' named Lassie one of the "100 Icons of the Century"—the only animal star on the list. ==Media==