Movies that'll make your tail wag

As an elementary school student in the 1970s, I saw the 1943 MGM film classic Lassie, Come Home on re-release at an Annandale, Virginia theater because my mother wanted me to see this true screen gem.  The Technicolor flick not only launched the childhood movie career of superstar Elizabeth Taylor, but also contained a scene in which another small dog dies after being clubbed by what looks like a tree branch.

The scene, made all the sadder when his owner grieves over the dog’s lifeless body, bothered me as a child and has stayed with me all these years.  When I watched the film again a few years ago, it was still upsetting for me.  Just think of the many dogs who suffer similar fates in real life.

I am often one of those people who prefers to be an ostrich with his head in the sand, avoiding both fiction and non-fiction depictions of abuse—to children and animals.  While I believe it is important to share such horror with the public, I avoid that kind of footage because I brood over what I have seen long afterwards.  Too, it only leads me to have even more contempt for our own species—the only species capable of true, evil malice—than I already do.

But what of more pleasant depictions of animals in movies?

One of the first films I remember seeing is Brighty of the Grand Canyon, a 1967 offering about a donkey who was found abandoned in the Grand Canyon near the turn-of-the-century and then spent a lifetime being a popular attraction for kids visiting the national park and carrying water for tourists.  Brighty apparently met President Teddy Roosevelt and his story was told in a highly esteemed 1950s children’s book.

But my favorite motion picture featuring an animal in a significant role is Sounder from 1972.  The dog is the title character in this heartwarming tale of an African-American sharecropping family grappling with poverty and racism in the Deep South during the Great Depression; however, he is not really a prominent character.  The story focuses on the canine’s human family but the love between the boy and his dog is powerful.  Just thinking about it makes my eyes well up.

For more information on movies with animals, I turned to an expert.  A friend of mine since seventh grade, almost 45 years ago, Dan Watanabe was told by our social studies teacher, with a laughing snort, after he gave an over-the-top oral report, “Dan, if you ever learn to write like you talk, you will make a million dollars one day!”  His breezy, irreverent delivery likely right went over the tween students’ heads—but Mrs. Wood was in stitches.

Dan was a gifted writer and classic movie connoisseur even in seventh grade.  From him at age 12, I developed an enormous appreciation for films targeted at people much older than us, such as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Rosemary’s Baby and even Valley of the Dolls.  I always have loved reading what he writes about film, so I asked him his thoughts on animals in the movies, knowing this lifetime critic of art on celluloid would have some delicious comments.

An adjunct instructor in film and screenwriting topics at Los Angeles Valley College since 2001 and Loyola Marymount University since 2013, Dan in 2018 finished an eight-year grant for providing the 19 community colleges in the L.A. region with a variety of workshops, guest speakers, and mini-conferences.  Starting in 1985, he spent sixteen years at a Hollywood production company, including as its vice president of development and current programming.

Dan also has his real estate license and on one of my visits to L.A., he took me to a showing of a Beverly Hills home where Marilyn Monroe and husband Joe DiMaggio once lived in the 1950s.  Today, he resides in North Hollywood with his poi dog, who, he said, is a mix of dachshund and some other breed, probably basenji.  “Poi” is a Hawaiian term for “mutt.”

When I asked him about some of the best movies in which animals are the primary focus of the story as the lead characters, he reminded me that he focuses on Hollywood’s golden era and first offered 1946’s Courage of Lassie, the sequel to Lassie, Come Home.   

He called it “a prime example of just how melodramatic Hollywood could be with animals,” noting that Lassie “gets accidentally abandoned, almost killed by a wolf, shot, lost in a snowstorm, hit by a bus, sent to war, becomes a hero, gets PTSD, returns home, escapes, starts attacking first sheep and then Liz Taylor, is put in court, and declared a hero before being reunited with Liz for a final happy clinch.”

But Dan’s analysis didn’t stop there.  With his students, he said he discusses the movie “as a classroom device where I use the narrative of most Lassie movies as an exemplar of the female melodrama. What, after all, is the difference between the heroics of Lassie and those of Joan Crawford?  Lassie is positioned as an active survivor, not a victim of circumstances.  Her brains and savoir faire are really notable, no matter the situation.  Lassie, an independent soul, lets her own goals determine what she will do next.  Sort of like Scarlett O’Hara in that way—especially in Lassie, Come Home.”

Dan claimed Courage of Lassie “was also very avant-garde,” noting its gender-bender casting of a trained male collie named Pal starring as the female Lassie, who during the film plays a male dog named Bill.  In Dan’s judgment, this was essentially a canine version of Victor/Victoria long before the Julie Andrews musical was ever made.

He also admires the animated Lady and the Tramp from 1955.  “It was difficult to pick between this and 101 Dalmatians but, to be honest, in terms of dog action this one is better,” he said.  “This is Disney at its most transgressive: telling the story of an amour fou between a lady of the manor and a commoner. Unlike many human versions of this—outside of rom-coms like It Happened One Night and Pretty Woman—the mismatching of social classes here works out fine.”

He explained that “the movie even has room for a gay couple: the neighboring dogs.”  He went on: “Where the movie is really ahead of its time is the way it dealt with adult concepts that parents would understand but children would gloss over, such as Lady awakening after suffering Worse Than Death with her ear over Tramp’s shoulder. We all know what that naughty-naughty means!”

Dan also brought up the 1987 Japanese film Hachiko, which was remade in English with Richard Gere in 2009.  It tells the tale of a Tokyo dog whose owner has died but continues to wait every day for him at a train station.

“The movie is harrowing because unlike its American cousins, it is fairly unsentimentalized in its depiction of how inhumane humans can be, especially to a dog.  Hachiko is seen to be alone in a world that neither will look after him or care,” Dan said.  “One would hope that humanity has gotten better, but sadly we know that in relation to animals, it really hasn’t.  The ending, when Hachiko dies, left not a dry eye in the house.”

I also asked Dan about films that feature animals prominently, rather than being about the animals.  He recommended After the Thin Man, one of the 1930s series of Thin Man films about simultaneous socialites and crime solvers Nick and Nora Charles, based on characters created by author Dashiell Hammett.  The movies featured Asta, a wire fox terrier whose real name was Skippy.  Asta is one of the most famous pooches in motion picture history—and his name pops up all the time in crossword puzzles, I’ve noticed over the years.

“Even though all of the Thin Man movies have ample time for the dog, Asta, After the Thin Man has a strong B-story for the dog that parallels that of the main mystery.  Plus, in this film Asta suffers great heartbreak when it becomes clear Mrs. Asta has had an affair with the doggie next door!  Asta is heartbroken, but, like Lassie, takes matters into his own hands and blocks the evil culprit later from being able to get into the garden with the use of a handy lawnmower,” explained Dan.

I was curious to know what this movie expert thought of the film industry’s history of inhumane treatment of animal actors during its early years.  He said he finds it difficult to watch old westerns and war movies in which wires were used to trip horses so that it looked like the horse and/or its rider had been killed, shot or otherwise harmed.

He added, “I have often wondered how the stunts with the lions were done in Born Free,” which was made in 1966. “Certainly, the message was powerful but it also had its side of cringe.”  Ironic, since the film was meant to encourage people to feel compassion toward animals.

Fortunately, nowadays, animals are protected on U.S. film sets and credits regularly state that no animals were harmed in the making of the movies. 

“Hollywood sets do everything in their power to protect animals—not only because of regulations, but actors won’t stand for an animal being abused,” stated Dan.  “Star power has its benefits.”  Happily, not just for the human stars.

Unfortunately, not all foreign films pay attention to the welfare of animals in their productions, according to him.

I asked Dan why more movies prominently featuring animals were not made in today’s Hollywood.  He mentioned that working with animals, as well as children, can be quite costly due to safety regulations and the amount of time they can work in a day.  Plus, it is tough for both to perform on cue, especially during a long and tiresome day of shooting.  What’s more, human actors may sometimes prefer not to work with animals because, like kids, they can easily steal scenes from big stars.

As for future films about animals, Dan thought movies like 2008’s Marley and Me would generate a flood of similar works with non-humans in leading roles.  He felt, however, that the flick “took the worst of the old Lassie movies and killed the genre.”

In any event, I keep hoping that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will soon air a tribute to animals in films as one of umpteen montages during an Oscar show.  The tribute could include a mea culpa about past mistreatment and urge everyone watching in the huge worldwide audience to treat animals humanely.  But I won’t hold my breath for that—or a Glenn Close victory.