Production
Produced under the working title, Laddie, Son of Lassie, the film originally had Elsa Lanchester playing the role of the adult Priscilla. Shortly after filming began, June Lockhart took over the role. It was the first movie filmed using the Technicolor Monobook method.
Principal filming took place from May to November 1944, in various locations throughout western Canada, including Vancouver Island and Christopher Point in British Columbia, Banff National Park in Alberta, as well as Jackson Hole, Wyoming and Los Angeles in the United States.
The wartime airfield scenes were shot at the air base at Patricia Bay which is now Victoria International Airport. The aircraft used included Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighters, Bristol Bolingbroke and Lockheed Ventura bombers of the Royal Canadian Air Force.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, John Charles Reed sued MGM in October 1947 for plagiarism, claiming the film script was based on his 1943 story "Candy". The jury disagreed and the suit was dismissed.
The movie reportedly popularized the name "Lad" for male dogs. Pal, the original male collie who played Lassie in Lassie Come Home (1943) played Laddie. A 20-year old June Lockhart, whose screen career had consisted of bit parts, had a more meaningful connection to the iconic Lassie story when in 1958, she took on the role of Ruth Martin, who adopts orphan Timmy (Jon Provost) in the long-running (CBS, 1954-1971) TV series "Lassie".
Read more about this topic: Son Of Lassie
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.”
—Ernest Gellner (b. 1925)