The Backstory: Why Do We Love Dog Movie Stars?

Nothing makes us melt like a great story about a kid and a dog. Lassie was a megastar in the 1950s, watching over her 7-year-old boy Timmy...but was her act lifted from the first canine movie star back in 1905?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We all love dogs and if we don't, we should.
And the people that started the movie industry pretty much
knew that almost from the beginning. Did you know that,
arguably the first movie to have a canine star, Blair
in Rescued by Rover, was released in nineteen oh five.
I'm Patty Steele. Guess what it seems? Blair's act was

(00:22):
stolen decades later by none other than Lassie. That's next
on the backstory. The backstory is back. There's something so
organically attractive about little children and dogs, and when you

(00:43):
put them together, it can be magic. Filmmakers seem to
pick up on this from the very beginning of Silent Film.
In nineteen oh five, the British director Lewis Fitzhaman capitalized
on what he thought would be a magic combo. One
year old Barbara Hepworth starred as kidnapped baby and the
real Hepworth family dog Blair stole the show as Rover.

(01:07):
Little Barbara's real life parents, Cecil and Margaret Hepworth plays
mother and father, but they got very little attention even
though they were big film people. The plot goes that
the nanny was taking baby for a stroll in her carriage,
and as she walked through the park, a gypsy woman
approached asking for money. The nanny said no way and

(01:28):
kept walking, but then she got distracted by a young
soldier and started talking to him. That's when the beggar
woman snuck up and snatched the baby from the carriage.
In the next scene, the nanny goes home and confesses
to the mother that baby has been lost. Aha, Rover,
here's all this, and then Lassie esk jumps through the window,

(01:51):
races down the street, around a corner, and across a river.
The pup finds its way to a bad part of
town and then barges through every door until he traces
the scent of baby and runs up the stairs in
an attic the beggar woman is taking off baby's clothing.
Rover barks, but is dispatched by the woman, then again

(02:14):
creating the Lassie playbook. Rover runs home and he goes
nuts in front of the dad father follows him down
the street, across the river and into the doorway of
the house where baby is being held. She's rescued, unharmed
and brought home, with Rover, of course, getting a lot
of attention for his rescue. That seven minute movie was

(02:36):
a sensation. Believe it or not, it cost about forty
bucks to make and help turn movie making into a
storytelling medium rather than just a scientific novelty. For the director,
Lewis Fitzhayman, this was his biggest film of the four
hundred that he made. He had other animal flicks such
as Dog Outwits the Kidnappers, which is kind of based

(02:59):
on the Rover movie, but Rover was his tour deiforce.
He did manage to sell four hundred copies of the
film for about ten bucks apiece, so he did make
a few bucks, but Blair, as Rover the Dog became
a household name. He's considered the world's first canine film star.
This was the first appearance of a dog in a

(03:19):
narrative based film, and believe it or not, that movie
made the pretty uncommon name of Rover into one of
the most popular names for dogs in the first half
of the twentieth century. Blair went on to make a
number of other films over the next five years, but
was first and foremost the Hepworth Family Dog. Another early

(03:41):
canine star was Shep. He starred in an eleven minute
film that was a huge critical hit in nineteen fourteen.
It was called A Dog's Love and it was very emotional. Again,
the dog was the star. It was about a dog
who loses his best friend, a small girl whose killed
when she's hit by a car. The movie focuses on

(04:03):
the dog's emotions in dealing with his loss. Audiences love
this flick because of its universally appealing theme. The description says,
the movie focuses on a poor, little rich girl who
has no one to play with. You see Baby Helen
with her doll looking out the window while other children play.
Baby Helen sets up a tea party in the yard

(04:26):
by herself and the neighbor's dog. Shep comes out to play.
She invites him to the tea party to share a muffin.
A week later, four year old Helen is sent out
on an errand. Not sure who sends a four year
old on an errand, but as she crosses the street,
she's hit by a passing car. SHEP races to her
rescue and then runs for the parents, but it's too late.

(04:49):
He's devastated. She's died. Then, in one of the earliest
and best uses of double exposure, Helen's ghost comes back
and guides Shep to her her grave, where he then
brings flowers and lays by her gravestone. People were beside
themselves with this story, and again it helped transition film

(05:11):
into a theatrical event that made people feel something that
told a real story. There's a final screen title in
that movie that says, don't cry, It's only make believe,
showing Helen holding flowers and leaning against Shep. It's a
reminder of little kids in the audience that it was
all simply a story. Critics loved it. The Chicago Tribune

(05:34):
wrote two more attractive artists never collaborated in a single
production than This Star Baby and This Star Dog. The
picture is a miniature masterpiece. Just a few years later, W. C. Fields,
with both of these flicks in mind, was quoted as saying,
never make a movie with a kid or a dog.

(05:55):
They always steal the show. Hope you like the backstory
with Patty Steele. Please leave a review. I'd love it
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It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm

(06:20):
Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,
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is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new
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(06:42):
Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The
pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.