Cinematic Canines: Dogs and Their Work in the Fiction Film

Chapter 4: Promoting Lassie: The Animal Star and Constructions of “Ideal” American Heroism

104 4 Promoting Lassie The Animal Star and Constructions of “Ideal” American Heroism KELLY WOLF Press materials related to canine stars as dog heroes in the United States from the 1930s through the 1950s often mythologized their subjects through a rhetoric of nationalism, partially owing to the connotative value of the dog—especially large dogs—as loyal, strong, and protective. Although they were continually balanced on the edge of domestication and wildness, dog heroes were always represented ultimately as “ideal” members of society. Despite the fame of the silent-era dog hero, especially Rin Tin Tin, the most recognizable animal performer in the United States probably was, and remains, Lassie, the tan and white rough collie that starred in films and television shows in the 1940s and 1950s and became the exemplar of the dog both as loyal companion and family member but also as a thinking, feeling, communicating entity who lived in perfect harmony and understanding with the humans lucky enough to own her. This essay focuses on the ways that Lassie’s star text was positioned discursively by the studios for which “she” worked1 and how this positioning came to define dogs both as canine performers and as actual domestic pets in relation to human codes of morality and behavior. The relationship that emerges between animal stars in Hollywood and their manufactured images necessitates an investigation into the work, both Promoting Lassie • 105 ideological and physical, that these canine actors were invariably enlisted to do. The deployment of the canine star image was instrumental in constructing appropriate standards of obedient behavior and American heroism. The intense physical conditioning and training involved in the labor of achieving this ideal was effaced through the fetishistic practices employed by studio press agents. Animal stars are put through a system of routinized labor, labor that precisely becomes invisible once the animal star in question becomes commoditized through the system of studio publicity. As was true with Strongheart and Rin Tin Tin, the audience was encouraged to subsume its conceptions of the common domestic canine under the idealized rubric of the dog hero provided by the films and their promotional and publicity materials. Both star and common canines can become fetishized commodities as a result, because of the disavowal of the labor involved on the part of both the star dog and trainer. First, I contextualize Lassie’s emergence as a canine film star within larger shifts in societal attitudes toward domestic pets and the industry’s desire to A glamour portrait of Lassie during the 1940s. Movie Star News. 106 • Cinematic Canines capitalize on the popularity and malleability of canine performers. A discussion of the early films in the Lassie franchise reveals MGM’s investment in promoting wartime idealism, as well as the studio’s initial crafting of the Lassie image. Lassie was marketed as an exemplary figuration of “American” heroism, a construction encouraged by the rhetoric of the press materials related to the films. These publicity tactics attempted to foster a nationalistic identity, through the audience’s identification with the star, that was based on gendered and racialized hierarchies. I conclude with an analysis of the manner in which the promotional displays and dog-giveaway contests that were used as part of the Lassie campaign reveal some insidious gender anxieties and problematic investments in racial purity within studio constructions of the “ideal” pet. The promotional contests that marketed the idea of Lassie to the public ultimately exploited the childhood fantasy of owning a dog that was as perfect as Lassie appeared to be, making both the star canine and common household pets into forms of merchandise. American cultural institutions utilize animal imagery and labor to promote a discourse about “viable” conceptions of humanness, and these ideas invariably have an impact on the lives of actual canines. Animal stars cannot speak about their own significance in the ways that human performers are traditionally able to assert themselves. Therefore it is important to analyze the means by which the discourse about animal stars of the past reveals the patterns of thought that placed the canine at the center of definitions of human identity. How Lassie “Came Home” to MGM Pal was a disheveled mass of undisciplined willfulness. The eight-month-old collie was proving too much of a burden for his owner; he chased cars obsessively and barked incessantly. Enlisting the help of a well-established Hollywood dog trainer, Rudd Weatherwax...